Confused political time-wasting over types of signs, on the misguided belief that signs slow down drivers… at the cost of our children’s safety.
NZ just needs to step back and look at its priorities.
Clearly Waka Kotahi isn’t incentivised to shop for a good deal, like the TaxPayer is. Those signs are around $1000USD on Alibaba from Shenzen/Guangzhou where all the best stuff comes from. So even if you hire the slowest contractors like the ones fixing George Street, it’s probabyl 2 days per school (solar powered, no wiring). So that is 4 man days with a truck and overheads you’re probably looking at about $7000 per school for 2 installed electronic signs. Where they got $90,000 per school from is a mystery and just lazy bueracrats not hunting for a deal, or getting kickbacks from their supplier. I’m a huge fan of dynamic speed zones for reducing speed. Small town i lived in Canada installed these in 2010 and they’re great. They just need to remember to account for school start times with regard to Daylight savings… And you may as well add electronic signs cos they’re all solar now, rather than static metal signs, because big part of the overall cost the installation not the hardware.
And while we’re on the subject - the entre Cumberland Street should be dyanmic 30kph to make it safer for cyclists and students dicing with HWY1 traffic.
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This article by RNZ is great. The quote by Paul Winton sums it up “The 60s have called Simeon Brown and they want their transport plan back.” The effects of change in direction by current government are very real: - the planned improvements around St Clair school - raised crossings, curb build outs, traffic calming to support the 30km/h zone (the signs are not achieving anything) have been thrown in the bin and funding pulled 
It is not safe for my daughter to walk or bike to school as she cant cross the wide road in front of school with high volume of cars going 50 km/h. In many instances signs need to be supported by infrastructure.
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