Grey St redesign project delayed

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

by Zita Campbell

Busy contractors tied up with fixing Gisborne’s roads have delayed the Grey and Kahutia streets development.

Originally set to start as a trial on January 15, the Grey and Kahutia street layout remained untouched yesterday.

The delay was caused by the challenge to find contractors able to fit the work into their busy schedule, said Haimona Ngata of Tairāwhiti Adventure Trust (TAT),  one of the project’s community partners.

It had been hard to line up contractors that were committed to the job,  he said.

The road changes aim to make the area safer and friendlier for  pedestrians and cyclists.

These changes include courtesy crossings, new pedestrian crossings (including one raised), dual cycleways, and a chicane to provide a dual purpose of safer crossing and calming traffic.

Additionally, the Kahutia Street intersection will be trialled as a left-hand-turn-only intersection and there will be new road art.

Once started, the project aims to be completed within  two weeks.

“That’s an optimistic two weeks — it’s also dependent on the weather,” Mr Ngata said.

The art piece will be a work by Sir Derek Lardelli called Tai Uehā.

“It’s basically linking the project to the whenua or the land — to the people who were here before colonisation, who are here now, and who will be here into the future.”

The impact of these changes are estimated to add 1.36 seconds of driving time to Grey street according to the adventure trust, but will encourage alternatives to people routinely driving their cars.

“There’s a massive narrative in the East Coast that Tūranga is quite reliant on cars, but if we give people options outside of cars to travel, that means fewer cars on the road.

“This means that trucks and people delivering support stuff will be able to get to their destination more quickly.”

More pedestrian and cycleway friendly developments happened in Christchurch after the earthquakes.

Mr Ngata said it was a good time to take a look at similar projects for Gisborne.

“We’ve had the cyclone which has been devastating, and obviously caused a reset to our larger transport infrastructure. How can we dial in on our route infrastructure to catch up with the rest of Aotearoa?

“The sooner we get it done, the sooner we can start the monitoring and find out if people want it  to be different.”

Over the six- month trial period, there will be statistical monitoring and community meetings.

“That’s the beauty of it being temporary. We can change it according to feedback,” said Mr Ngata.