NPDC Madness with Concrete Cycleway

Households along the Spotswood end of Devon Street West got their letters this week to let them know cycleway “separators” will start being installed next week. These are little concrete barriers to make sure cars don’t drive on to the cycleways. (There are drawings in the link at the bottom of this story).

Many, many carparks will also be disappearing along the Barrett Road to Morley Street route in coming weeks.

We ran a story a few weeks back about the petition done in 2023 where 7,600 people said they did not want this project to go ahead and only 1,500 people did. Included in that story is how this project has wiped millions of dollars off property values along a stretch of this road and people are finding it difficult to sell their homes because there is no longer any parking near their home.

The NPDC has gone ahead anyway, without a care for the majority of the people of New Plymouth who live in this area.

The people on Devon Street West who started the 2023 petition went to a Council meeting this week asking the Council to reconsider their decision. No change has been made to the plan.

Several Councillors attempted to get extra carparks put back in place. They could not get support to do that.

This is a clear cut case where 7,600 people said no to this project and only 1,500 said yes.

The community did not support this project.

So how did our Councillors vote on this ?

For the cycleway:

Neil Holdom

Amanda Clinton-Ghodes

Harry Duynhoven

Dinnie Moeahu

Anneka Carlson Matthews

Bali Haque

Bryan Vickery

Te Waka McLeod

Marie Pearce

Against the cycleway:

David Bublitz

Sam Bennett

Murray Chong

Max Brough

Tony Bedford

Absent:

Gordon Brown

For putting some carparks back in place:

Councillors Vickery, Brough, Chong and Brown.

Against putting some car parks back in place:

Councillors Moeahu, Bedford, Pearce, Bublitz, Clinton-Gohdes, Haque, Duynhoven and Carlson-Matthews.

Absent:

Mayor Holdom, Councillors Bennett and McLeod

People have been asking for information about who is making the decisions the community is not happy with. We will be doing more of this, so people can have a good think about how they vote next time.

P.S Some of the biggest public concerns with this project were about emergency vehicles being able to get through traffic when cars can’t easily pull over to the side of the road, and there being no space for emergency vehicles to get through. We hope we are all very wrong about this being a future issue.