Vogel St on track for safety fixes
Safety improvements for a busy Palmerston North street are being lined up to be put in place within the next financial year.
Vogel St, a largely residential street, carries an increasing number of heavy vehicles, and the city council’s economic growth committee has recommended progress be made as soon as possible on the installation of three raised pedestrian crossings.
It also wants right-turn bays for vehicles turning into Featherston St and Haydon St.
The decisions follow a petition signed by 568 residents and frequent street users two years ago calling for actions to make the street safer for all users. There has also been a round of community engagement about possible solutions.
Vogel St carries about 12,000 vehicles a day and has become an increasingly
Bryce Hosking
well-used route for trucks between the industrial area of Tremaine Ave and State Highway 3.
The council’s acting group manager for transport and development, Bryce Hosking, said putting in the raised crossings at Rata St, Rangiora St and near Featherston St would be straightforward.
One had already been installed at the Roslyn shopping centre near Kipling St, and Hosking said the other three could easily be done next year from a low-cost, low-risk roading budget.
The right-turn bays, however, were more complicated and would need more than just some painted lines on the road.
The problem was the short distance between Featherston St on one side and Haydon St on the other. Both would need bays long enough for vehicles waiting to turn, with enough space for a straightthrough traffic lane on the inside.
“It’s a very tight dogleg of intersections.” Hosking said design work would go ahead in the next financial year. However, if that showed changes were needed to the berms, or property needed to be purchased to extend the road space through the intersections, the physical work might be delayed into the following year.
The other safety solution that had been explored for the street was the installation of cycle lanes or a shared pathway for cyclists and pedestrians, but that would not go ahead in the near future.
Hosking said there was no clear preference about the layout of any cycle lanes, and removal of on-street parking and some street trees would probably be needed.
The idea would be parked for the moment, as the council had other cycle improvements higher up its priority list, including Featherston St, Summerhill Drive and Botanical Rd.
Councillor Brent Barrett said making improvements on Vogel St had become urgent if the council was to respond to the significant community request from two years ago.
He did not want the time frame stretching beyond three years from the petition to some action on the street.
Barrett said he was slightly concerned that community expectations about the prospect of cycle lanes had been raised but would not be fulfilled in the short term.
However, he accepted the advice that other cycle projects should be dealt with first.