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The Dunedin City Council is expected to receive data today which will help it decide whether the social distancing measures in George St are still necessary.
The council’s planning and environment committee last month approved, in a 9-4 vote, staff plans to allow city-centre businesses to extend on to the footpaths, and road-markings and 10kmh speed limits designed to allow 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".
DCC chief executive Sue Bidrose said a decision on whether to go a step further and place speed bumps in George St would be made in the next two days.
"At this point, there is no meeting set up in our calendar, but we all know we are going to meet to discuss it.
"When we came up with the plan for George St, we were still in lockdown, so we didn’t know how much social distancing people would feel that they needed to do.
"So now we will know. We can have a look at the actual data, we can have a look at the actual pedestrian numbers and traffic numbers, and make a decision about that social distancing need.
"We can look at Paymark data; we’ve done a survey about whether people are avoiding town because of the social distancing."
Dr Bidrose said the council would receive all of the data today and discussions would be made about how to proceed.
The data would also be used to inform the council’s decision about whether to continue free parking across the city.
The parking decision would be made at the next council meeting on June 8.
Many store owners spoken to by the Otago Daily Times yesterday said it was hard to know if the new safety measures had had any effect on foot traffic in the city centre.
Wild South staff member Jill Graham said foot traffic over Queen’s Birthday weekend was about the same as any other weekend
"Nobody is driving 10kmh. But there’s still lots of people walking up and down.
"There’s probably been more people in town because of the long weekend."