Third time lucky in city council’s search for new bus stop location?
Finding the best place for a bus stop and shelter at the start of Palmerston North’s new 104 bus route is taking time.
There will be a temporary stop only on Clarke Ave when the new routes kick in on the new all-electric bus service on Monday morning, while Palmerston North City Council staff look for a location that would be third time lucky.
A resident who lives next to the first proposed site for a bus shelter, near the Amberley Ave intersection, objected.
Apart from not wanting a bus shelter outside their master bedroom, the resident said it would be unsafe to have the bus stopping at the beginning of a bend, where cars would sweep past it and into the path of oncoming traffic.
City councillors who heard objections to the proposed location back in October agreed that it was too much of an intrusion on privacy, as well as not being ideal for safety reasons.
They had no authority to say where the bus stop could go, but they upheld the objection to putting a bus shelter there.
In response, council staff led by intermediate project manager Frances Duffin proposed a site even closer to the intersection with Amberley Ave, outside the corner property.
The owner of that property then objected, predicting that a bus stop there would lead to an accident or even a fatality, as vehicles often took the right-hand turn into Clarke Ave at speed and veered close to the kerb, exactly where the bus would be parked at the shelter.
Councillors who heard the objection in February decided they would not make a ruling on allowing a bus shelter there until the results of a safety audit came back.
The council’s acting group manager for transport and development, Bryce Hosking, said that after hearing the objection and considering the safety audit, staff had decided it was not an appropriate place for a bus stop.
The bus stop sign and the 1.8m concrete crossing from the footpath across the grass berm at the temporary location would eventually be removed.
Another site for a shelter and stop was being sought, but the property owners there would also have a right to object.
The new all-electric bus service needs 350 bus stops around the city – nearly half of them being new ones.
There will be shelters at 145 of them, mostly on inbound routes.
Not many will be ready for Monday’s launch, and they will be rolled out progressively until the end of June.
The $5.5 million project to upgrade and construct all the stops and shelters is fully funded by the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi through its Transport Choices programme.