Driving around Dunedin is now quite frustrating

I FIND myself agreeing with Bernice Armstrong (Letters, 16.10.19) with respect to the proliferation of ‘‘trafficcalming’’ measures around our city.

I am fortunate that I live close to the city and, consequently, walk most of the time. However, I am becoming more and more frustrated whenever I do need to take the car out.

Indeed, there are an increasing number of streets about the city that I no longer dare drive down for fear of suffering significant damage to the underside of my vehicle. The number of gouges in some of the speed bumps would suggest I am not alone. Not all of us drive highriding SUVs or utes.

The plethora of curb protrusions and/or islands is also vexing, as negotiating some corners becomes an exercise in playing dodgems with traffic in the opposing lane.

I’m sure these things are designed using the latest computer software, but practicality seems to have gone out the window. For example, how is an emergency vehicle, such as a fire engine, supposed to make progress at some of these intersections without having to ride over the kerb/island, or do a timeconsuming threepoint turn?

I would far rather the council spent money on largely invisible, but much more necessary, items such as renewing/upgrading 3 Waters infrastructure than wasting more ratepayer funds on structures of highly debatable benefit.

Brian Stewart

City Rise

Forestry

THE Government has an aspirational goal to plant a billion trees, and the sentiment towards a zerocarbon goal is obvious, but the policy requires some serious scrutiny.

The target figure includes replanting of exotic cutovers so the net area gain is unpredictable, but with handouts from the Provincial Growth Fund, it is likely to be significant.

Forestry has had boom times recently but the huge increase in the annual cut has been largely directed towards the log trade. Log trading to Japan phased out in the mid1990s and that void was filled by South Korea, which is now only at a very low level relative to early 2000. Those markets will not return with declining population growth.

The log trade will now be almost exclusively directed to China with the attendant risk in single market trading. The present exotic forestry estate of about 1.2 million hectares is sufficient.

The very real risk, as I see it, is overseas corporates hijacking our economy by purchasing large pastoral blocks and converting the land to forestry. Two such blocks (4000ha) in the Wairarapa and King Country have recently been purchased. Three Government majoritycontrolled companies have expressed similar strategies.

They are not interested in planting for the intrinsic value of the trees but for gaining carbon credits to mitigate their operational emissions (which will not change).

It is a very disturbing development. The Government needs the revenue that farming generates and not paying out carbon credits.

Ian Williams

Oamaru

Faulty buildings

HOW wicked to have information about the total lack of strength of a multistorey building and withhold it from the occupants (ODT, 15.10.19).

Just imagine if you had prior knowledge of the lack of strength of the CTV building and you failed to act.

We are rightly concerned as our entire immediate family possibly work in these buildings.

This must be the height of wickedness to withhold this information on the legal grounds of commercial sensitivity. This deserves the closest scrutiny of any story.

These buildings must be identified immediately and steps to rectify them taken.

Barbara Armstrong and Steve Moynihan

Cromwell