EXPERT ADVICE
I agree with Paul Godden, leave it up to the experts on how the Waipapa intersection should be designed. If one of our top councillors has been on this case for 20 years, the traffic officers have been watching this intersection like hawks forever. It’s time to leave it to our highly trained experts. If you leave it up to a local vote you will get ten different ideas and take another 20 years. How much more consultation on upgrading the Waipapa junction must the community endure before the first scrape of a digger occurs? Many years ago there were detailed engineers’ drawings of roundabout alternatives displayed in the Waipapa Hall for viewing and community comment. Where did these get to?
Another roading sleeper is the Kerikeri central business district bypass – a long hibernation if ever there was one.
One of the development objectives of the Kerikeri Structure Plan 2000 was to reduce traffic flows on Kerikeri Rd through the town centre.
Traffic engineering advice to the Kerikeri Main Street Working Group (of which I was a member) was that footpaths could not be widened within the entire project perimeter without creating traffic congestion unless there was concurrent development of a complementary main street bypass route. This advice was ignored by council.
Subsequently the one way system around the centre was established as a ‘temporary’ measure. Sadly, progress since has matched the Far North definition of temporary. I’m guessing that the ship has sailed, but at the time of the Heritage bypass project, and even before, there was talk about extending the bypass road through Doonside to Kapiro Rd.
That was never pursued, but would have taken most of the north-bound traffic out of the Waipapa Rd equation and onto the highway at Kapiro Rd. If this alternative route was to be revisited, then it would possibly meet the NZTA aims and objectives for an effective route and therefore attract a subsidy.
If Waipapa and Kerikeri keep growing at the present rate, neither a roundabout or a small diversion through the back of