NZTA, retailer not parallel

An Alexandra retailer is not convinced changes to parking outside his Centennial Ave shop will improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, as claimed by the agency behind the proposal.

As part of a $1.4 million safety upgrade and resurfacing of the street, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has proposed to replace angle parking with parallel parking between Shannon and Brandon Sts, to install a pedestrian refuge on the pedestrian crossing in the same block, and to build a roundabout at the intersection of Centennial Ave, and Clutha and Killarney Sts.

Central Digital Imaging director David Tidey, of Alexandra, said the proposed changes, which were designed to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, would not work as well as the NZTA thought.

"There will not be enough improvement in safety and traffic flow to justify the changes," Mr Tidey said.

"It has not been thought through well enough.

"It may not be ideal at the moment, but [what NZTA has proposed] is not an improvement."

He called for open discussion on the proposals, which he said had not happened.

Mr Tidey disputed an NZTA suggestion, made in the Otago Daily Times on August 21, that parallel parking would be safer for cyclists because it removed the need for motorists to reverse into their path when backing out from an angled park.

"Backing into a parallel park will involve reversing into the cycle lane from the middle of a traffic lane - holding up traffic."

Pedestrian safety would not be helped by parallel parking near the crossing, as to reverse into the parallel park closest to it, a car would almost have to be on the crossing first before it backed into the flow of oncoming traffic, holding it up, Mr Tidey said.

"Any danger to pedestrians on the crossing is due to either speed or inattention, and changing to parallel parking will not change this."

There was parallel parking across the street from Mr Tidey's business, immediately before the pedestrian crossing, which had not made the crossing safer for pedestrians accessing the crossing from that side of the street, he said.

If there was not enough guaranteed funding to do the whole Centennial Ave upgrade at once, Mr Tidey said the roundabout should be built first, so changes to parking around the pedestrian crossing could be looked at more closely.

NZTA Central Otago area manager John Jarvis said the advantage of parallel parking compared with angle parking was visibility.

"With a parallel park, the driver and cyclist would both be fully visible to each other.

When a motorist exits an angle park, their vision is obscured until they are well out, which is not a good situation at all.

"It's far safer to have parallel parks."

Replacing the angle parking with parallel parking was the only way a central refuge could be built on the pedestrian crossing, which would improve the safety of the crossing by making it more visible, Mr Jarvis said.

"We wouldn't be able to build the central refuge with angle parking [on the left-hand side of Centennial Ave, heading towards Cromwell], as cars would reverse into it as they pulled out."

Motorists backing into the parallel park closest to the pedestrian crossing would have to drive partially on to it but that was not uncommon, he said.

The No 1 priority in doing the work was resurfacing the road, he said.

"If that's not done, it won't get through another winter without significant repairs."

It made sense to do work on the road, pedestrian crossing and footpaths at the same time, which was why if any part of the overall job was to be rescheduled, it would be the roundabout, Mr Jarvis said.

- colin.williscroft@odt.co.nz