I had to check the date when reading (Times, May 25) about the Auckland Transport (AT) proposal to install a new crossing with speed bumps on the Pakuranga Highway.
At first, I thought this was the editor’s idea of a joke but as I read on, this became not so.
The justification appears to be that about 200 people daily use bus stops in the vicinity. Assuming that about 90 per cent do not need to cross the road, we would have speed bumps being installed to cater for about 20 people per day.
I don’t know how one can justify spending $330,000 to benefit 20 people at the expense of 30,000 people. The nose-tail collisions will be horrendous and the carbon emissions from vehicles as they accelerate away from this crossing and lights will be considerable. I’ll bet AT has not even had the nerve to do a cost-benefit study of this ludicrous proposal.
By all means, install a standard crossing with lights 200m from the existing lights at Glenmore if 20 users per day is considered justifiable – which it ain’t – but leave the bumps out. And I suppose it would be beyond AT’s ability to have the lights synchronised with the traffic flow wouldn’t it?
Anyone who has witnessed the installation of these raised crossings has seen the disruption and mayhem that even building these crossings creates. And as a not-totally-unrelated matter, can someone tell me if these crossings are designed so that the vehicle hits the bump at the same time as it hits the pedestrian or is the design such that the vehicle hits the pedestrian at the same time as it hits the bump?
This whole scheme is lunacy in the extreme in both concept and cost. Auckland Council wonders why it is broke and AT wonders why it is held in such low esteem by everyone you talk to.
Do you suppose they have the faintest idea?
Robert Finley
Howick
