Draft Squeaky Wheel Annual Plan Submission to TDC

Hi

Ron is sorting out the draft Squeaky Wheel submission for posting to here for Timaru Core to read and comment on. The submission is due Monday next week.

Ron is away from Friday so there is only a brief opportunity to make changes as Ron will be sending it in on Friday. Ron has also agreed to speak to the submission which is likely to be on June 10.

If you click on 11 subscribers to the left of this page you will see who are subscribers to Timaru Core.

Looking forward to people's comments once the draft is up for viewing.

We need to sort out the best way to get feedback for cycling issues to TDC e.g. the corner that Wally has big issues with (and no doubt other cyclists too).

We have quarterly meetings scheduled with TDC to talk about long term projects but we need to discuss with TDC how we feed in the immediate safety issues.

Next meeting is 5.30pm June 3 at Community House in Strathallan Street. Hope to see you all there.

Regards

Fiona

Comments

Submitted by Jon Harris on 2 October, 2008 - 20:38

I think that the Council is on the right 'track' prioritising cycle lanes on the city's streets - these are the routes that will contribute the most to enabling people to cycle more often as part of their daily lives. However, in my experience there are some routes that are more threatening to cyclists than others and for that reason they are probably avoided by many.

I would like to suggest that two of these receive a high priority, one urban and one rural:

  1. The Hilton Highway is one of these, and because it is the route many use to get to their places of work in the Washdyke area, the completion of a cycle-walkway should be a high priority.
  2. The Pleasant Point Highway is a scary road to ride along, with steadily increasing traffic volumes, including school buses and trucks, and lots of people in a hurry to get to work in Timaru in the morning, or home in the evening. A cycle-way utilising the wide grass verge on the Northern side would encourage more to undertake the 15 km journey by bicycle.

One further suggestion relates to Pleasant Point:

 - The entrance to the town from the direction of Timaru has a 70 km/hr speed limit almost to the first shop. This means that cars that are travelling too fast anyway are only slowing down to 50 km/hr by the time they reach the centre of town, and meanwhile they have travelled at speed through an area of housing where vehicles are pulling out of and into driveways, children are walking to and from school and people are cycling. In my view this speed is a danger, especially as many of the vehicles are dump trucks, logging trucks and other heavily-loaded vehicles that cannot stop in a hurry. Cyclists would feel appreciably safer if the speed were lowered to 50 km/hr (as it is for the entire length of Afghan Street, which runs parallell but is a fraction as busy) from at least the first house by George Street or the domain entrance.