Letters: Why the delay in fixing Mount Maunganui's Base Track?

How much consultation needs to be done and has it taken so long to repair the Mount Base Track, a reader asks. Photo / George Novak

I agree with your correspondents Ray Malcolm and Andrew Lattimore (Letters, February 11). The Mount Base Track is probably our greatest visitor and resident attraction.

It is not acceptable for the nearly two-year delay, depriving the opportunity for those with pushchairs and wheelchairs or those who have difficulty negotiating the stairs of the experience of circumnavigating the Mount.

How much consultation needs to be done and why does it take so long?

Why also is it taking so long to build the cycleway along Totara St?

I'm sure many more people would cycle to the Mount (and avoid road congestion and parking difficulties) if they didn't have to face the scary ride along Totara St.

So much money was spent creating an excellent cycleway across the bridge and to Totara St, why not finish the job?

This cycleway was to be completed in September 2018 and was delayed a year. Why do these projects take such a long time?

John Douglas
Mount Maunganui

Bus service fiasco

"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

That desperate cry from Shakespeare's Richard III can be heard echoing around the bus shelters of Tauranga where would-be commuters wait despairingly for the bus that will never come.

Since the introduction of a new network and operator the entire regime - from back office to front line - appears to be spiralling out of control.

A Third World service? Well, no. That would be doing Yemen and Sudan a disservice. In those chaotic countries, the bus does eventually arrive.

The regional council's public transport model is fundamentally flawed. Hub-and-spoke systems are for bicycle wheels, not lonely outposts like the Farm St "interchange".

Further, that approach relies heavily on near-faultless cohesion and communication, neither of which have yet been sighted.

Failing a council rethink, commuters trying to navigate the system will remain bewildered:,like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there.

Peter Bullick
Bethlehem

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