Playground in Mornington; airport commuter train

IN relation to suggestions to place a playground at the harbour basin, it has merit. However, to alter the roading infrastructure to such an extent during the hospital redevelopment may be a little illconceived.

An alternative would be to establish a playground at the Mornington playing fields and expedite the reestablishment of the Mornington cable car.

This would provide a destination attraction for the cable car. There are already skate bowls in the area and the setting in the Town Belt is quite bucolic away from wind. The cable car could sell a season pass for parents, similar to the Chinese Garden.

I admire the society’s progress, so maybe it’s time for the council to engage a little more with them in heritage, marketing and civil engineering, if that is not already the case.

I am also in favour of reestablishing commuter rail, but let’s go a step further and take the railway to the airport.

A costly bridge and tracklaying would be involved. A train and rail car could do an hourly circuit to and from the city taking in suburban stops

Visitors could arrive by aircraft to Dunedin, ‘‘The World’s Smallest City’’ , and then take the train to our railway station in the centre of the city. It would give us an air of sophistication that can only be found in much older cities in Europe. S. Kilroy

Burkes

IT is truly a measure of how inured the citizens of Dunedin have become to all the crazy ideas and botched works emanating from the DCC that a proposal to create a children’s playground in the coldest part of Dunedin by casually moving a road and snipping off a vital bridge ramp to the industrial area attracted only a single comment.

Are we so punchdrunk from observing all the cycleway mistakes, the City Hall shrug, the new ‘‘improved’’ remedial works, the endless costs to ratepayers, the total lack of accountability, that we greet this latest nutty idea with indifference?

Responsibility for this grand plan is attributed to David BensonPope, who is involved in an email spat about it with Lee Vandervis and Andrew Whiley. Amid claim and counterclaim of electioneering, Cr BensonPope is undecided if he will stand again. If this playground idea is indicative of his thinking, it will be a good thing if he doesn’t.

I would like to thank Cr Vandervis for the many times he has opposed illthought, even reckless council policy. His is often a lone voice against a sycophantic council core that is way too green and in thrall to Mayor Cull.

Local councils are supposed to be apolitical; this one isn’t. Bring on the elections. Kevin Casey

Mornington

Baldwin St option

I SEE that there are thoughts as to what the replacement might be for the rolling of Jaffas down Baldwin St.

Might I suggest that we put our mayor and councillors in barrels and roll them down Baldwin St.

It just might knock some sense into their heads. All we have had from our parttime mayor and his cowboys are half facts. Dave Cull stated a while ago that Dunedin had the lowest rates of any New Zealand city.

He did not state that we also have the lowest income per head. We need more spent on infrastructure and not on fancy bridges.

I, like many others, have had a gutsful. Roll on the next election.

R. Williams

Fairfield

Thanks

THANKS to Richard Saunders of the DCC for replying to my concerns on safety of opening the Chain Hills tunnel to cyclists with services running through the tunnel. As an engineer myself, I am interested to see details of how this will be made safe and what type of monitoring will be done in due course. Nancy Robbie

Dunedin

BIBLE READING: For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. — Jeremiah 31:34