Timarkos was responding to a letter sent to affected householders last week in which the council outlined plans to improve the reliability of bus travel times into town during the morning rush hour.
Council transport manager Martin Parkes said that as a first step the council proposed to install the bus lane from just past the intersection with James Cook Drive to the Meadowviews Drive intersection. It included removing the median.
''Our hope is to have this bus lane in place by the end of April/early May.''
He told the Bay of Plenty Times that the design would go through a rigorous safety audit before any decision was made.
Parkes said the proposal was being driven by the significant levels of congestion along Welcome Bay Rd over the past four to five weeks, with complaints that buses were not running to time and some school buses were over an hour late dropping off students.
He said there was pressure on the council to get some traction to reduce congestion.
When the regional council increased the frequency of bus services from December, people wanting to take the bus had to be given an advantage, and the only way to do that was through priority bus measures such as bus lanes.
Welcome Bay residents had until this Thursday to make known their feelings on the plan.
Timarkos said the median was put in because there were so many near misses. ''Now the traffic is 10 times the volume, and they want to take it out,'' she posted on Welcome Bay Noticeboard online.
She told the Bay of Plenty Times the median is also used to get children safely across the road.
Timarkos said she was a passenger in a car hit from behind by a truck that came barrelling around the corner before the median was built. Two of her school friends suffered whiplash.
Everyone was criticising the proposal on the noticeboard, saying how dangerous it was going to be, she said.
Traffic flows would also be held up when any of the estimated 59-plus residents had to turn right into their properties along the length of the bus lane.
Welcome Bay Community Centre manager Anna Larsen said residents along that stretch of road were feeling anxious and the council needed to be a lot more informative and proactive in sharing what the proposed change would look like and how it would work.
''There needs to be thorough consultation because what has been proposed has riled up people. Either the information was not comprehensive enough, or the council has under-estimated the reaction.''
The Welcome Bay Transport Forum was pushing to free up congestion into town by reintroducing free school buses from the start of term two until the end of the year, and running a free bus trial for commuters, she said.
Larsen's idea was to offer one free return trip a week for commuters. ''If everyone took one bus journey once a week, it would alleviate congestion.''
Welcome Bay Rd outbound bus and cycle lane proposal
- Remove the flush median along the centre of the road.
- Retain the cycle lane on the opposite side of the road.
- Remove parking spaces between 93 and 139 Welcome Bay Rd.
