Safe speeds around schools Safe speeds around schools

The internationally recognised safe and appropriate speed in areas with people walking and on bikes, like around schools, is 30km/h. In Auckland, there are over 560 schools with current speed limits that do not make walking, cycling, and scooting appealing modes of transport, both for children and their parents.

New safe speed limits

Speed limits around 57 schools were successfully changed to 30km/h between 30 June – 28 July 2022 as part of Phase 2 speed programme. See the full list of Phase 2 school speed limits.

For Phase 3 of the Safe Speeds Programme, we have proposed safe speed limits around a further 82 Auckland schools between 1 December 2022 and 30 March 2023.

The new 30km/h school zone speed will be legally enforceable by NZ Police.

Reasons for these changes

• Setting safe speed limits outside and surrounding schools improves children’s safety.  If parents believe their children are safe on the way to school, they will allow them to walk and cycle to school more often.
• Safe speed limits deliver many benefits to Auckland communities including: healthier environments, thriving town centres, safe streets for walking and biking, improved air quality, and lower carbon emissions.  
• The internationally accepted speed to greatly reduce the chances of a pedestrian being killed or seriously injured is 30km/h.

The majority of these 82 schools are located in residential areas where the actual speeds that vehicles travel at (operating speeds) are already low. Therefore, the changes we propose will simply bring the posted speed limit in line with the speed vehicles are already travelling at.

Time frame for school speed changes

To find out when the changes will happen for your school, you can match your school’s Local Board Area to the date that the change will take place

Schools with new speed limits

For more information, please see FAQs on school speed management.