The car and Esk St debate that keeps surfacing
“The long summer days has meant people have really enjoyed that space and not having to compete with cars."
It’s the topic that continues to come up.
Both around the Invercargill City Council table and within in the community as a whole.
Would Esk St [from Kelvin St to Dee St] be better off long-term without cars? Should it remain pedestrian only, as it has been while streetscapes work has been carried out recently?
Mana whenua representative Evelyn Cook was the latest to raise the matter at a council meeting on Tuesday.
Cook said she has spent a lot of time in the area recently and had a lot of feedback that people were enjoying the pedestrian only nature of Esk St and not having to “compete with cars”.
Cook stated she would be interested what feedback they got when it went out to consultation.
“The long summer days has meant people have really enjoyed that space and not having to compete with cars,” Cook said.
Although infrastructure committee chair Ian Pottinger said the prospect of Esk St being car free in the future was not something that would be consulted on.
As it stands, when the streetscape work is completed, Esk St will be reopened to cars.
“I don’t think stopping cars in Esk St is something we would consult on, that’s a decision obviously of council.”
He said the council had the ability to make it car free for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, if wanted.
Pottinger pointed to information that the council has received that if you removed vehicle movements it would be “a death blow to a street”.
“That comes from international experts,” Pottinger said.
“It’s an interesting point, I think we’ve got the opportunity for lots of trials.”
The council’s group infrastructure manager Erin Moogan said there were differing views around the table and out in the community around what Esk St “would look like in a perfect world”.
However, she pointed out that there were private car parks that were accessed from Esk St and while that situation remained, they have to allow access to those car parks.
The council’s strategic assets manager Russell Pearson said in his view the key was the behaviour of those in the cars when they return to Esk St.
“I think we’ve now got a place where the people have claimed the space back, where cars might be welcome. That’s part of what we want to see when we open the street again,” Pearson said.
Cr Alan Arnold said there had been a promise made to Esk St retailers that cars would return.
“To be fair, they’ve had to put up with two years of probably limited trading. So, I think at the end of the day we need to go down that path initially.”
Mayor Nobby Clark said surveys in the community suggests most people want Esk St closed to cars permanently.
However, he said the retailers have had two Christmas periods without car access and some of them struggled.
“We gave them a commitment that we would open it up in a limited way, we need to honour that.”
Clark has suggested to those retailers that next summer there could be a trial period with it closed to cars. Or it could be open Monday to Friday but closed on the weekends.
Cr Darren Ludlow agreed there could be a lack of activity in the winter months and without cars it could make it look quite desolate.
However, he understood it had been the lack of foot traffic that was the biggest impact retailers during the time of the streetscape work, rather than the lack of vehicles.
He felt both parties could re-examine it in a 12 months’ time after the upgrade is complete.