Digital billboard for region’s most dangerous intersection?

The region’s most dangerous urban intersection could soon be home to a digital advertising billboard.

The billboard, proposed to be 3.5 metres tall and 7 metres wide, would sit atop the PetMart building at 332 Queen St on the corner of its intersection with Gladstone Rd/State Highway 6.

Tasman District Council has publicly notified the resource consent application for the billboard lodged by Bekon Media and residents have until 9 August to submit on the proposal.

A transport assessment commissioned by Bekon Media to support its application concludes that “the digital billboard will not present any particular road safety concerns” provided that suitable resource consent conditions are put in place.

Those conditions include prohibiting displaying videos or moving images, flashing colours, sequential advertisements, or colours, graphics, and shapes that could confuse or direct a driver by conflicting with existing traffic control devices, like traffic lights or road signs.

The applicant has also volunteered that the billboard would incorporate a lighting control to automatically adjust its brightness in line with ambient light levels.

The static advertisements would be displayed for a minimum of eight seconds before changing to the next display and would only be visible to drivers coming north along Gladstone Rd towards Nelson, or to drivers travelling east along Lower Queen St towards Richmond.

The intersection of Queen St with Gladstone Rd is one of the busiest across Nelson Tasman.

The transport assessment indicates that more than 30,000 vehicles could use the intersection each day, which suggests that the billboard, only visible on two approaches, could be seen by about 15,000 vehicles daily.

However, such a high degree of use provides its own challenges – the intersection is Nelson Tasman’s most dangerous.

An independent review of the application commissioned by Tasman District Council notes that the intersection has “both the highest total number of reported crashes as well as the highest number of reported all-injury crashes” of all urban intersections in the region over the five year-period from 2019-2023.

Given the high rate of crashes, and the billboard’s inconsistency with national guidance which states that advertising signs should not be located within 100 metres of an urban intersection, the review recommends that the consent be declined due to its potential to distract drivers.

A road safety engineer at the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi has also raised “serious traffic safety concerns” about the application’s potential to exacerbate safety issues at the intersection. Bekon Media’s original proposal was for a static billboard in the same location which was about 25 per cent smaller than what it’s currently seeking.

The company operates several digital billboards across the country – mostly in Christchurch, but also in Auckland, Wellington, and Queenstown.

The digital billboard would be Tasman’s first, but the second in the wider Nelson Tasman area – one already exists on Trent Drive visible only to drivers leaving Nelson Airport.

For more information, or to make a submission visit here.