Posts by Julie Fairey
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One of the sites on the secret minibus tour was Three Kings Quarry and surrounding park land, land that most certainly isn’t owned by the Crown. No surprises then when Smith decided to join the resources of the Ministry of Housing and HNZ Corp to the side of the owners of Three Kings Quarry, and hopeful developers of that and a bunch of council land too, Fletchers, in an Environment Court appeal now being heard in June.
Is the list of land available anywhere online? I would be very interested to see it if so.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Agree with this Bart - the case for shared spaces providing more business not less seems to be clear from the evidence, even if it has yet to win over everyone *cough* High St *cough*.
I'm talking more about the dairies in particular that are on their own on an arterial road - shared space isn't an option (and wouldn't work anyway).
Parking is usually the lowest priority use of the limited space of the road corridor, as it should be imho. I was at Skye Duncan's talk last week and liked her hierarchy about this - pedestrians, cyclists, public transport, private cars moving, parking. There will be specific circumstances in which you move that hierarchy around a bit, but I can't imagine a scenario in which parking ought to come first.
And arterials are exactly the roads which often have the most difficult decisions, because they are most in demand for the full range of uses, particularly in proximity to schools and town centres.
Mt Albert Rd is the one I think about most, as from Sandringham Rd almost to the Royal Oak roundabout it is in my area and I use it a lot myself by car, bike, walking, and sometimes bus. There's a dairy part way along, near Kiwitea St and Gifford Ave, and it's all alone - there's a (minor) bus stop nearby but otherwise nothing that would mean foot traffic. The P5 outside becomes vital for survival, to supplement the small number of locals who would walk there when the milk runs out, or grab an ice block for the walk home from the bus on a hot day. What do we do? (genuine q!)
PS Parking surveys show Mt Roskill Village (cnr Mt Albert & Dominion) has plenty of parking, as does Roskill South. The parking is primarily behind the shops, and not as well known as it could be, but that's not something that needs on-street parking to fix. I don't know about Balmoral.
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Excuse the multiple posts, above, responding to particular other posts, here is a more general one. May I point out the Puketapapa Greenways Plan, brainchild of former Local Board Chair Richard Barter, who continues to do sterling work advocating for implementation and local cycling initiatives to support increased use http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/AboutCouncil/representativesbodies/LocalBoards/Puketapapalocalboard/Pages/puketapapaplans.aspx#greenwaysplan This was put together a couple of years ago now, and I recently put together this rough summary of where things are up to, according to the original Greenways map.
The biggest barrier to getting the infrastructure built (after funding) is threats to on-street carparking. The Local Board has faced some opposition in regard to two major linkage projects – Somerset Rd (a small part of the much larger Mt Roskill Safer Routes project and without the Somerset Rd stretch the rest wouldn’t have got funded or delivered by AT) in particular was a huge fight for the majority of the Local Board with one Board member constantly wanting to relitigate it and stirring up opposition. I can go on about that at length if anyone wants!
In another case a project that AT undertook without the Local Board (as they are entitled to do) and had nothing to do with cycling resulted in the loss of a small number of parks and cycling is being blamed for that, even though there is no cycle lane there. That is still a very live issue (albeit no threat to cycling infrastructure, and AT’s problem really): http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/77456945/auckland-businesses-struggle-to-survive-with-yellow-lines
Putting aside the issue of on-street parking as car storage for private vehicles, we do need to think about what to do for convenience based businesses like dairies who won’t get business without P5 outside them, or foot traffic driven by being in a town centre, near a PT stop, or in a dense enough community where a lot of walking happens. Do we have an obligation to try to come up with a solution? Do we let the market decide? Is there even a solution to be had or is this one of those hard choices? Genuine questions that I’m mulling over.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Russell Brown,
Part of it is about the funding coming from different places. It is a lot easier for a Local Board to decide to widen a pathway (or install one) in a local park - not only does the Local Board control the budget it is also the landowner for the park too. With on-street it is more complicated, not least as technically the decisions are with AT even when it is the Local Board's AT capex fund.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to jnorthover,
Hendry is absurd, and a constant bug bear. When I have time to bike and train into the city (rather than bus from very near my house) I cycle to Onehunga (which is mostly down hill) but on the way back I take the train to Mt Albert and cycle home mainly to avoid Hendry.
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Would replacing Governing Body with Commissioners only apply to the Unitary Plan process? And what about Local Boards, do they get replaced too? It is a shared governance model after all.
I'm not very happy today. That's probably about all I should say about that right now.
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Sacha,
It's Auckland Council's smallest CCO I think! For some reason doesn't have the profile of Auckland Transport or Watercare ;-)
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Jason Kemp,
Yes that's correct. Only pools in Mt Roskill electorate are Cameron Pools, which are free to kids. But they do have nothing to do with Phil Goff, they are under the aegis of the Puketapapa Local Board of Auckland Council (currently contracted to YMCA to run along with Lynfield Rec Centre) and we've put a huge wodge of money into fixing the roof starting in January.
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Kevin McCready,
Sadly Dr Asquith didn't entirely take his own advice on that opinion piece in the Herald recently, equating City Vision with Labour. On the Waitemata Local Board, which has a CV majority, there are actually more Green party members than Labour. And the only CV councillor, Cathy Casey, is staunchly not Labour. (Mike Lee stands as an independent, which is frustrating to me, but anyway). Puketapapa LB (I'm chair) has a local CV ticket called Roskill Community Voice of which 2/4 are Labour. We're not the Labour party in disguise, we are a coalition of centre-left and lefties, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
I haven't seen the Pt Chev maps specifically (and I couldn't tell you if I could because it was all in confidential) but two points
1. Mixed Housing Suburban is 2 stories, same as Single House, Mixed Housing Urban is 3 stories. Moving around the isthmus I have started actively looking for 3 storey houses and there are a lot more of them than you would think and many are pretty pricey too so there must be some demand, the Invisible Hand tells me.
2. What is being decided is Council's position to go back to the Independent Commissioners on the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan. It's not necessarily what will come out at the end of the panel process, which then in turn needs to go to Governing Body in July and August 2016. (Good timing don't you think?!)
