Busy route all set for roundabouts

Four new roundabouts are to be built to help control trucks and other heavy traffic on Napier's Marine Parade.

Mayor Bill Dalton said the roundabouts might make Marine Parade "less attractive" to trucks heading to-and-from Napier Port, as well as being designed to smooth traffic flow.

The move has pleased Mon Logis bed-and breakfast proprietor Gerard Averous, who has been at the forefront of attempts to get the city council to rid the parade of the port traffic since he bought the business 12 years ago.

"We are quite pleased the council is taking some steps," he said.

The first, funded from budgets linked to the rebuilding of the Hawke's Bay Museum (now the MTG) and traffic flow around it, will be at the intersection with Browning St, outside two of Napier's oldest buildings, the Hawke's Bay Club and the Department of Conservation regional headquarters, the former Napier Courthouse.

Council road assets manager John Schwass said no land will be needed to be taken for the roundabout, on which work is expected to start in June, less than 200 metres north of the only roundabout already on the parade at the intersection with Tennyson St and overlooked by MTG.

He also expects no land will need to be taken for the three other roundabouts, for which sites and funding are yet to be confirmed.

They are likely to include the intersection with Vautier St, for which a roundabout had been considered in 1999. Sale St was considered in a 2002 Crash Reduction study.

Mr Shwass said he would also "like to do something" with the intersection with Warren St (between the Parade and the southern end of Hastings St), but the southern beachfront approach at Ellison St is a state highways issue and the responsibility of national agencies.

Mr Dalton said he had pledged when being elected to the mayoralty last year that something would be done to address heavy transport issues on Marine Parade.

"But I did also say that I don't think we'll ever get all of the trucks off Marine Parade," he said.