Residents fear further traffic chaos
A townhouse development in Auckland’s eastern bays has residents worried.
Residents fear traffic chaos at the Meadowbank and Remuera roads intersection as an apartment development may add 140 extra cars to the roads.
A 60 – 70 apartment complex on special housing land at the top of Meadowbank Road is replacing eight current homes. Each apartment is expected to have two carparks.
At a meeting of the Meadowbank and St Johns Residents Association the local community expressed concerns to the developer, Murdoch Dryden, director of Dryden Property.
Resident Paul Clemo was concerned about drivers from the complex wishing to turn right into Meadowbank Road and says intersection queues extend past the exit to the apartment complex.
“Meadowbank Road is already a disaster zone. This will turn it into a bigger one, “ he said.
Clemo says residents would struggle to enter the queue so close to the intersection and would need to turn left and do a U-turn further down the road to then enter the queue’s tail, causing issues on a narrow road.
Traffic queues at the intersection on a week-day morning often stretch well past the exit to the proposed development and at times are 130 metres long.
Dryden’s personal view is the traffic lights at the top of Meadowbank Road adjacent to the development site are overloaded by drivers wanting to turn right onto Remuera Road.
He says if he were looking at the area from Auckland Transport’s perspective he’d want more traffic control.
“The argument we would make to them is they need to be thinking about traffic lights at Waiatarua Road to probably pick up the school traffic or Temple Street to pick up some of the traffic that’s coming out of Gowing Drive or Ripon Crescent.”
The proposed unitary plan allows for the inclusion of fewer carparks in apartment constructions but Dryden believes the parks are necessary.
“The risk from a developer’s perspective is if we built an apartment building with no car parks there’s probably no buyers because the people who buy apartments want to park somewhere.”
If the unitary plan is approved Dryden says current plans may change to include an additional storey, and he expects the number of additional apartments created to be around three or four.
As a result of last night’s discussion the association is planning to invite Auckland Transport to address them.
The development is currently in planning stages with the council. Dryden Property hope to lodge a resource consent plan in the next few months and start construction in the second quarter of 2017.
