Beca on Beca. Who wrote the Cycleway Safety Plan ? Who is auditing the Cycleway Safety Plan ?

We’ve been seeing a number of comments on Facebook that Beca is auditing the Barrett Road to Morley Street Cycleway once it’s completed.

We had asked for a copy of the original Public Health and Safety Plan that was done BEFORE building the cycleway – and the company who prepared that was ALSO Beca.

So we thought we’d better check with the NPDC if the comments on Facebook were true and that Beca - was auditing itself - Beca - on the success of the Cycleway.

Gareth Green, the CEO, confirmed for us yesterday that Beca IS doing the Safety Audit of the Barret Road to Morley Street Cycleway.

How can this be ???

How can this report on the Final Safety Audit carry any credibility - if the people who wrote the Safety Plan - audit their own Safety plan ? How could the Ratepayers - for one second - believe that Beca will find fault with their own plan ?

How much is this final Safety Report from Beca going to cost the Ratepayer ? This report which will have so little credibility.

Gareth Green has advised that there will be a second audit done as well – a Design Review – but they are not sure who will be doing this – and of course THEY must have all the necessary “traffic engineering skills and knowledge”.

The completion of the Cycleway is a matter of weeks away (even giving a few extra weeks if running behind time) – yet – the NPDC does NOT YET know who will be doing the OTHER audit – the Design Review.

Could we be forgiven to be thinking the Design Review has been added at the last minute so it appears that someone “actually” independent is now involved in some of the audit ?

We keep talking about a lack of transparency with this Council – and once again we have to question the integrity of decisions being made.

Be very careful how you all vote this year – we need to change how these things are being handled by our local Council.

P.S We think the best audit of all is the people using this route start contacting the council with all the near misses they are seeing on a daily basis, of people who are falling over, tripping, being almost hit by objects and vehicles, cars having dings etc etc.

P.P.S There is a petition that has started for how people feel about the cycleway. We will have more information about this soon.