Yellow - Proposed New 40km
Green - Already Existing 40km

Strategic Context

The State Government’s Road Safety Strategy strives for zero lives lost on our roads by 2050 Road Safety Strategy. The 10 year target is to half the total number of lives lost and achieve at least a 30% reduction in serious injuries by 2030. Relevant strategic focus areas include Road User Behaviour (supporting and enforcing safer road user behaviour), Roads (safer design, construction and maintenance of road infrastructure) and Walking Cycling and Public Transport (Improving safety for people who walk and cycle, etc.)

Our Responsibility as a Road Authority

The ‘Safe systems’ road safety approach includes the following facts:

1. Humans make predictable mistakes that can lead to road crashes
2. The human body is fragile
3. Road and vehicle planners, designers, builders and managers share the responsibility to prevent crashes with those who use roads and vehicles
4. All parts of the system must be strengthened to provide the best protection

The State Road Safety Strategy seeks that local Councils use the “Movement and Place” approach when planning road safety treatments and setting speed limits. This approach acknowledges that roads serve a ‘movement’ function for transport, as well as a ‘place’ function (land access) for people to live, work and engage in civic life.

Local streets (which are the streets we are proposing to convert to 40km/h) have both a small movement and a small place function, and therefore are suited to low speed limits. Reduced speeds improve local amenity while only impacting travel times by a matter of seconds, particularly when the majority of a trip is usually on arterial roads which remain at 60km/h.

Why are low driver speeds important?

As demonstrated in the graph below, if a driver hits a pedestrian while travelling at 50km/h, the risk of fatality to the pedestrian is doubled compared to if the driver had been travelling at 40km/h. The faster you drive, the further you travel before you stop; the harder you hit. Speed is a contributing factor in about 1/3 of fatal crashes. No death or serious injury on our roads is acceptable or inevitable, and the whole community must work together the address the trauma caused by everyday use of the roads.

History of 40 Areas in the City of Charles Sturt

There are currently 18 suburbs in the City of Charles Sturt with a 40 Area Speed Limit. Our previous consultations on 40 Areas have proven a little divisive, with some strongly against the idea. After the previous round of new 40 Areas were consulted on in 2016/17, Council resolved to proceed in some suburbs, and to not proceed in others. They also resolved “that Council Officers' conduct a review into the operation of 40km/h Area speed Limits in areas where the speed limit has been operational for a minimum of 12 months to understand the impact of the lower speed limits on drivers” (refer council meeting minutes CL 25/09/17, Item 2.2).

In 2019/20 Council funded a comprehensive review of the 40 Area speed limits in the City of Charles Sturt. The review found that while the lowered speed limit had an impact on driver speeds (reducing speeds by an average of 4km/h), the community who responded to the opt-in survey were mostly against the initiative. It was decided that Council await the State Government’s new Road Safety Strategy prior to determining its future direction and making future decisions in relation to speed limits.

Now that the State Government has released its new Road Safety Strategy, and lowered speed limits are supported in line with Movement and Place principles, we are proposing to lower speed limits to 40km/h in some further suburbs, to improve road safety in our community. This approach is consistent with the recently endorsed future direction and strategy for Road Safety at the City of Charles Sturt (refer AM 18/10/21 Item 4.64).