By John McDonald (Hamilton East Candidate and CityWatch NZ Editor)
People are facing rates increases and economic hardship. Hamilton City Council has now gone over $1 billion in debt. Community consultation activities are often not genuine and key planning details are being hidden. Roads are being redesign and transformed to frustrate and punish vehicle travel. With a budget of over $13 million, the planned “Safety Improvements” project on Te Aroha Street and Ruakura Road is a significant example.
The planned changes on Te Aroha Street and Ruakura Road are a significant part of the larger “Eastern Pathways School Link” project which is expected to cost somewhere between $26 million and $30 million[1]. New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA - Waka Kotahi) was going to cover half the project cost, until the new government restricted the funds going to speed hump projects. The project is currently on hold. However, many smaller projects with similar features have been already been built around the City. Those small projects have burdened Hamilton with more humps, more in-lane bus stops, more debt, and higher rates increases to support that growing debt.
A version of the “Te Aroha/Ruakura Safety Improvements” project still sits on the Council website, stuck in “planning” status and awaiting approval. If any future government restarts NZTA subsidies for speed humps, then the project could be restarted by Council staff and then approved by Councillors. The wider “Eastern Pathways School Link” project still has a completion date of 2030 according the HCC website[2].
Some information about the project can on the Council’s website[3] and the digital plans were eventually released after many official information requests[4]. Based on this information, the planned “Te Aroha/Ruakura Safety Improvements” project would involve:
· Re-designing and re-arranging the whole road between the Te Aroha Street roundabout through to Ruakura Road outside Mitre 10.
· Installing over ten raised crossings. Raised crossings on every side street, plus a few more raised crossings on the main roads.
· Converting the intersection of Te Aroha Street and Peachgrove Road into a raised intersection (effectively one large speed hump).
· Creating new bike paths and wider shared paths by narrowing the road.
· Removing carparking space for over 40 cars along Te Aroha Street.
· Installing six new in-lane bus stops, so that buses can routinely obstruct the roadway while passengers embark and disembark.
· Reducing the number of lanes “from four lanes to two” along Ruakura Road between Peachgrove Road and the Wairere Drive intersection.
· Removing some existing trees, landscaping, and installing “rain gardens”.
· Reducing the speed limit from 50km/h to 40km/h.
Reducing the number of lanes on Ruakura Road is expected to cause issues for vehicles accessing the Mitre 10 Mega, the self-storage facility, and the retirement village. These are busy locations on a busy road; with many trucks, trailers, and cars turning in and out of each location. Narrowing the roads and adding extra obstacles creates difficulties for emergency vehicles passing through and the other road users trying to let them pass.[John McD1]
Raised safety platforms and in-lane bus stops are unpopular with vehicle drivers, especially when installed on a busy road. This project would have installed the largest number of both unwanted features for any single project in the history of Hamilton. The notorious Rifle Range Road “Improvements” had an early budget of around $2.8 million. This project on Te Aroha Street and Ruakura Road is approximately four times that size in terms of budget.
The situation with the “Te Aroha/Ruakura Safety Improvements” gets worse, due to how the local community was informed about the project.
Council put a brochure about the project in letterboxes in late 2023. The brochure hid the fact that all the new crossings would effectively be speed humps and that over 40 carparks would be removed. The brochure wasted a lot of page space on cartoons, yet omitted critical details such as expected project costs and how many months of construction-related disruptions were likely.
The excessive use of cartoons in brochures is also insulting. The City Council is treating the people who pay their salaries as if they are preschoolers. More worrying is the possibility that some influential Council officials do actually see the world in cartoon terms.
The brochure also omitted the total number of in-lane bus stops and raised crossings, as if Council staff were aware that giving people too many key details would raise more opposition to the project.
The “Safety Improvements” project on Te Aroha Street is also important because it confirmed the disturbing link between raised crossings and the City’s growing levels of intergenerational debt. If you think it is a bad idea for the City to get further into debt in order to build speed humps, the situation is probably much worse than you think. Government subsidies for raised crossings and in-lane bus stops were being used to increase the City Council’s debt limit[5].
Hamilton City Council should have been upfront with the local community about their plans for Te Aroha Street and Ruakura Road. Instead of cartoons, the brochure should have clearly stated the project cost, and listed all the key features: six in-lane bus stops, two raised crossings across Te Aroha Street, raised crossings on every side street, 40+ carparking spaces being removed, and the estimated construction time (months of disruption) on this busy road.
People in Hamilton need to be well-informed about what these planned projects involve, Council should be upfront with details such as estimated project costs, important design features, and the likely impacts. Consultation needs to be genuine. Hamilton City Council needs to stop producing so many cartoons, stop hiding critical details, and stop their bad faith dealing with the community.
[1] haveyoursay.hamilton.govt.nz/
[2] hamilton.govt.nz/strategies-plans-and-projects/projects/eastern-pathways
[5] Page 46, Hamilton City Council Agenda v2, 20 February 2024
