Split-second call: Highway island a matter of timing

Trust has a problem with the public toilets in Seddon being on the other side of State Highway 1 to the small cluster of businesses in town.

They are mainly worried about children and older people trying to get across the highway.

The trust submitted a proposal for a road refuge to the Marlborough District Council’s long-term plan. The council said it would refer the matter to Marlborough Roads for consideration.

The New Zealand Transport Agency confirmed on Friday the proposal was in the early stages of planning ‘‘for the safety of people crossing the state highway’’.

But cafe owner Bruce Horton said he thought the proposal was ‘‘dead and buried’’ after it first came up in an urban plan a decade ago. But the businesses predicted on the other side of the road never came to fruition.

His wife Linda Horton said the idea was a ‘‘stupid waste of bloody money’’ that would remove car parks, which were already limited on the Seddon main road. Plus there was an underpass a couple of hundred metres down the road.

When tourist buses unloaded in Seddon, the Hortons said they offered their cafe toilets so people did not have to cross the road, ‘‘customer or not’’.

But Awatere Community Trust member Lil Broadhurst said this did not account for everyone that stopped in Seddon.

Her office overlooked the highway and she sometimes saw people parking on the wrong side of the road so they didn’t have to run across it. And visitors to the township did not know about the underpass because it was not sign-posted, she said.

Renwick and Havelock had refuges; a precedent for making their roads safer for pedestrians, Broadhurst said.