Life was simply cleaner without ‘plague’ of cars

ONE of the few upsides of the Level 4 lockdown was suppression of the plague of cars on our streets.

Streets became quieter, there was less air pollution, and pedestrians, cyclists and skaters were able to reclaim the streets in safety.

Unfortunately, with Alert Level 3 and 2, we have seen a return of the plague.

I support the efforts of the Dunedin City Council to rebalance our urban transport, away from the dominance of cars, through initiatives such as the Barnes dance intersections, reduced vehicle speeds limits, reduced car parks and traffic calming measures.

However, more needs to be done to make bus transport cheaper and more accessible and to provide separated cycle paths.

We can support our local businesses, but we don’t have to do it by driving to their front door in a onetonne metal box. Bike, catch the bus or walk — good public health measures to suppress the plague.

Matt Jenks

St Clair

HILARY Calvert (Opinion, 11.5.20) calls for the city to make physical shopping as good an experience as possible to attract people back to the centre of town.

Does she really believe that being able to drive along and park in George St is the way to do that?

Does she not find Mall St in Queenstown, or Cuba Mall in Wellington, a more pleasant shopping experience than dodging the traffic when shopping on their adjoining streets?

When I go shopping in George St, I head for one of the 1350 existing parks in the Filluel St and Great King St car parks, rather than wasting time hoping one of the 27 metered car parks in George St will be empty.

I agree with Hilary Calvert to make physical shopping a pleasant experience. But I disagree that we need cars on George St to achieve that.

Colin Brown

Mosgiel

Supporting businesses

I AM mindful of the many people who have been economically disadvantaged by the Covid19 lockdown; people who have lost jobs, lost wages or lost businesses.

But there must be (particularly in Dunedin) thousands of people like me, working for the Government or university or in otherwise secure and wellpaid jobs, who have spent the past seven weeks at home quietly working, earning our usual incomes, but spending a fraction of what we would normally.

The money that I and others have saved on coffees and snacks, meals out, concerts and movies, petrol, grooming, purchases of clothes and so on must be considerable. Why is the Government not making any sort of effort to encourage us to go out into the local community and spend our real money, rather than only spending imaginary money

Upping our patronage of local businesses is absolutely the best thing that many of us can do right now. That’s something that the Government ought to be saying. Everincreasing handouts of imaginary money can’t do us good in the long run, can they?

Gabby Mathias

Opoho