Tyres slashed in airport parking wars
Wellington Airport parking wars are turning nasty as an apparent parking vigilante takes to attacking tyres.
Miramar residents have grown increasingly frustrated as people park for free in their neighbourhood, often for long periods, as they fly out from Wellington.
Now residents in and around Kauri St, one of the closest residential streets to the airport, are reporting up to 25 cars with their tyres spiked in the past week.
Howard Rait said his daughter’s car, parked outside his house in Kauri St, had a punctured tyre this week, seemingly from a tool with a sharp spike.
As he was fixing that tyre in the driving rain, a family returned from a funeral in Timaru to find two of their tyres had been spiked.
That family reported the incident, along with 16 other cars nearby with spiked tyres, to police.
Rait said there had been about 25 cases, and he believed the culprit was a local vigilante. ‘‘It’s people who are trying to get a response out of [Wellington City] council. In the last six to seven years, they have got nowhere.’’
The issue has been bubbling away for years, and frustrated residents have taken to placing illegal fences and concrete blocks outside their homes to stop people ditching their cars for weeks or months in the free parks, then walking to the airport.
In 2013, cyclist Alan Cecil Robieson, 65, died after hitting a low wire fence erected by a resident on a grass berm.
Coroner Carla na Nagara investigated the death and, last year criticised the city council’s ‘‘indifference’’ to solving the parking pressures in Miramar.
Wellington City Council former transport and urban development chairman Andy Foster said in July that some solutions were imminent, to show people ‘‘what the options are’’.
A handful of grass verges outside homes in Kauri, Miro and Kedah streets were to get flexible marker posts installed around them, and some would also be
"There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to take the law into their own hands." Wellington City Council transport and urban development chairman Chris Calvi-Freeman
planted out. His recent replacement in the position, Chris CalviFreeman, said the issue of parking in the area would be dealt with by the council as a ‘‘reasonably high priority’’, and he could see no reason to change tack from Foster’s approach.
‘‘There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to take the law into their own hands.’’
Police said in a written statement that damage to vehicles in Miramar and eastern suburbs had re-emerged as an issue in the past month, and there had been ‘‘numerous reports in the last week of tyres being slashed on vehicles’’.
There had been no arrests yet, but they were aware of the issue and urged people to report any damage or any unusual or suspicious behaviour.
‘‘Police are investigating the incidents, and extra measures are being put in place in the area, including other policing groups being made aware of the problem.’’
Reports of damage had come in from Kauri St, Miramar Rd and Miramar North Rd.