College students spot commuters’ missing link
A once “precarious” road for pedestrians to cross now has a raised crossing and a thumbs up from the students whose feedback put the project on the council radar.
Under the tutelage of Nelson College teacher Richard Brudvik-Lindner, the now Year 11 students spent all of 2023 studying social studies under the theme of Inventing Nelson.
That involved taking field trips into town, and spending an entire term working with Nelson City Council staff on the Streets for People and Transport Choices projects, looking at the area from Nelson Intermediate School to the hospital.
Brudvik-Lindner said this was, and is, a dangerous area where boys had been hit by cars.
Often, accidents went unrecorded. “Students will come to school and be like ‘oh I was hit by a car today, it knocked me off my bike, but it didn’t really hurt me’, and they don’t tell anybody,” Brudvik-Lindner said.
There had also been more serious incidents where students have had to go to hospital.
During several “walking workshops”, the boys came up with their own ideas about how to make the streets safer in their morning commute, ideas they put forward in formal presentations to NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi contractors and council.
The Motueka St raised pedestrian crossing was one of them, and was added to the project scope as a result. Now finished, it’s been given the thumbs up by the students, who were excited to see their feedback come to fruition. With 8000 cars passing a day, the road was “quite precarious”, said Mattias Bower, 15.
Since 2018, there have been 32 accidents on the street, with data showing a “cluster of accidents” at the intersection.
The new crossing was wider, which meant you could get a bike onto it, and because it was raised, slowed traffic down as well, Bower said.
Michael Lee said currently, the city was “designed for cars”. To get people to walk and bike, they needed the infrastructure available, he said.
The new installation was not only safer, but also a lot more appealing for walkers than the previous pedestrian refuge, said Max Harrington.
A Nelson College spokesperson said Brudvik-Lindner had been a “champion” for the boys in getting their voices heard.
“It’s easy for motorists to forget that there are other arteries in the town for transport, and a massive demographic of people who are not able to drive,” she said.
“We do have to remember the kids don’t have a choice.”
Jayden Coetzee said he found it encouraging to see value placed on the voices and input of youth.
“We’ve studied government over the last two years and this is an example of democracy in action, and my mates and I were part of it,” he said, adding that it gave him “belief” in the democratic process.
For Rory Shand, the crossing was a “start”, though many more were needed.
Brudvik-Lindner said Nelson had a problem in that its young people tended to “flee” the city, compounding its aging population.
Giving young people a reason to believe they could effect change in the community would make it more attractive to them, he said.
The Motueka St crossing is part of Stage One of the Streets for People project, which has also included two other crossings at the junctions of Franklyn St and Tipahi St and Franklyn St and Kawai St.
Contractors are now working on a shared path along Tipahi St before continuing up Kawai St.
The NZTA-funded Streets for People programme is set up as a trial, council said, and once all parts were in place, it would be seeking feedback.