The Rotorua District Council is right to hold off on advising the New Zealand Transport Agency which option it prefers for the city's Eastern Arterial route.
Councillors did not want to sign off on their preference until a cultural assessment has been completed. People affected by any development must always be
properly consulted and in this case the option the council prefers is one which will go through Maori land and will separate the iwi which owns the land from the lake and their cemetery. There are also people living on the land through which the preferred route, running parallel to Vaughan Rd, will go if given the green light.
The effect this could have on these people must be considered. Roads can't just be built willy-nilly with no consideration for those who might be displaced or affected in any way through the construction stage and/or long term after a road is completed.
As Rotorua District Councillor Geoff Kenny put it to his fellow councillors, people's lives may be seriously affected and before being asked to "throw people out of their homes", councillors need as much information as possible so mistakes of the past aren't repeated.
It's to be hoped that councillors, once they have the information they require, will give consideration to what the cultural impact report tells them.
As an iwi representative points out in today's front page story, this project has been on the Rotorua agenda for some four decades and the New Zealand Transport Agency can surely wait another few months while the people affected are consulted and informed of the ramifications for them should the preferred option go ahead.
There's no question that Te Ngae Rd has become congested at certain times of the day with queues of traffic sometimes kilometres long. An alternative route taking traffic away from this road, which is residential all the way from Rotorua Airport to Tarawera Rd, would be a good thing - but not at any cost.
