Chester St residents upset

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 5

Chester St residents upset

Traffic in Chester Street East seemed to have increased and had not shifted to improved thoroughfares nearby, the Christchurch City Council works and traffic committee was told yesterday.

A petition by residents in the street, between Oxford Terrace and Fitzgerald Avenue, asked the council to narrow the carriageway and do landscaping that would make it a “slow street,” unattractive to through traffic.

Residents said that the speed and noise of vehicles seemed to be out of proportion to any real need for traffic to use the street.

Many houses, including semi-detached dwellings

built in the 1890 s, were closer than usual to the street. The neighbourhood was gradually improving through redevelopment, and street changes could enhance those moves. The petition was referred for a staff report. M.E.D. kiosk The narrowed Rugby Street carriageway between Papanui Road and Winchester Street may soon have a Municipal Electricity Department transformer kiosk on one of its grass berms.

The M.E.D. has been unable to buy a kiosk site along the front section of any property about the middle of the block, where the transformer is needed. Because kiosks are a

“substantial intrusion” into a landscaped area, according to a council engineering report, they are not approved normally for grass berms. They were difficult to screen.

Of about 1500 kiosk substations in the M.E.D. area, only 69 were on road reserves.

The committee said that Rugby Street residents should be satisfied with the siting proposal, and the Merivale Precinct Society should also be informed. Signals Traffic signals will be placed at the intersection of Wainoni Road and Breezes Road.

Traffic from side roads faced long delays and 23

injury collisions were reported from 1980 to 1984.

Reserved parking

Reserved spaces for the A.M.P. Society in the Oxford Terrace parking building will be shifted from the lower decks to the top decks.

Two reserved spaces for disabled drivers will remain on the lower levels. Councillors were told that haviiig to use upper decks for casual parking was particularly inconvenient for people with young children, the elderly, and disabled drivers. Some visitors to Christchurch had had their cars towed away when they inadvertently parked in reserved spaces.