Road freight association, Transporting New Zealand, has endorsed a number of “common sense” proposals in the NZ Transport Agency’s recent lane use consultation.
The proposals include permitting children up to 12 years of age to ride bicycles on footpaths, allowing e-scooters to use cycle lanes, setting a minimum passing gap when overtaking other road users, and giving way to buses exiting bus stops.
“Young children riding bikes on footpaths and e-scooters using cycle lanes is something which already happens now, but for which the rules are unclear,” said Transporting New Zealand Policy & Advocacy Advisor, Mark Stockdale.
“These changes will normalise current behaviour and help improve safety for vulnerable road users by meaning they don’t have to share the road with larger vehicles like cars and trucks.
“Whilst there could be a risk of young cyclists on footpaths being injured from cars reversing out of driveways, this could be partially mitigated through education encouraging drivers to ‘RIFO’: reverse in and forward out of their driveways,” Stockdale adds.
Mr Stockdale said Transporting New Zealand cautiously supported other proposals to require traffic to give way to buses exiting buses stops, and to set a minimum overtaking width, as these will encourage good practice, however the association thinks the latter rule will be difficult to enforce.
“Not all of New Zealand’s road network is wide enough to permit wide passing gaps for all traffic types such as overtaking tractors or farm machinery on narrow rural roads, so some enforcement discretion would need to be applied,” he said.
However, Transporting New Zealand opposed the proposal that road controlling authorities would no longer be required to signpost any prohibitions on berm parking. The organisation said that, like some of the other proposals, this was relatively common behaviour, and to not clearly advertise a ban using signs would be problematic for drivers.
– Transporting New Zealand’s submission can be read here: https://www.transporting.nz/submissions/submission-to-nzta-lane-use-improvements.
