About

What's this project about?

We're reviewing how fast people travel on Council-owned roads to make our streets safer for everyone. Our focus is on reducing the risk and severity of crashes, especially for people walking, riding, and driving on busy local routes. This work responds to what we've heard from residents about the safety of our streets and aligns with national and state road safety goals aiming to cut serious injuries and deaths.

We're starting with community input and asking you to nominate the roads you think need a closer look. We will combine your feedback with a technical assessment, so any changes are evidence-based, consistent, and fair.

If changes are recommended, they will be staged so the highest safety benefits are delivered first and the community has time to adjust. We are also collecting before-and-after traffic data to check the impact of changes.

Consultation

Timeline

Timeline

  • Timeline item 1 - complete

    Initial research

    The project team identified inconsistencies in speed limits across our road networks and sought support from the Councillors to engage the community in helping us identify other sites which might need to be reviewed.

  • Timeline item 2 - active

    Community engagement

    September - October 2025

    The consultation runs from 17 September to 15 October 2025 and seeks your input on what roads we should do a speed limit review on.

  • Timeline item 3 - incomplete

    Report and seek approval

    The project team will use your feedback and create a "Consultation Report" which outlines our findings and which roads we will conduct reviews on.

    We will then submit a report of the proposed roads to the Transport Commissioner for approval.

  • Timeline item 4 - incomplete

    Implementation

    City of Clarence will begin implementing changes across approved sites.

Background

Why review speed limits?

City of Clarence is initiating a comprehensive review of speed limits on Council-owned roads to improve safety and community wellbeing. The key drivers are:

  • road safety
  • alignment with current strategy frameworks
  • community concerns.

Road safety

Effective speed management is crucial for reducing serious injuries and fatal crashes. Studies show that a 10 km/h speed reduction has the most significant impact on decreasing road trauma. There is strong evidence from the City of Hobart and City of Glenorchy that demonstrate the benefit in road safety after the implementation of speed limit reductions on their roads.

Alignment with current strategy frameworks

The review aligns with:

Community concerns

We regularly hear concerns from residents about speeds and speeding on our roads. There's also growing awareness of the benefits of lowering speeds, especially for pedestrians and cyclists.

Road types

Initial road groupings are suggesting below and will be further refined based on the outcomes of the community engagement and further technical review.

These roads are primarily rural roads with unposted speed signs. Many of the changes on these roads will formalise the speed most drivers already use.

The current default speed on these roads may be considered too high for the road conditions or inconsistent with the speed limit on the adjacent State road network.

Example:

These roads are primarily beachfront roads with low to medium traffic volumes and high levels of pedestrian activity - particularly during the summer and on weekends.

Example:

These roads are semi-urban roads on the edge of built-up areas. These roads may have changed or developed since the speed limit was set, and the nature of the roads has changed. These routes are often arterial or collector roads with medium to high traffic volumes.

Example:

These roads are primarily high-volume local arterial roads that travel through residential areas. The goal is to ensure speed limits on these routes are consistent with other similar roads across Greater Hobart and align with the nationally adopted 50km/h urban limit.

This group of roads could have the greatest safety benefit from reduced speeds due to the high traffic volumes and the interactions with vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists.

Example:

What happens next?

We will set speed limits so they fit the type of road and how it is used, following State Government rules called the Tasmanian Speed Zoning Guidelines. For each road, we prepare a change request and the Transport Commissioner reviews and decides. If approved, we will put the new limits in place, update signs, and let the community and relevant services know.

Safe speed limits can save lives - Towards Zero

How speed impacts your field of view?

Please be advised: the following videos show scenes of accidents which may be confronting to some viewers.

How does speed impact stopping times?

How does speed impact safety?

Documents

Document Library

FAQs

Myths and Misconceptions

* statistics obtained from the Tasmanian Department of State Growth Speed Management Strategy Consultation.