A Dunedin City Council planner has recommended a controversial proposal to realign a road that cuts through the Dunedin Botanic Garden be declined.
The plan to realign Lovelock Ave to allow more room for the Rhododendron Dell, allow relocation of propagation houses and administration buildings, and deal with safety issues related to the road, is a project being supported by the Friends of the Dunedin Botanic Garden.
It is due for what should be a lively resource consent hearing on Thursday and Friday this week.
The plan has proved unpopular with many Opoho residents, who have said the new route would be more dangerous because of its steep gradient, ice and sun-strike, and would be popular with boy racers.
The hearing, before commissioners Roger Tasker and Allan Cubitt, and city councillor Colin Weatherall, has received 79 submissions, 23 in support and 55 in opposition, and one conditionally in support.
One submission includes a petition signed by 543 people.
Council planner Darryl Sycamore - whose recommendation to decline the application will be considered by the hearing committee along with all other submissions - has echoed the residents' concerns.
His report said the horizontal alignment of the new road was inadequately designed, and the gradient so steep only the most capable of cyclists could travel up it.
The gradient of 1:6.2 was comparable to other streets in Dunedin, but few were of that gradient for more than 100m, as the new road was, and almost all were older roads, established before the inception of the Resource Management Act and the city's district plan.
"I find it hard to accept that a new road replacing an existing roadway should be designed with a substantially steeper gradient than the existing formation, especially when it does function as a collector road."
Insufficient consideration had been given to the effect of frost, and inadequate reasons given as to why relocation of the garden's infrastructure could not begin with the existing road in place.
"In my opinion, the proposed new road alignment will be likely to be subject to frost formation during winter periods, therefore compounding the hazards associated with a steep gradient for vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists."
Friends of the Dunedin Botanic Garden president Nicola Holman said yesterday there had been no change to the application before the hearing.
The Botanic Garden, rather than the friends, was making the application, and would have transportation experts and others at the hearing.
It was hoped the realignment would also allow room for education facilities, such as a lecture theatre, and a new entrance to the garden.
Mrs Holman said she would be presenting two submissions, one on behalf of the friends, and another private submission.
