George St works, Jules Radich, Team Dunedin and a question from the ODT

Some additional comment

At 1:50pm on Friday 16th September Dunedin City council candidates received an email from Grant Miller a reporter at the Otago Daily Times.

Kia ora,

I'm looking to get a selection of views regarding Team Dunedin's call for a review of the George St makeover.

What did you make of this?

I've got a tight turnaround for a story, to get it in Saturday's paper, so any response would need to be in by 4pm today.

My response was 6 minutes later as I happened to be online at the time.

Hi Grant,

not good for cars, not good for cyclists, not good for pedestrians and not good for retailers.

Cars because nobody wants to drive at 10kmh hour, cyclists because those frustrated car drivers are going to be sharing the road with them and pedestrians because they have to navigate both cyclists and car drivers. Also I've seen no bike parking spots in the plans that I've looked at so where exactly is everyone going to leave their bike while they go shopping? In addition the cycling infrastructure to get you to George St is inadequate in the first place.

Finally a one way street that still has cars on it will result in fewer customers for the retailers. It is a godawful plan.

But there are plenty of cities in Europe with retail precincts that are carless. Think Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Amsterdam, Covent Garden and these days Paris which has used the last few years of nonsense to actually implement cycling infrastructure unlike the virtue signalling idiots on this council such as Hawkins, Benson-Pope, Barker and Laufiso. In addition you can go to the closer to home malls on Pitt St in Sydney or Bourke St in Melbourne or Queen St in Brisbane to see how pedestrian precincts can be done that increase foot traffic for retailers.

And followed that up with this about 10 minutes after that;

To follow up on this I'd make part of George St, the main retail precinct pedestrian only.

Cyclists and cars also need to be separated from each other. This George St plan is just the current version with speed limits and restrictions (one way). It is a terrible plan and will do cycling and pedestrianisation no favours at all.

David Milne doesn’t remember getting any such email from Grant so I’m not sure that all candidates did receive the email but anyway it was printed up on the ODT this Saturday just gone. I’m happy enough with it, my views are right at the end of the article. Click the graphic for the link, or click here.

It was very disappointing to read what Steve Walker had to say and that he considers Dunedin to be stuck in the 1970s. So although I am happy that he has a willingness regarding cycling infrastructure this sort of commentary is just inflammatory in my view and he should tone it down.

#dunedin #dcc #seager #richardseager #julesradich #teamdunedin @seagerformayor