Letters: Underpass construction has two irritations

The new Welcome Bay underpass has been marred by two things, says a reader. Photo / File

The underpass has been successful in reducing the length of queues on Welcome Bay Rd, but it's marred by two parts.

The obvious one is Welcome Bay Lane (now closed) which gave traffic a valuable shortcut to the highway. The other is the lower end of Hairini St.

This short piece of road which was used by thousands of cars daily, constructed and maintained with ratepayer funds, is now closed to traffic.

It is however, open to commercial buses to give them priority at the Hairini Bridge bottleneck.

Some of these buses carry fewer passengers than the cars they have priority over.

I suggest these two irritations should be passed to someone competent to deal with.

Dan Russell
Welcome Bay

Greerton gridlock

I agree with Dan Russell (Letters, November 23), that the traffic upgrades in Greerton are a disaster and I believe they are more like downgrades. The consequences of gridlock caused by merging two lanes of traffic into one are many.

These include motorists now using the quieter streets in Greerton to avoid the Cameron Rd, Chadwick St roundabout, turning these streets into high traffic areas. Parking is now difficult in Greerton and probably to the detriment of local shop keepers. In addition, it is predictable that emergency service vehicles will have difficulties negotiating the single lanes through this area.

Tamaki Drive in Auckland could have been a model where cyclists and pedestrians share a wider pavement allowing for an even flow of traffic around the waterfront. This could have been a more cost-efficient solution for Greerton.

Dr Meg Butler
Welcome Bay

Cycleway progress

Thank you for challenging my letter about cycleways (Letters, November 23).

Western Bay of Plenty District Council and Tauranga City Council and the Transport Agency are developing the most iconic cycleway/walkway between Omokoroa and the city.

We are all impatient for it to be completed. We love it, walk and cycle it and love each section as it develops. In this beautiful sub-region, it is a tourism magnet as well, and our other cycleways can't come fast enough.

But my criticism is about Auckland where they grossly over-estimated the use of several of their cycleways including the glamorous pink central city one, and when Auckland gets funding that is not justified it is taking money away from other districts including ours.

That is my issue and it is the same with roading. Worse still, Auckland has a fine Metro bus service to the airport but the Government and Auckland Council want to build a tram, which many are saying is a waste of money and will cause years of congestion and take money from other much-needed roading proposed projects put on hold by this new Government.

Margaret Murray-Benge
Bethlehem

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