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Round the roundabout for the village

 

 

JULIA WADE

thumbnail 05 MF-Roundabout1-267Talking around roundabouts was the ongoing theme at a recent community presentation, as the public and council officials ponder on what to do with the crossroads at Mangawhai Village.

Intersections at Moir and Insley Streets, as well as Molesworth Drive, are up for reconstruction and, following on from several meetings with business owners and affected residents last year, Kaipara District Council (KDC) held a public drop-in meeting on February 26 to gather feedback on their concept designs from the wider community.

Held at the Village’s Library Hall, the meeting was attended by council officials including mayor Dr Jason Smith, deputy Anna Curnow and councillors Peter Wethey and Jonathan Larsen, as well as planning engineers and a steady stream of interested residents. KDC’s Mangawhai programme delivery manager, Tim Manning says it was a great turnout.

“The event had a cross-section of the community and allowed our engineers and experts to discuss why we’ve made some of the decisions we’ve made, and why some things we would ‘like’ just aren’t doable,” he says. “Overall, people understand the need for something to happen to bring some reprieve, and we’re now getting to work on the specifics.”

Access to the Village can be ‘a real headache over our peak summertime’ Manning says, especially when driving in from Auckland along Insley Street.

“But as the Mangawhai Community Panel found, and the Mangawhai Community Plan talked about, roundabouts are a great way to protect the ‘slow street’ concept, and keep a ‘Mangawhai feel’ for not only those in cars, but pedestrians, and those with accessibility issues.”

Two options were presented for scrutiny, a ‘double roundabout’ design placed at both intersections at Moir/Insley and Moir/Molesworth, and a ‘single roundabout’ idea with an ongoing right-turn flow intersection from Molesworth onto Moir.

Questions raised among the visitors mainly concerned parking areas, Insley Street being reduced to one lane at the Moir Street turn-off and size of the roundabout.

“Changing a road is an involved technical process,” Manning says. “We’re working with utility providers – powerlines, street lights, cabling – to see what the underground part of the road looks like. We’re also preparing detailed drawings and taking the feedback we’ve received to see what we can incorporate within budgets and timeframes.”

Once council know more about the construction of the intersections ‘we’ll make sure’ the community are informed and ‘know what to expect’ he says.

“The way Mangawhai is growing and changing, everyone realises we’re going to have to change a few things to make sure everyone can move around, and that at the same time, we’re preparing for the future.”


 
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