Janine Rankin on losing our parking spaces

College St residents about to lose all their on-street parking for about 1.5 kilometres of their street were taken by surprise by the implications of living on a preferred cycle route.

These were not stupid or inattentive people. Somebody, somewhere in the Palmerston North City Council might have guessed that those in the block from Botanical Rd to Batt St, who already have tight restrictions on parking, might have an opinion.

OK, we might all accept that roads are there for road users, not as an extension of private properties on their edges.

They are also the lid on a maze of underground services, but that’s another story.

Some roading engineers, the professional ones, that is, not the armchair ones, will explain that residents have no particular rights over the roadway outside their houses.

That’s not entirely reasonable, of course, if the council expects them to mow the grass berms and clear the autumn leaves out of gutters and drains.

And we know city folk, especially as you move out of the city centre toward the suburbs, as you do travelling along College St, take a sort-of proprietary interest in the potential to park a car outside.

The present writer is excluded from that generalisation, given there’s a bend just before the driveway, and a request to have a protective yellow line painted along the kerb outside was granted.

Anyway, to find out in a letter from the council that car parks are about to be taken away, like, within a couple of weeks, could have been predicted to go down badly.

Ever so slightly pouring petrol on the fire was a comment that the proposal to upgrade College St’s cycle facilities was consistent with the council’s environmental and transport strategies ‘‘which have been developed in consultation with the community’’.

There were looks of total bafflement about that. None of the affected residents could recall any opportunities to make submissions on such strategies.

And you’ve got to be a pretty dedicated council watcher to find out what the comment meant.

It could well be a reference to the Integrated Transport Strategy of 2015.

This 73-page document, adopted in November 2015, has ‘‘encourage walking and cycling’’ as one of its key drivers, and clearly identifies College St as a primary on-road cycle route.

It signalled there would be ‘‘design responses for cyclists on primary cycle routes’’, and it was likely that would mean giving priority to cyclists over on-street parking.

There was a media article alerting people that the council was calling for submissions.

Submissions closed in May 2015, with 39 received.

It was reported to councillors that there had also been intensive pre-consultation with interest groups, which, at a glance, meant people with an interest in wheels.

Information about the draft and the consultation process was publicised on the council’s website, in a media release and in the

Square Circular.

Paper copies were also distributed to the Customer Service Centre, to all libraries, and made available at the ‘‘Let’s talk to the Councillor’’ meetings.

Most of the feedback the council received was, not surprisingly, from road users, particularly cyclists.

‘‘Strong concern was expressed about cyclist safety and the conflict between cyclists and cars, particularly cars parked in and using cycle lanes.

‘‘A number of suggestions were made to improve cycle safety, such as wider roads, protected or separated cycle lanes, physical barriers, use of footpaths for cycling, and bylaws.’’

Residents, it seems, were not targeted. They were hardly alerted, involved, reactive, or considered.

So it comes as no surprise that they have responded with a vengeance, and that the council, rather after the horse has bolted, is holding a public meeting to try to get the balance right.

END NOTE:

Cats will be cats, and it’s in their nature, with a dismissive flick of the tail, to ignore any rules humans try to impose.

In particular, they can be expected to totally ignore bylaws.

And their human staff are to various degrees likely to respect, if not actively encourage, their assumption of independence and superiority.

City councillors, some of whom have cats, are on the cusp of understanding the limitations of adopting a bylaw that cats will not read.

Today, the planning and strategy committee is expected to recommend the reviewed animals and bees bylaw include rules about mandatory desexing and microchipping felines by the time they are 4 months old.

Making it mandatory will not necessarily make it happen.

And so, another committee of sorts is likely to be formed, to grapple with real and perceived problems on the cat-management front.

... residents have no particular rights over the roadway outside their houses.