Wadestown Residents Oppose Council parking, cycle changes

Wadestown residents have rejected revised proposals from the Wellington City Council that they say would fundamentally change the character of the suburb by installing a restrictive parking management plan and cycle lane.

Around 200 residents gathered at St Lukes Hall in Wadestown to voice their concerns to councillors Diane Calvert, Ray Chung, Sarah Free and Ben McNulty – all members of the Council Regulatory Committee.  The meeting was hosted by Wadestown Residents Association with support from Wadestown Voices.

Around 200 residents from Wadestown attend a public meeting on council proposed parking restrictions and cycle lane. Residents overwhelmingly rejected the council’s proposals.

Wadestown Voices spokesperson, Jeremy Verity, says the overwhelming message delivered to councillors was that the council needed to completely stop its current proposals on cycle lanes and parking management for Wadestown, consult meaningfully with Wadestown residents and the association, and ultimately start again.

Key resolutions for the meeting were:

• There is majority opposition to the cycle way proposal,
• The council has over-stated concerns regarding access by emergency vehicles,
• The current rules for no stopping lines should remain as they are and not be adjusted,
• In general, the Wadestown Connections Proposal should be reduced to just addressing very few localised parking hotspots, with council consulting with community on those streets.

Wadestown Voices gave a short presentation identifying a number of key issues, such as the council pushing to change the policy around how narrow a road or street should be to allow for yellow no-parking lines to be painted on one side. The council is apparently looking to change the regulations from the current six metres to 6.9 metres.

Council officers clearly hadn’t measured the roads around Wadestown, many or most of which are around 6.4 metres, meaning the council’s own policy doesn’t require no parking lines. Hence the drive to make it 6.9 metres to capture the policy.

Councillor Ben McNulty is proposing the new rule that no-stopping lines be applied to streets that are 6.9 metres or less in width.  This has the potential to remove many more parks from the suburb of Wadestown, Jeremy told Better Wellington.

“The council’s data presented by Abley suggests that an extensive parking management plan was a huge over-reach and a solution to a problem that did not exist, and the council had no evidence to propose the changes in the Parking Management Plan,” Jeremy says.

Wadestown Voices was of the opinion that the council was too focused on their “Te Atakura – First to Zero 2019”  blueprint for making Wellington City a zero-carbon capital (net zero emissions) by 2050, and another agenda of the council which is the National Policy Statement for Urban Development.(NPS-UD). Policy 11 of the NPS-UD prevents local authorities from setting minimum car parking rate. (eg discouraging car ownership) Both documents are cited in their document management plan.

The Regulatory Committee will be voting on the Wadestown Connections Proposal on Wednesday 11 September.