Commision News & Views with Commission Chair Anne Tolley

Tauranga City Council is looking to empower a community panel to come up with solutions to the safety and traffic volume issues which have plagued Links Avenue in recent years.

The council has trialled two different cul-de-sac configurations to reduce the number of vehicles using the street to something more like the volume a residential street should be carrying, with only buses and a limited range of other service vehicles allowed to travel through the closure area.

Rat runners

The trials have eliminated the use of Links Ave by ‘rat runners' avoiding queues on Maunganui Road, reducing the number of vehicles on the street from around 7500 to 2500 daily. That's brought some welcome changes for some people and allowed removal of the bus lane, both of which have contributed to a much safer environment for the hundreds of schoolchildren who use Links Ave on weekdays.

However, there was a convenience downside, with residents of Links Ave and the streets running off it unable to exit from the eastern end of the street, which resulted in time-consuming travel delays for local residents.

No simple solution

There's no simple solution to the Links Ave issues that will please everyone, but we've asked a panel comprised of community representatives to identify the best possible approach which will achieve the safety and traffic volume outcomes we need.

The panel will be assisted by an independent facilitator and independent traffic engineering advice and we're confident this ‘participatory democracy' approach will identify some options that the local community can live with, at least until traffic flows go back to something like normal when the major works on State Highway 2 come to an end.

If this approach is as successful as we hope, it will establish a model that can be used for other key infrastructure works where the community can help identify the solutions needed to achieve a better and safer transport network.