Survey: George St parking no dealbreaker
NEARLY nine out of 10 pedestrians surveyed in a Dunedin City Council-commissioned study would continue to visit the city centre if George St parking was not an option.
The survey, part of a report by urban design and landscape architecture firm Aitken Taylor, follows a suggestion by council consultants to recreate George St so the atpresent caroriented road provides for 25% vehicles and 75% pedestrians and public space.
As one of seven reports published by the council in advance of a Monday meeting at which council staff will update councillors on controversial plans to partly pedestrianise George St, the George Street Public Life Survey makes the case for pedestrianisation through monitoring pedestrian, cycling, and ‘‘staying’’ activities, an outdoor seating audit and facetoface surveys with 65 pedestrians from March 1113.
The Otago Daily Times extended an offer to all city councillors to comment on the survey yesterday, and council planning and environment committee chairman David BensonPope applauded the ‘‘comprehensive expert advice on which to base our decisions’’.
Cr Andrew Whiley noted the pedestrian study was done during a busy summer period when three cruise ships were in town, including Ruby Princess, which carries 3600 passengers and 1100 crew.
Further, he noted the user experience survey included more than a third (34%) of respondents who were aged just 15 to 24.
Eighty percent of those who took part in the user experience survey were residents, 42% were in George St for recreation, 37% were there daily, 42% arrived in a private vehicle, and 29% walked.
The pedestrian survey noted 72,402 pedestrian ‘‘movements’’ on the Saturday, 42% of the foot traffic between the times of noon and 2pm.
There were 1230 weekday bicycle movements, and 92% more cycling trips were made during the week than on the Saturday.
More than half (57%) of the socalled staying activity recorded was ‘‘standing’’, and included people smoking cigarettes or window shopping.
There were 51 outdoor dining chairs available in George St over the survey period and they were at a peak seating occupancy of 29% on Saturday, up from 27% on the weekdays.
A pedestrian age and gender registration showed less than 3% of the people in the street were under 5 years old, and those over 65 were underrepresented demographically both during the week (14%) and on weekends (7%).
Plans to revamp George St into a more pedestrianfriendly, or carfree, area after renewing its aged underground infrastructure have come under fire recently.
George St jeweller Brent Weatherall presented a petition with 6000plus signatures last week opposing the initial concept design.
THE Dunedin City Council has made a Uturn on one of its controversial temporary measures for George St, but the AA is calling for more.
A council spokesman yesterday said the Barnes Dance phasing experiment lasted only a few days. Feedback from business owners — received by Enterprise Dunedin staff as they visited businesses — was that the increased pedestrian crossing phasing had the opposite effect from what was intended and the measure was pulled on Tuesday.
The change to the pedestrian crossings ‘‘actually created a longer than anticipated tailback of vehicles and made it harder, not easier, for pedestrians to use the shared space,’’ he said.
But the AA yesterday urged the council to ‘‘listen to its people and reverse the illconceived changes it has made on George St’’.
AA Otago district chairman Malcolm Budd said the association was ‘‘one of many’’ groups to tell the council that the changes enacted last week — including lowering the speed limit in George St to 10kmh to promote physical distancing under Covid19 Alert Level 2, the installation of temporary speed bumps, and increasing the frequency of Barnes Dance crossings — were ‘‘a bad idea, but none of us were listened to beforehand’’.
Mr Budd said the council needed to ‘‘show some common sense’’.
The feedback from the AA’s membership had been ‘‘ overwhelmingly negative’’and the changes were commonly described as ‘‘ludicrous’’, ‘‘ridiculous’’ and ‘‘stupid’’; they had increased the risks to pedestrians, and showed the council ‘‘see themselves as knowing ‘better’ than the people they are supposed to represent’’.
‘‘Now we are seeing the reality hit, and it is exactly what people warned the council would happen: people struggling to travel at the extremely low limit, more congestion, and nearly everyone saying the changes have made the area worse rather than better,’’ Mr Budd said.
This week, from a personal account, council chief executive Sue Bidrose tweeted, then deleted, her take on the city’s reaction to the changes.
‘‘The PM [Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern] shuts down the whole country and stops commerce to keep people safe from virus. 91% of people support,’’ she wrote.
‘‘Council makes it 2 mins longer to drive down George St to keep people safe from the virus. The city looses (sic) its shit.’’