Letters: Bayfair underpass or overpass? That is the question

Re Bayfair underpass, well done Tauranga chief executive Marty Grenfell - you're right on the mark re the modern transport standards (News, August 15).

They also relate to modern holistic community development. We have a great city growing and we are consciously growing it.

The NZ Transport Agency is part of it, as we all are, and as a team we should be looking at achieving the same outcome: Good quality, as the Resource Management Act says in its purposes and principles, which are compulsory, for the health, safety and welfare of people and the community.

Underpass or overpass would seem to be the only question here.

We are looking into the future, over the longer time frame time the cost of this will reduce to insignificance, particularly when compared with the unthinkable potential cost of not doing this and the cost of the road construction works.

Mark Batchelor
Matua

Avenues clarification

F. Gardner's suggestion ( Letters, August 9 ) that 70 per cent of ratepayers want the Avenues pathway project to be progressed needs qualifying.

Seventy per cent of the very small proportion of Tauranga ratepayers who responded to a Tauranga City Council survey supported further investigation of a project that was pitched in the survey as having numerous benefits and no drawbacks.

It is not credible that 70 per cent of ratepayers would support any plan to impose hugely expensive infrastructure upon the natural environment especially on low-lying and vulnerable coastal land.

F. Gardner writes that ratepayers remember at election time those councillors who voted against continuing to cost the project or contact them to establish their rationale.

But, conversely, many ratepayers will vote for councillors who are likely to exercise fiscal responsibility, show concern for the environment, respect ratepayers' property rights and treat all of Tauranga's communities with compassion.

R. Rimmer
Welcome Bay
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