Cycleway v car parks
Council faces uproar
Business owners have ripped into the Christchurch City Council’s proposal to drastically cut parking spaces along part of Ferry Rd to make way for a cycleway.
Meanwhile, a church on the Woolston street, which attracts about 1100 people to its Sunday services, says the plan will result in its near closure.
Ferry Rd between Fitzgerald Ave and Wilsons Rd forms part of the new Heathcote Expressway, most of which was approved yesterday by council’s Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Committee.
Construction is likely to start on the section running from Truscotts Rd to Charles St later this year, but the Ferry and Wilsons roads segment remains out for consultation to address route issues.
Among the business group speaking out against the council’s proposed Ferry Rd section were developer Craig Newbury and former city council roading engineer Ray Edwards.
Yesterday, Edwards said business owners were ‘‘deeply affected by the proposal for cycle lanes and the removal of on-street parking’’.
The council’s preferred option, he said, left 10 of 71 current parking spaces. An alternative option kept 32.
Business owners asked council staff in 2016 to provide parking-demand statistics for the section, he said.
‘‘Instead, what the council assessment does [is] it considers the section of road down Wilsons Rd by Jade Stadium, when there’s almost no on-street parking demand [at that site].
‘‘But then they’ve added that into Ferry Rd and said ‘Hey, we’ve only got 50 per cent occupancy’. With respect, that’s bollocks.’’
Edwards said the business owners estimated the occupancy rate was 90 per cent.
‘‘The council recognises in its assessment that this proposal is going to displace this parking, I’d love to know where it’s going to go.
‘‘Their solution is: ‘We’ll put parking restrictions down what’s left of Ferry Rd’, conveniently not recognising that all but 10 of the 71 spaces on Ferry Rd already have parking restrictions on them.
‘‘Here we are removing 70 to 80 per cent of more of the on-street parking spaces, with no sense of what’s left or the impact that would have on businesses.’’
The group represented by Edwards did not want to get rid of cycle lanes, but wanted to see ‘‘competing demand for the finite amount of road space’’ met in a balanced manner.
Councillor Phil Clearwater called the implication people were being misled ‘‘offensive’’ and requested a withdrawal, but committee chairwoman Pauline Cotter interpreted the comments as ‘‘a different view of the information’’.
A council spokeswoman said further consultation allowed other route options to be assessed and for information to be collected and shared with the community before a decision was made.
‘‘In delivering on the community’s desire for better cycling infrastructure, the council has to balance the needs of people living and working along the cycleways with people who will ride their bikes along the route,’’ she said.
When designing cycleways, council considered directness of the route to destinations, safety, the impact of new infrastructure on businesses and residents, as well as how easy and logical the flow was for users.
Grace Vineyard Church minister David MacGregor said the Ferry Rd plan would ‘‘massively affect us to the point of almost closing us’’.
‘‘Our resource consent is reliant on using parks there … We were told by council the best place to be was an industrial area, not a residential area.’’
Cotter said the section of the road was going to be ‘‘extremely challenging for all of us’’.
Davidson said he was concerned the council was trying to fit approval into a short timeframe to get maximum external funding.
One criterion for Crown funding is construction on funded route sections .