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Warwick Smith/Stuff
Puriri Terrace is usually full of parked cars. Residents want safety improvements to slow traffic.
Residents of a Palmerston North street packed with parked cars by day, carrying traffic to and from sports facilities at weekends, and plagued by street racers, have taken their plea for action directly to city councillors.
Puriri Terrace petition-leader Chris Morgan told the council’s economic growth committee the group had struggled for years to get improvements made.
But every time they went back to talk to council’s roading staff, they were dealing with someone new who told them a different story.
Their latest feedback from council staff was that there were no plans to make any improvements any time in the next five years.
Residents at 33 of the 39 occupied homes in the street signed the petition asking for judder bars to be put in.
Morgan said the other six were concerned about traffic hazards, but were not sure judder bars were the answer.
He said the street was often busy with traffic to and from the car park at Vautier Park, which was used not just for netball and sports, but by hospital staff and visitors, and people going to Freyberg High School, the community pool and Skoglund Park.
On-street parking was often fully occupied, creating dangers for residents going in and out of their driveways.
Residents were concerned about the speeds some vehicles travelled at along the narrow space between parked cars. It had also become a street frequented by street racers doing burnouts.
There had been damage to parked cars, broken wing mirrors, dangers for pedestrians, and a high number of near misses, Morgan said.
Warwick Smith/Stuff
Palmerston North Hospital staff and visitors take up most of the on-street parks in Puriri Terrace.
Cr Lorna Johnson’s request for a staff report on the safety issues and recommended solutions in the street was supported by the committee.
But Johnson said she was uncomfortable to hear that residents had not been able to get a resolution by working with council staff.
“It’s unfortunate it has to come to a petition to council.”
Later in the meeting, chief infrastructure officer Chris Dyhrberg explained that until recently, seven out of eight positions in the roading unit had been vacant.
That had also caused delays in reporting on the council’s road maintenance contract with Fulton Hogan, and on proposed safety improvements for Vogel St.
Dyhrberg said all but one vacancy had since been filled, which would bring the unit back to nearly full capacity and enable staff to get back on top of things that were slipping.
But he said priority was being given to preparing for the draft budgets for the review of the long-term plan early next year.
Johnson said she was concerned that issues that should have been a key part of the council’s business as usual had been allowed to slide without councillors being given information that staff resources were stretched so thin.
Mayor Grant Smith, however, said the staffing issues had been signalled to councillors.
He said it was great staff had been recruited in a tight job market, and councillors should be aware that even business as usual was very difficult given the pressures the organisation was under.
Deputy mayor Debi Marshall-Lobb said she appreciated staff were busy, but councillors needed to know if staff shortages were causing projects to go off track before members of the public agitated about road safety issues told them about it.
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