Planners Defend Hagley Park Motorway

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30535, 2 September 1964, Page 18

Planners Defend Hagley Park Motorway

The only alternative to a motorway through Hagley Park would be to close Harper avenue and run a motorway through the Carlton Mill road properties north of the river, Mr M. Douglas, the Christchurch Regional Planning Authority’s traffic engineer, told the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce Council last evening.

Mr Douglas said this would involve the use of 300 properties instead of about 100.

Mr C. B. Millar, the authority’s director of planning, said the alternative would involve colossal expenditure that to his mind was quite unnecessary. It would mean a colossal cost to the whole city, to the environment, and to people in the destruction of homes.

Mr Millar said a motorway through Bealey avenue would destroy an area that eould be a tremendous asset to the city. If Bealey avenue were used Harper avenue would have to be considerably widened, with about the same loss to Hagley Park. The chamber had asked whether Bealey avenue could not be used instead of the proposed east-west route parallel to Peterborough street.

Mr Douglas said that Bealey avenue in its present form could never be improved to have adequate capacity to meet future traffic growth. Substitution of Bealey avenue would cost £3m, compared with half that for the proposed FendaltonAvonside motorway as far as Barbadoes street, and it would destroy the best area in Christchurch for highdensity housing and public institutions.

The part of the motorway running through Hagley Park would mean a net loss to the park of 11 acres. The total required would be 17 acres, and six acres of that total would be an existing part of Harper avenue. Mr Douglas said the motor-

way would be a pipeline through the park, with no impact on the park itself. "This piece of motorway,” he said, "will get more attention and more care in design than any other piece of motorway that will ever be built in Christchurch.” Mr Millar said the essential thing was to preserve the purpose and idea of Hagley Park, not just its existence. The decision to build a road through it had been made with regret, but all other possibilities would cause greater disruption. He said the motorway would contribute to the park, because it was not wrong in parks to mix the active with the passive. To break up the flat stretch of grassland would be to add to it It would take only two acres of playing flelds, when the 20year need would be 100 acres, which Hagley Park would never be able to provide. Mr Millar said the motorway through the park could be turned to very real advantage. In future the main approach to Christchurch would be from the airport, and drivers would have a pleasant approach through a properly landscaped park area into the heart of the city. The alternative was an approach through congestion, hubbub and delay. Asked about the amount of land needed for motorways within the belts, Mr Douglas said the total area of land within the belts was about 1000 acres. Existing streets took up 14 per cent of that area. Motorways would need another 70 acres, and a further 30 acres would be required for minor widening of other streets. Mr Douglas said the land

which would remain for business development was more than that available in cities three or four times the size of Christchurch.

He said there was a provisional plan for some oneway streets. Some would run parallel to the motorways, and another pair would be south of the business area. The one-way street pattern being investigated would act as a palliative five years from now.