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Cars and people can mix in the road through Dunedin’s city centre as traffic is set to slow to 10kmh in George St as a response to Covid-19 Alert Level 2.
Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins made the case for the health and safety response to the global pandemic by asking his colleagues to consider the "worst-case scenarios" for both action or inaction on approving a plan that allows city centre businesses to extend into the footpaths and people to walk through car parks and on to George St from Moray Pl to Albany St in a road treated as a "shared space".
"Level 2 is a significant shift," Mr Hawkins said.
People would be encouraged into a street that on a busy summer day had 70,000 people sharing the up to 4m footpaths.
He addressed issues of ideology — stating everybody based decisions on their own ideologies.
He addressed issues of the adequacy of engagement — stating "in a perfect world engagement could have been better".
"But this is not a perfect world."
All of the measures included in the report would be easily reversible; the temporary speed limit could be changed within the maximum 12-month period; staff would engage with groups to provide for cyclists, pedestrians and people with mobility challenges; there would be free parking to be reviewed monthly; and staff would work on an application for Government funding.
The report before the Dunedin City Council’s planning and environment committee today outlined the benefits of the NZ Transport Agency’s Innovating Streets for People fund.
But because council chief executive Sue Bidrose informed councillors that funding was for temporary measures in response to Covid-19, which were designed to become permanent, and there were no plans, she said, for these measures to be permanent, reference to the specific funding was dropped.
Cr Lee Vandervis was among the councillors who took umbrage with what he called a $40,000 ideologically driven experiment that amounted to "retrospective rubber stamping" of a council plan already under way.
He noted $10,000 had already been spent on 70 10kmh speed limit signs.
And he said the real health and safety risk was due to the council encouraging people to walk in the road.
"I see the real health and safety issue here being created -- being created by an experiment that hasn’t been thought through," Cr Vandervis said.
"I think there’s been actually a significant amount of pushing this through in advance, spending money in advance."
While he withdrew any suggestion council staff did anything wrong at today's meeting, earlier he would not withdraw a statement that Cr Chris Staynes had — during yesterday’s debate on a delay on the debate on the proposal — told councillors he would not be able to participate in decision-making if the meeting were delayed.
The meeting was delayed and Cr Staynes did participate.
But Cr Jules Radich did not -- Cr Radich won the delay while requesting an opinion from the auditor-general on whether he indeed, as council’s counsel indicated, had a conflict of interest in the matter as a George St property owner.
Cr Radich did not receive the advice before the start of today’s meeting and he did not participate.
How they voted
For
- Cr Barker
- Cr Christine Garey
- Cr Doug Hall
- Mayor Aaron Hawkins
- Cr Marie Laufiso
- Cr Jim O’Malley
- Cr Chris Staynes
- Cr Steve Walker
- Cr Benson-Pope
Against
- Cr Carmen Houlahan
- Cr Mike Lord
- Cr Lee Vandervis
- Cr Andrew Whiley
Withdrawn
- Cr Jules Radich
Absent
- Cr Rachel Elder