The Greenways Trust team on the corner of Dargaville's Hokianga Road and SH12/Normanby Street. (From left)L Helen Flight, Tiffany Stimpson, Jeremy Forster, Katy McAteer, Peter Whittaker and Marie Birkenhead. Photo / Tania Whyte
The Greenways Trust team on the corner of Dargaville's Hokianga Road and SH12/Normanby Street. (From left)L Helen Flight, Tiffany Stimpson, Jeremy Forster, Katy McAteer, Peter Whittaker and Marie Birkenhead. Photo / Tania Whyte
Dargaville residents have hit out at the local council’s plans to improve biking and walking in the town.
Ratepayer Ron Bishop, who presented a petition against connectivity proposals to Kaipara District Council (KDC), said more consultation was still needed via formal meetings for the whole community.
KDC wants to make it easier and safer for people to cycle and walk around Dargaville’s residential area and town centre through an $8 million Government-funded Kaipara cycle network connections project. Separated cycleways, shared paths, semi-protected cycle lanes and pavement markings are part of the proposals in two different options put forward.
The town of 5000 is to get up to 17 new pedestrian crossings under the proposals.
Bishop said safer connectivity was fantastic in principle, for junior and senior citizens alike.
However, he took issue with aspects of the proposals, and said the council had tried to rush these through without a wider public council meeting or adequate community consultation.
The township needed to get the best value it could from the project through improving current risk areas – rather than working on what was not broken.
Bishop said KDC needed to first work with Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency on Dargaville’s worst intersection - SH12/Normanby Street and Hokianga Road - which was not part of the connectivity proposals.
The intersection, he said, had an existing unsatisfactory crossing that had to be navigated by children, the elderly and many others.
Dargaville's Ron Bishop in Victoria Street, the town's main drag, where he says there is no room for semi-protected cycleways proposed under new council transport connectivity plans. Photo / Tania Whyte
Greenways Trust Day programme facilitator Marie Birkenhead agreed the intersection’s crossing was dangerous.
“Every time I see anybody in our community on that crossing, I think, ‘Oh, they’re taking their lives in their hands’,” Birkenhead said.
Birkenhead works with intellectually challenged people at the trust in the old Dargaville post office at the intersection.
She said a trust participant had been knocked off his bike on the crossing while coming back from the town centre.
Birkenhead said intersection traffic regularly exceeded the speed limit, and there had been a number of near misses generally, too.
As many as 30 logging trucks traversed the crossing daily, as well as milk tankers, stock trucks, gravel trucks and fertiliser trucks.
The Dargaville duo said a roundabout or lights would be safer intersection options and would be a better way to spend funds directed towards the KDC connectivity effort.
The Greenways Trust team members have to make their way back from the town centre to their home base at the old Dargaville post office at the SH12/Normanby Street and Hokiranga Road intersection. Photo / Tania Whyte
Northland Transportation Alliance (NTA) general manager Calvin Thomas said KDC would be working with Waka Kotahi to improve the intersection.
Thomas said changes at this intersection had not been part of proposed transport corridor improvement options as it already had a crossing and was not considered a direct school travel route.
Birkenhead took issue with this. She said the crossing was no longer fit for purpose or safe, with now-prevailing traffic conditions.
Thomas said proposed connectivity routes had been developed to align with the transport choices programme’s goal to support safe, green and healthy school travel.
“The proposed design options provide the most direct routes to schools,” Thomas said.
Thomas said KDC did a month’s targeted communication and engagement with key stakeholders, a Dargaville Primary School workshop, hosted drop-in sessions and invited community feedback.
He said consultation feedback would be presented at a public KDC briefing meeting on September 6. Community feedback would come after that.
A proposed semi-protected cycleways going through the town centre’s main Victoria Street also drew criticism from Bishop.
“That street’s too busy - the cycleway should bypass the city centre on the river side of Victoria Street, from Countdown in the east to the band rotunda in the west,” Bishop said.
Waka Kotahi urban mobility manager Kathryn King said the Government’s $348m transport choices programme was part of New Zealand moving towards a low-emissions, climate-resilient future.
She did not respond specifically to questions about the SH12/Normanby Street and Hokianga Road intersection.
Waka Kotahi was working with 46 councils nationally to quickly provide more transport options.
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.
