Plan for Claudelands Bridge to become a shared zone

Hamilton city councillor Mark Bunting wants to turn Claudelands bridge into a shared cycling and pedestrian zone, while dropping the speed limit to 20km/h. Photo / Tom Rowland

An ambitious plan to turn Hamilton's oldest bridge into a shared zone for cars, pedestrians and cyclists is the latest project of cycling city councillor Mark Bunting.

Mr Bunting, who chairs the Access Hamilton taskforce, is turning the gears to have the Claudelands Bridge changed to a shared zone within a year to make the CBD more accessible to everyone.

"By creating better connectivity for cyclists in town, we are actually going to drain the roads of cars, because a lot of these people are cyclists who just don't feel safe enough to ride into town," Mr Bunting told Hamilton News.

Mr Bunting said the idea came to him when he was walking across the shared vehicle zone in Garden Place and thought, "wouldn't it be great if we had more streets like this".

"It's just making the CBD more accessible to everyone, not just those who drive cars, but also not excluding those people as well."

"Claudelands Bridge is the natural one, and it is also right in the centre of town."

Mr Bunting said that connecting the east and the west, via cycleways in the city, was a big part of his idea to transform the bridge.

"This is the slowest of all the bridges. Cobham Bridge is called the truck bridge, Pukete bridge already has clip-ons, Fairfield Bridge you can't do anything with, and Whitiora is the fast bridge — sometimes you don't even know the speed you're going over on that bridge," Mr Bunting said.

Claudelands Bridge was built as a railway bridge in 1884. In the 1960s the railway line through the central city was lowered and a new railway bridge built. The old bridge was gifted to the city and converted to a traffic bridge in 1968 with a steel deck structure on top of the old trusses. It's one of the oldest major bridges still in service in the country.

Mr Bunting said while no calculations on how much it would cost to change the bridge have be done, it would be considerably cheaper than building a new pedestrian bridge.

"To build that proposed pedestrian bridge up near the proposed regional theatre site we are looking at $4-5 million, and the Perry Bridge came in at $3 million."

Mr Bunting's design would be to take out the middle islands on the town side of the bridge, while also removing the existing barrier between the footpath and the road.

He said it will be hard to convince the anti cyclist brigade of his idea, but is hoping for open mindedness.

"I keep coming back to this: If all the roads didn't connect as badly as the cycleways don't connect, then you would find another way. I'm just asking for a fair-go."

While it could be seen as political campaigning, Mr Bunting said he remains committed to his job as councillor and chair of Access Hamilton, to finding better ways of transporting Hamiltonians around.

"If I do run again, this time I don't want to be elected as Mark Bunting the DJ or radio host, but as Councillor Bunting."