Living Streets Hamilton

Notes from meeting held Thursday November 8^th, 2007 , at CCS Disability Action, 17 Claudeland Rd, Hamilton at 5.30pm

 

 

Present:: Fiona Green, Philip King, Tony Ryks, David Peart, Peter Bos, Adrienne Heath, Judy McDonald

 

Apologies: Celia Hope, Maxine Fraser, Barbara Crawforth

 

 

1.Philip King from HCC talked to us about the activities proposed for the Walking and Cycling – Give ‘em a Go fortnight planned for February – March 2008. He noted that Bikewise Week has become a very successful event. LTNZ has created Feet First walk to school week to follow on from the Bikewise events, and Hamilton City Council has decided this year to promote the two events together as a fortnight’s worth of activities. Preliminary meetings have been held and HCC now has a general plan for the fortnight. The intention is that HCC will assist in promoting the large number of activities already scheduled for the period, including the Masters games, Rev 120 Bike ride, and a large number of other events, many of which are organised by individual clubs and groups. At this point, there is no specific programme for walking, but the idea of a business battle for participation in walking is being looked at, in conjunction with the business battle for cycling during the event. There is also the possibility for walking and riding round the bridges as a family-style event, and perhaps walking round the Hamilton Lake. These could include family picnics and perhaps be an opportunity for LSH to distribute our “spot prizes” that we have recently received funding for.

 

Philip’s presentation triggered a lot of discussion, with a range of suggestions including:

• Promote walking or cycling to Saturday sports events rather than taking the car
• Maybe have a mass night walk to encourage people to experience Hamilton safely by night
• Close off the main street, or maybe Barton St and turn it briefly into a pedestrian mall with businesses and charities having street stalls

 

Philip noted the need for volunteers to help with any and all of the events during the fortnight, in terms of setting up, help with getting things going and assisting during events. He suggested that getting plenty of people involved and asking for only a couple of hours per person is likely to be the best approach.

 

Philip also commented on the City Heart project, aimed at CBD redevelopment, which links to the wellbeing strategy council already has in place. Public meetings will be held to allow input of ideas.

 

We also discussed with Philip the problems facing pedestrians at intersections, and expressed our desire as a group to be involved with any planning in this area as it comes up. We discussed the possibility of lobbying LTNZ about the regulations currently applying to pedestrian crossings at light-controlled intersections, where the current rules allow left-turning traffic to move when pedestrians still have a cross light. We discussed the possibility of approaching LSA about this issue.

 

2. Peter Bos presented a map relating to our now-funded ideas for a walking map of the CBD. He has marked in routes which have accessible crossing points (light or pedestrian crossings). The group discussed the possibilities of getting input from council, and also perhaps some design work on the map from either Wintec students or the geography department at Waikato University. It was suggested that Katherine Hay at the Environment Centre may have useful information on this subject as some preliminary work may have already been done by RAFT in the past. Judy will contact and investigate.