 | | |
| | |
| | |
EDITORIAL: Autumn Issue 2010
_____________________________________________________________________________
Back in 1994 BeachLife Magazine identified a potentially dangerous situation at the junction of Oneroa and State Highway 35. This was not long after the highway had been moved to bypass Wairere Road.
It’s interesting to see that this subject has come up again, prompted by recent fears expressed by the Gisborne Road Safety Action Group, claiming failure to give way to logging trucks at this intersection is putting drivers and their passengers at risk of having a serious accident,
In the December 1995 issue of BeachLife we noted that traffic coming off the Oneroa Road give way often underestimated the speed of the faster traffic on the highway, causing drivers to take evasive action to avoid accidents.
A GDC roading spokesperson responded saying that there was “no evident justification to change the give way sign to a stop sign at the junction”.
He said there were strict national criteria governing the placement of stop or give way signs on highway junctions that were based on visibility.
That was then, this is now. And now we have the “Wall of Wood” and the daily, and nightly, convoy of loggers travelling at maximum speed along the highway at a rate of often more than one a minute.
The New Zealand Transport Agency has responded to the local road safety group’s concerns saying a safety review of the junction was now underway.
The agency says an average of 4491 vehicles a day, including 346 trucks, pass the intersection each day. It compared this to a similar junction on the Napier Expressway which carries 23,000 vehicles a day.
It says visibility at the Oneroa junction was good, so traffic engineers would need to ascertain if there were other issues.
Yes, there is another issue, and it’s the main cause of the problem. Drivers leaving Oneroa Road are, for some reason, compelled to keep proceeding even when they can see vehicles coming down the highway.
Okitu residents travelling to town observe and react to this phenomenon daily. And it’s been going on since 1994.
It’s not that the residents of the “south end” are collectively suicidal or totally arrogant – there is a certain “softness” in the design of the junction which suggests to drivers that there is some sort of “merging lane” operating.
There is something about the way Oneroa Road blends into the shoulder of the highway that compels drivers not to stop but to edge along the shoulder inside the white line until it is safe to pull out into the main stream.
Some drivers amble along inside the white line on the edge of the seal for hundreds of meters. A stop sign at this junction will really irritate the residents of the south end of the beach, having to stop every time, even when the way is clear.
The answer might be to stop treating the intersection as if it’s the Ellerslie on-ramp and actually give way to traffic hoofing it down the highway. To do this, maybe the Transport Agency engineers need to reconfigure the intersection to take away this “merging lane” compulsion effect.
There’s also a faction out in our community who would like to see the 100km/h speed limit between Okitu and Sponge Bay reduced to a constant 70km/h, which might reduce the danger at this intersection and others. This seems like a fair request. For those people living alongside the highway it must be a daily nightmare.
The stop-start 70kmh, then 100, then 70 again through the Wainui-Sponge Bay area is erratic. Make it 70kmh all the way I say. Life is about people, not cars.
ABOBE: The dreaded 100kmh bend by the Boardroom Surf Shop, the scene of numerous serious accidents.
There are others who would like to see the speed along Moana Road reduced to 50km/h and I believe this is a fair request too.
This is our village after all and not just some remote straggle of homes beside the highway out in the back blocks. We try to live life at an urban pace along Moana Road and I believe we have every right to be protected from the logging trucks and other fast moving traffic as the people along, say, Ormond Road in Gisborne do.
Logging trucks travelling at any speed are daunting. When you get three or four in convoy barrelling down Moana Road at 7okm/h it’s a horror show.
A local petition calling for a 50km/h along Moana Road was rejected by Transit New Zealand in 2008. Instead they erected those big “threshhold gateway” 70km/h signs.
At the time the authority said one of the main tests of suitability for imposing a speed restriction on a section of highway is “if there can be a realistic expectation of observance”.
Well, BeachLife reckons there could be and should be. The moment you drive over Makorori hill and hit the houses at Okitu you know you’re back in “town”. It’s obvious you have entered an urban area.
It might be a pain for the logging truck drivers to have to slow down to 50km/h for a couple of kilometres while they drive through our village and it might inconvenience the forestry company’s harvesting schedules by a few minutes a day.
We quietly, albeit begrudgingly, accept that the loggers must pass through our community to get their logs into town. We would like some respect shown in return.
Transit New Zealand (which is now Transport Agency) said at the time of the rejected petition in 2008: “It’s not the end of the equation. Things do change and we will keep monitoring the situation. It’s not a matter of sticking to some rule book on this. We have to use commonsense.”
Maybe it’s time for commonsense – and another petition?
EDITOR
- HOME PAGE
- Issue #5 stories list