 | | |
| | |
| | |
EDITORIAL: Summer Issue 2010
_____________________________________________________________________________
Never before have I felt so right about believing something is so wrong.
The photograph above – taken just ten minutes after deciding to see if I could take a photograph to illustrate the real need for a cycleway and walking track between Wainui Beach and Gisborne – rams home the argument. The highway between Wainui Beach and Gisborne is dangerous.
Whoever decided that providing a safe pathway for cyclists and pedestrians between the beach and the city was “of low priority” has not done his or her home work.
It’s not about providing a feel-good recreational asset for beach-loving cyclists and get-fit mothers out power-walking. It’s about the protection of lives. It’s a life and death issue.
It was so close – BeachLife spoke to NZTA before the project was canned and a spokesman said there were just a few “consultation issues” to sort out. It was felt that construction would probably have started in 2010.
The Wainui cycle track and walkway concept was put forward over 20 years ago and even then – before the logging trucks took over our country road – the highway between Sponge Bay and Oneroa Road was dangerous in heavy traffic. Now it is a nightmare. It was then – and is now – about road safety.
Today cycling is back in vogue as an environmentally friendly method of transport. We definitely have too many cars on the road at a time when petrol engine emissions are being part-blamed for the increase in global warming.
There are people in our community who would love to bike to work in town or let their children bike into town for sports events. Families would love to bike to town at the weekend for whatever reason. But they are now just too scared to take on the logging trucks and other traffic.
Somewhere in a desk drawer or on a computer at NZTA there is an amazing, finished design plan for the Wainui-Gisborne cycleway.
Transit New Zealand, the Government, Anne Tolley – whoever you are with the power to move and shake – you have to put this project back on the top of the list.
The reality is that the cycleway won’t be built – with Government funding at least – for many years to come. Unless someone comes up with a really good argument. I guess its over to the newly formed Wainui-Okitu Residents and Ratepayers Association to take up the cause.
It was also a bitter blow to see the Tsunami Bar close its doors. A bar and café at the Oneroa Road end of the beach has been an institution at Wainui since 1994 when it opened as Waves Café and Bar. It later became Off The Wall, then the Sandbar and most lately Tsunami Bar and Brasserie.
Locals Ray and Gail Dalton, with Guy Rutledge and Maurice Judd, bought the Sandbar and its lease from Brent Mitchell in 2006 to save it from closing back then. They put a lot of money and passion into renovating and reinvigorating the bar in the hope that the citizens of Wainui would respond and give it full support. Unfortunately this never really happened except for patronage from a handful of hardy regulars.
Present owners, Rutledge and Judd, threw an all-you-can-drink-free night for the regulars to thank them for their patronage on Friday November 20 – and then bolted the doors.
Guy Rutledge says firmly: "The bar has closed because the people of Wainui Beach did not see fit to support it."
While BeachLife tends to take a positive view of life here at the beach, it makes us wonder why a seaside settlement of over 700 homes could not make one small café and bar viable.
Even the smallest village anywhere in the world has some sort of local inn, café or bar where locals can socialise on neutral ground, dine out occasionally, take friends for a drink or just get out of the house for a while.
And imagine holidaying at a Mediterranean seaside village without a local taverna or café to relax at with a bottle of wine or to sample the local cuisine at the end of the day.
Once the chattels have been sold it’s unlikely our local bar will open again anytime soon.
EDITOR