Subscribe to RSSDominion Rd Protest Meeting
300 attended last night’s public meeting in the Balmoral school hall organised by the Save Dominion Road campaign and the message from them was: they don’t want a “four lane highway through Eden Valley, Balmoral and Mt Roskill villages.”
Meeting organiser and local resident Penny Hickey said her group believes that the council’s plan for Dominion Road would “ruin the pedestrian environment, damage or destroy the hundreds of businesses along the road, and move parking into residential streets in which parking space is already at a premium.”
“As Aucklanders, we don’t want to see our city become a mini Los Angeles with isolated residential pockets divided by lanes of vehicles. Dominion Road is where we should draw the line, for Auckland City as a whole.
” Proposals to remove bus lanes and make buses share with cars and trucks carrying passengers, effectively will make it more attractive for people to bring their cars into town, and make public transport less attractive. But that is a short-term solution. We can keep adding capacity for cars by building more motorways, and removing parking from our traditional community roads, but as anyone who uses Auckland’s motorways knows, that only eases congestion for a while. That is why increasing public transport use is so important.”
“Use of public transport in Auckland is growing, and having bus lanes at peak hours has helped make that happen.”
Ms Hickey said there was general support for encouraging cyclists.
“We understand that around 38 cyclists move through Eden Valley during peak hour. At the moment, they just have to share the bus lane with a few buses. If we go to T2 and a designated cycle lane, cyclists would have to share with cars and trucks around the bus stops and in the villages, so for a third of their journey. If we just go T2 and keep parking there will be no room for a cycle lane at all which means that cyclists will have to compete with everything once more. That’s a less safe environment than what they have currently.”
Ms Hickey said the meeting was a useful first step in providing an alternative point of view to residents and business owners on the Council’s proposals.
“Our perspective is that small changes, such as a half hour extension to peak hour bus lanes to ease current congestion, and taking bus lanes through to intersections, would make a huge difference. Council traffic modelling suggests traffic on Dominion Road will decrease once State Highway 20 Waterview is completed, so making radical change is not required.”
2 Comments
Sounds actually mostly reasonable. Mea culpa for having feared another “lets be against everything” group.
Though I still fear that any cycling improvements will face the axe if this project remains so contested. It’s reasonable to point out some of the constraints of the current scheme for cyclists - but just to tweak a little around the edges isn’t going to bring us cycle lanes either. The fact that there are only 38 cyclists in the peak hour is a testimony for how horrible it is at the moment. Good provision will be needed, and in some places that will mean widening and/or removal or parking.
I can understand why the local group don’t want Dominion Rd to become a 4 lane highway but the reality is that in many ways it already is. It is one of the busiest arterials in Auckland and that is not going to change.
I spend a lot of time on or near Dominion Road and what always amazes me about it is how bad the congestion there is - even at times like Sunday midday when would you not expect it.
Personally I’d rather have a dedicated bus and cycle way moving people efficiently through the area and no kerb-side parking than the current situation of having 50 cars backed up through the Valley Rd intersection at almost any time during the day.