We have received the following letter from the Wellington City Council, providing information on the latest developments in the Cycleway Project (you can see our submission here):
Plans to improve the Oriental Bay shared path
Changes have been proposed to make walking and biking easier and safer along the harbour side of Oriental Parade between Herd Street and Freyberg Pool.
Oriental Bay is one of Wellington’s top destinations and as the city grows this area will become more popular. The existing shared path is too narrow to comfortably accommodate the numbers of people walking, biking, running and sightseeing, especially during summer and weekends.
This year the Council has been working with people in your community on changes to local streets to make it easier for people to ride bikes in your neighbourhood and across town. The Oriental Bay community working group has explored a range of options to find the best ways of improving the narrowest section of shared path for everyone, and agreed on two options.
We will formally on consult one of these two options over four weeks early in the new year.
Two options for a new shared path
Both options would:
- create a new wide shared path between the parked cars and pohutukawa trees on the harbour-side of Oriental Parade, from Herd Street to Freyberg Pool
- extend the kerb out into the road by several metres to make room for the new path
- include a buffer zone between the new path and parked cars
- shorten the time restriction for car parks along this stretch of Oriental Parade from 10 hours to a mix of 2 and 4 hours.
Option A would:
- change the angle parking to parallel parking to make room for a 4.8m-wide shared path — this would reduce the number of car parks by about half but much shorter time restrictions will mean more people can use these car parks
- retain the 2m-wide painted median on the road.
Option B would:
- retain the angle parking
- reduce the width of the new shared path to 3.6m
- arrow the traffic lanes from 4m wide to about 3.3m, to make room for the new path and angle parking
- narrow the width of the painted median to 1m.
Bays Connections
The Oriental Bay proposals are part of a $37.5 million project by Wellington City Council, the NZ Transport Agency and the Government to make a start on a connected cycle network for the city.
The Government is investing a lot of money helping to make New Zealand cities easier places to get around by bike. This fits perfectly with our aim to make Wellington an even more people-friendly, attractive and sustainable city. To qualify for the Government funding, all projects must be approved by mid-2018 and built by mid-2019. There are several projects under way in different parts of Wellington, and in November we will be consulting on proposed bike path designs for Evans Bay Parade and streets in Kilbirnie.
The Oriental Bay route is part of the Bays Connections between the eastern suburbs and the city via the proposed two-way bike path around Evans Bay and new cycling and walking paths now under construction on Cobham Drive. There may be funding in the longer term to improve the rest of the Oriental Bay shared path, from Freyberg Pool car park to the bottom of Carlton Gore Road, where the Evans Bay route will start.
You can see the plans online: transportprojects.org.nz .
