Tamatea householder plays musical chairs after traffic calming measure installed by driveway

Tamatea resident Ben Donovan now has to play the equivalent of musical chairs when it comes to snapping up a parking space outside his house, thanks to a new road island.

Napier City Council has installed a series of traffic islands down Freyberg Ave in a bid to slow down speeding vehicles, one of them right beside Donovan's driveway that he "pretty much runs into when backing out".

It may look like a quiet neighbourhood, but the road is home not only to residents, but two schools and also borders onto the forever popular Anderson Park.

Tamatea resident Ben Donovan is frustrated at the placement of a road island directly outside his driveway on Freyberg Avenue. Photo / Warren Buckland

Donovan has only lived in at the address for about five months, but he says he's never noticed an issue with speeding vehicles.

He shares a house with others, meaning the driveway is already cluttered with cars, so he resorts to street parking instead.

But since the traffic island's sudden arrival and somewhat inconvenient placing, Donovan finds himself struggling for parking space and nearly got ticketed for parking his truck in front of the island last week.

"There's another [island] across the road and that has 2m of space from the driveway, yet they've put this one just 2m from our driveway which means we pretty much run into it when backing out."

The island is also used as a courtesy road crossing, something that also worries Donovan as it's situated so close to their driveway.

"We basically have to back into it when coming out of our driveway. The last thing I'd want to do is hit anyone when they're crossing the road.

"They could have just shifted it across at least 1m like they have on all the other driveways."

Napier City Council's transportation team leader Robin Malley said the council was aware some residents had raised concern with the location of some of the traffic calming measures installed in Freyberg Ave.

Council had contacted and consulted with all property owners prior to the construction, Malley said.

"The kerb build-outs, which are only a few centimetres high, narrow the traffic lanes a small amount to encourage motorists to slow down while approaching a traffic island, and assist pedestrians in reducing the width of road they have to cross.

"The reason the traffic islands and kerb build-outs have been installed is because of a number of incidents involving speeding vehicles, which have hit lamp posts, fences and damaged people's properties."

Malley said the measures were designed to reduce excessive speed and shouldn't affect motorists travelling at a safe and appropriate speed.