Nearing the 1 year anniversary of the start of this petition; a petition I wish was never needed. I wanted to update and thank each and every one of you who cared about our community and signed to help make town safer.
While a safety crossings have been implemented at the railway crossing at Hewletts and Hull Roads, there is still no safe pedestrian crossing on Maunganui Road near Mount College for our tamariki or community, nor a pedestrian crossing across Hull Road to Blake Park. This is unacceptable and needs to be remedied ASAP.
Tauranga City Council currently plan to implement a shared use path along Maunganui Road, which theoretically would improve safety for the community. However, TCC has decided to place the shared use path on the residential side of Maunganui Road between Tui Street and Kupe Avenue, instead of the railway side (as planned by the original designer) which is currently used from the new skatepark to Kupe Avenue. The shared path as currently planned will have multiple car movements crossing the shared path throughout the day endangering users and residents alike, and vehicle movements will only increase with future development. Risk which would be mitigated by following the original plan and using the crossing point already constructed near Tui Street. No where else along Maunganui Road is the shared path placed in front of residential homes.
Tauranga City Council has also failed to consider Plan change 33 in drafting the shared path as this stretch of Maunganui Road is zoned for high density development, yet Tauranga City Council plans to remove 9 on street car parks and 16 off street verge parks, all of which are currently used by existing residents, in order to implement this shared pathway. This means this community will go from 32 car parks, to 7. Parking along this stretch of road should be increased based on current and future use, not drastically decreased. This is unacceptable and does not allow for future growth or development. In addition, the recent resource consent for a dental center on Kupe Avenue was partially approved due to ample overflow parking on Maunganui Road, another aspect disregarded by TCC.
TCC only informed residents on Friday 26 July 2024 that they will be without driveway access to their properties for 4 weeks starting Monday 29 July 2024 weather permitting the works to proceed as planned, and could easily double to 8 weeks if not more with wet winter weather. The residents have a right to legally access their properties, and this timeline seems excessive and could easily be avoided by moving the path across the road, widening the current footpath like it is currently at Tui Street, or abandoning the project until the piping infrastructure is updated in the future.
As of writing this update, there is no provision for parking for residents, no safety plan for emergency service access to residences, such as fire or ambulance, nor a plan for rubbish removal.
The residents along Maunganui Road have been requesting information regarding this project for weeks and have received differing information. Multiple reasons have been given by the council as reasons why the shared path could not be moved across the road such as, the reduced parking will help to incentivise public transport use (that’s not how it works); significant trees have been identified along Maunganui Road (there’s currently no funding for this stretch of road, it’s done by a lottery system and the lack of care has resulted in wild fires in recent years, as well as allow unhoused individuals to take up residence in the vegetation which is a serious safety risk next to the train tracks); it’s leased land from KiwiRail and the path requires a certain distance off the fence (the path is already on leased land and right against the railway fence across from Central Parade); it would require an additional crossing point (no, there’s one already constructed at Tui Street); it wouldn’t provide as much connectivity (it would actually link up with the current shared path that runs along Maunganui Road to Blake Park and down the Mount). The last response given to the residents was that TCC had invested funds in this design and it would be proceeding— the truth, TCC is prioritising money over residents and safety.
There is strength in knowing when to pivot and change course, perhaps the new Councillors and Mayor will have more sense and care for the well-being and safety of our residents than what we’ve experienced in the past. Hopefully the need for petitions and going to the papers will be a thing of the past. Maybe the needs of our community will be heard instead of falling on deaf ears. My true concern is that change for safety has only been implemented following a tragic preventable death of a child. It took a horrific accident and death for the speed limit to be reduced from 70km to 50km along Maunganui Road. It took another preventable tragedy and death for safety crossings to be implemented at the railway. Will it take another death of a child for TCC to realise that placing a shared path in the direct line of motorists in an area of increasing density was not safe? Because we can prevent that from happening right now. We can stop it. The council can stop it. Put the lives of our tamariki and residents ahead of plans to beautify the city based on an invested design that doesn’t make sense.
If you agree, please share. Please sign if you haven’t. Remember, there’s strength in numbers when we stand together.