Letters: Underpass used by everyone

Bayfair underpass protest. Photo / File

We believe any government project should result in betterment for the community. Here in Tauranga we have just the opposite, a community amenity is being removed and this will produce all kinds of safety issues.

There has been, since 1999, a pedestrian/cyclist underpass from Bayfair to Matapihi under the four-lane road leading to the Port of Tauranga.

It is a major logging truck route and full of heavy trucks.

The underpass is used by everyone; schoolchildren, the elderly, mobility scooters, cycle commuters to downtown Tauranga. It is the only safe crossing across the highway and provides complete separation between pedestrians and vehicles.

NZTA has decided to upgrade the highway in a project called Baylink. And now they are demolishing the underpass and not replacing it in three weeks' time. This is a change of stance from last year when they announced they would build a replacement underpass. Then in July 2019 out of the blue, they announced the replacement underpass would be canned.

They are not listening to any community concerns, just a done deal. The demolition is being driven from Minister Twyford's desk. The reason given is too expensive. Not true, just inventive costings to stop a project. What price for an injury or death while crossing the road? We say, keep the existing underpass and extend it.

Now, all pedestrians and cyclists will need to cross eight lanes of traffic and walk through a roundabout to get to the other side. We are very concerned for the safety of the schoolchildren, pedestrians and cyclists crossing the highway and also the delay to the traffic while the vehicles are stopped.

The existing underpass ticks all the boxes of the Labour transportation policies.

Common sense should be used here.

Philip Brown
Bayfair Underpass Alliance
Tauranga

Why all the reports?

Why is that every time there is problem in this country the Government calls for an independent report on the issue?

I ask:

1. What has been the cost of all these reports since they have been in power?
2. Why don't the MPs and Prime Minister have the ability themselves to work out the solutions?

After all, that is what they are paid for.

Leigh Neilson
Tauriko

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