Time for Taylor to tuck away the paint
Russell Taylor’s decades of petty painterly crime look set to end as Wellington City Council prepares to make honest lines out of his illegal road markings.
The council has called for public submissions on a proposal for Holloway Rd, in the suburb of Aro Valley, that would see 17 car parks sacrificed so legitimate yellow ‘‘no parking’’ lines could be placed along 11 sections of the residential street.
Holloway Rd is already home to some crudely drawn, broken yellow lines, courtesy of Taylor.
He painted his first guerrilla parking restrictions 20 years ago, then repainted them a decade later.
He never had permission to paint the lines, but said he planned to continue doing so until the city council put up signs to stop cars parking on the road.
Taylor’s one-man safety crusade attracted international media attention after The Dominion Post reported it in July.
He has lived in Holloway Rd since the 1970s and has seen plenty of accidents and near-misses. Emergency vehicles often struggled to get up the road. Recently, a fire engine had to tow cars out of its way so it could attend a house fire, he said.
Council documents confirm that cars had to be moved to allow a fire engine through on April 5. The papers also reveal that concerns about parked cars on both sides of Holloway Rd have been raised by several residents.
‘‘Recycling trucks have faced a similar situation on a number of occasions and have expressed their opinion over the phone to confirm the issue of restricted access,’’ Taylor said.
Councillors and council staff had visited the site and talked to residents before opting for the improved safety measures.
As well as putting down broken yellow lines, the council has proposed putting up ‘‘no exit’’ and ‘‘road not suitable for long vehicles’’ signage.
Taylor was delighted the council had finally – seemingly – vindicated his years of work, which fell into a legal grey area.
It was, he said, not strictly illegal to paint a road. But it was illegal to paint signs purporting to be road signs – a legality he got around easily.
‘‘That is why I did them very untidily,’’ he said, pointing out there was no way his primrose yellow road markings – done with excess interior paint – could be mistaken for genuine council markings. ‘‘I wasn’t trying to portray them as anything more than an amateurish, local initiative.’’