30km/h limit backed

Northland MP Mike Sabin has lent his voice to calls for a 30km/h speed limit on Ninety Mile Beach at Ahipara.

The Far North District Council had proposed a 30km/h limit 300m each side of the Foreshore Rd and Kaka St access points, but Ahipara residents want the limit to apply all the way from Kaka St to Shipwreck Bay.

In a letter to the council Mr Sabin said he also believed the limit should apply to all 2.3km of Ahipara's foreshore.

Mr Sabin said dangerous and disruptive driving was a long-running problem which he knew well from his time as a police officer in 2001-06.

Concerns raised by constituents included safety, noise, being unable to use the beach for sunbathing or swimming, the threat to endangered dotterels, and tension between beachgoers and beach drivers.

The MP said those concerns were well founded. While the speed limit on Ninety Mile Beach was 100km/h, the beach between Kaka St and Foreshore Rd was highly populated and vehicles travelling at anywhere close to that speed posed a major risk to the public.

It was like sunbathing on a state highway, he said.

The accidents and large number of near misses in the area were due not just to high speed but also to people showing off because they had a captive audience.

Applying a 30km/h limit to the whole area would also make enforcement easier, Mr Sabin said.

Requiring vehicles to stay below the high-tide mark would also be a sensible way of separating vehicles and other beach users.

Councillors last week decided not to pass a new bylaw but to recommend that the incoming Te Oneroa a Tohe Statutory Board, which will manage Ninety Mile Beach, consider the request of Ahipara residents.