Some Invercargill streets now have lower speed limits, part of a slowdown agenda that has been called the most significant change in speed management in the city for 20 years.
Invercargill City Council lowered speeds from 50 km/h to 30 km/h in certain areas of downtown, Windsor and South City early this month, and will set new limits on paved and unpaved roads over the next six to 18 months. variable speed limits for school zones.
In some ways, this is a thoroughly contemporary move, synchronizing with Waka Kotahi’s Road to Zero safety strategy.
But in reality, the 2022 council is the latest player in a dynamic of dizzying forces that has challenged city rulers for generations.
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In the late 1800s, the town had a problem with what was called Furious Riding.
Horse riding is what it used to be.
Magistrate H McCulloch would fine 19th century citizens for driving on sidewalks. The explanation, if not justification, was that the roads themselves, given the great swampiness, were so often miserable and impassable that the boardwalk footpaths were the only real option. .
by 1880 The Southland News jumped in defense of the pedestrians, scolding men “who think it takes them a step above the ordinary to run at a brisk gallop down a sidewalk”.
A writer to The Southland Times in 1892 typified the indignation of that time.
“Is it possible that there is no force in this city…that can stop the practice of trotting horses at top speed in the street?” wrote one citizen under the pseudonym Moderation.
“There are three or four men who make a habit of riding such horses regularly, as hard as they can; they don’t stop or go away to cross or anything; erect in the stirrups and with a link to the animal’s mane, they tear on as if they were on a racecourse, trying to break a record.”
The first car driver’s license wasn’t registered until 1902, and that word “furious” was soon back in the headlines.
The municipality was disturbed by ‘the furious car and bicycle driving in the neighbourhood”.
What exactly furious cycling was isn’t entirely clear, but at the time, traveling at 20 miles or 20 miles per hour was considered the extreme of tolerance. (You’ll notice that the recently imposed limits put at least some city streets back to roughly that limit).
At the time, however, it wasn’t really a formal limit. And vehicle numbers were so scarce that the left-hand rule was more of a rule of thumb.
In 1914, a motorist accidentally, or at least oversight, brought up the problem and disrupted race day traffic by driving the wrong side of Tay St.
He was persecuted, but it led to the Time to grumble about the prevailing laxity: ”With a few exceptions, today’s rule is … Go where you want”.
In 1917 a maximum speed was agreed on site. The city inspector and the municipality police were asked to take immediate action against motorists driving faster than 24 km/h.
Note the word opinion. There were no speed cameras back then.
Oddly enough, the town fathers weren’t too pleased with the talk that drivers should have a driver’s license.
Accidents were more often caused by recklessness than by inexperience, according to the municipality.
The government thought otherwise, and in 1924 licensing, along with the annual registration and licensing of vehicles, became a requirement.
It was only then that the council appointed a dedicated motor and traffic inspector whose name – you would think this would be appropriate – was E Stopford.
By mid-1928, the speed limit in the municipality had risen to 40 km/h, but when approaching intersections and hospitals, and only 16 km/h when cornering or passing a safety zone.
Ten years later, the city’s shopkeepers’ association came up with the bright idea: a parking limit of one hour. But only for city cars.
If a farmer had bothered to drive into town, he would not be subjected to such compulsion, the association found.
Police Inspector T Gibson broke the news that the courts could have a problem with this distinction.
Parking meters – 132 of them – finally showed up in 1954 and cost 3d for half an hour, 6d for an hour and a shilling for two hours.
After four days, they had brought in 54 pounds, eight shillings, and eight rings from the congregation.
Brain Hannam
Milk bar cowboys from the 50s. Invercargill, the authorities, like so many others, didn’t approve.
In the mid to late 1950s, the paper reported on the problem of milk bar cowboys—widgies and bodices described as crash helmeted bikers, teddy boys, and “contemporary women clad in half-mast jeans, toreador pants, and multicolored sweaters.”
They were engaged, the newspaper felt obliged to report, with “whining and the occasional amour”.
The worst offenders had their license revoked for several years in some cases.
The city then had a Stewart Hardy magistrate tartar, known for the hefty fines and license revocations imposed on Invercargill drivers. He once fined a schoolboy 7 pounds and 10 shillings for cycling at night without a light.
Many of his decisions were appealed, but he didn’t seem to care because his firm dealing with traffic violations had made the city a safer place to drive.