Whanganui letters: Speed bumps could solve Glasgow St crossing issue

Felicity Campbell suggests speed bumps could be an effective option to solve issues at the Glasgow St crossing. Photo / Bevan Conley

Re Glasgow St lights: I completely agree with correspondents criticising dangerous driving at the Glasgow St Te Tuaiwi pathway traffic lights.

I ride both an e-trike and a powerchair and have been shocked three or four times by people speeding out of the supermarket carpark and running the red light.

It doesn't matter which side you are approaching the crossing from, you risk being hit at the kerb or hit midway across the road.

The crossing is too close to the Glasgow St-Victoria Ave lights, it is also too close to supermarket exits, and drivers are impatient because they have had to wait, possibly at both locations, before being stopped a third time by the pedestrian crossing light.

Some of them, who have been looking hard to their right to swing out into Glasgow St, simply don't see the red light on their left. Others know it's there, and ignore it anyway. Jess McKenzie's suggestion of a speed bump (Letters, June 19) would be an effective option, but there needs to be one on both sides of the cycle path.

FELICITY CAMPBELL
Whanganui

Extreme weather more common

Rob Thomson (Letters, June 17) queries a Chronicle editorial that blamed the recent Canterbury floods on global warming. He wants to know what causes extreme weather events, what evidence there is for these events occurring more frequently, and how they can cause more droughts.

The Chronicle was quite correct in stating that extreme events are becoming more common. Between 1980 and 1999, the United Nations recorded 3656 disastrous floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and forest fires around the world. But, between 2000 and 2019, there were 6681 climate-related disasters. (tinyurl.com/parawhenua).

Nasa and NOAA have just reported they found Earth retained twice as much of the sun's energy in 2019 than it did in 2005, partially due to a temporary El Nino event and partly the result of an increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases returning more solar radiation back to Earth's surface. This raised seawater temperatures, causing more water vapour to rise into the atmosphere. (tinyurl.com/huarua).

Excessive amounts of lightweight humid air rising up from the oceans cause deluges, high winds, tornadoes and cyclones, so the more water vapour that rises from the warming-up oceans around us, the heavier will be the deluges on Taihape and Parapara hills.

During a Beef + Lamb woolshed meeting at Bell's Junction about 10 years ago, a Niwa climate expert told us to expect warmer and more-frequent westerlies creating "rain events" dumping 50 per cent more water on our hills than past cloudbursts did, while East Coast farmers could expect worse droughts because they are in our rain shadow.

A MAF farm expert suggested local farmers could prepare for these events by planting more hillside trees and by moving tracks and farm sheds further away from the rivers. It is good to see many of them have now taken these precautions.

Hopefully, this answers Mr Thomson's questions.

JOHN ARCHER
Ohakune

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