Hospital construction may affect cycleway

THE NZ Transport Agency’s oneway cycleway may undergo changes to fit with the construction of the new Dunedin hospital, but will go ahead regardless.

NZTA project manager Simon Underwood said in terms of planning the cycleway, nothing had changed.

But the project was designed to take into account, for instance, where driveways were, and with the hospital still being designed, that would change.

The agency was considering what arrangements would be needed while construction work was under way, and what arrangements it would need when the building was finished.

The work being done was ‘‘highly adaptive’’ — for instance precast separators could be moved — and that meant it could still carry on, but be changed later.

Mr Underwood said the block between Hanover and St Andrew Sts had included pullover areas for driveways.

‘‘Clearly we would need to revisit whether it’s worthwhile doing those.’’

Instead, NZTA would wait to see where the final access points would be, and design the cycleway around that.

With work on the area north of the University of Otago complete, Mr Underwood said the focus was on the oneway south, south of Albany St.

The first part of work was widening on Gowland St, which meant there could be parking on both sides of the road.

Once that was done, that block would ‘‘just sit for a while’’.

The effort would move to the Queens Gardens area, after which the agency would ‘‘progressively work our way back to Albany St’’.

The major work people would see would be between Stuart St and Rattray St.

The section south of Stuart St on the oneway south had extra lane capacity.

A lane had already been taken out, and once the cycleway was in place it would stay as wide as it was now for vehicles.

The finish time for the cycleway on both the north and south oneways was still October ‘‘in essence’’, although ‘‘extra elements’’ had been added, such as traffic signals, which might require extra time to complete.