Where did the outcome of the Tim Tam’s get to in the Council meeting this week ?

Our take on this 18^th December meeting about the Tim Tams – it seems the majority of Councillors and Council Staff don’t want to do the job that the NPDC needs to do.

It seems come hell or high water there is not a willingness to capture real safety data. If the Council staff don’t want to drive that process – why don’t we do it for them ?

Due to surgery 2 days before this meeting sadly our team wasn’t able to participate with the presentations.

If we could have spoken we would have raised our biggest concern since the Cycleway has been put in - the injuries and accidents which have been happening with all modes of transport. Pedestrians, bikes, mobility devices and vehicles, and the complete lack of recording of any of these hundreds of examples of unsafe incidents taking place on the cycleway.

Hundreds of incidents were mentioned in Thursday's meeting.

We were pleased to see acknowledgement in the meeting that real safety data has not been recorded with what has actually been happening along this cycleway.

We are also totally unimpressed, when for the second time, Shane Devlin has reminded the councillors and Mayor that over 7,600 people – twice – have signed petitions to have the Tim Tams removed – because they ARE NOT SAFE – as well as the other negative impacts they are having on the people living and doing business along this road.

Twice – this significant number of people – 7,600 – have been ignored by Council Staff and elected officials. Shane took all the folders with all the signatures from the last petition to this meeting and reminded all the Councillors and Mayor how many people put pen to paper – because this piece of road is not safe.

Murray Chong did put forward a motion to support option 5 on the agenda, the full removal of the Tim Tam’s, and it was good to see he did have support from a number of other Councillors, but not enough voted in support, so the Tim Tam’s remain.

After considerable discussion it was agreed to make changes to part of the cycleway, test how that works, and if that is better than what is in place now, look at more changes along this stretch of road. Morley Street to Belt Road will be altered and tested.

Comments were made that this is a straight piece of road where there will probably be few incidents. So how likely are there to be safety incidents during this test ? Why don’t they do a test on the dangerous stretch of road after the Blagdon Shops on the drive out of town ? The stretch of road which is not as wide as a State Highway is meant to be, and multiple head on collisions have only just been avoided.

Wouldn’t that be a proper test instead of a perfectly straight flat piece of road ? Do the officials at this Council not want to find any faults with this piece of road, so they don’t have to change the design they wanted put in place ?

There was acknowledgment by Council Staff, with question sessions from Councillors, that they could have done more to gather actual data about incidents happening along the cycleway over the last year.

The answer suggested to move forward ? They think we need more focus groups.

Frankly, Absolutely NO !!

The minutes for the agenda for last Thursday’s meeting show the Council has 25 focus groups NOW – that is the data gathering that has been happening for a year – and just these focus groups have been INVITED to make comments that have been recorded.

What this city needs – and the people and businesses on Devon Street West - is the NPDC staff actually listening to real feedback and writing it down and presenting the truth of what is going on along this road. By the time they are capturing data now, one year on, the massive lack of safety has been totally missed.

Again, we are going to say it – there are patches of this road that multiple people keep bringing up where accidents and almost head on’s are taking place – and the Urban Connections Audit clearly states the State Highway does not actually comply with the width required for a State Highway in all places. If the Council staff don’t start taking their job seriously and actually doing something about the information they are being given someone is going to die along this stretch of road. They have been warned about this many times – and were warned yet again on Thursday.

There were discussions of Councillors and Council Staff being so concerned about the relationship of the NPDC with the NZTA if a decision is made to remove the Tim Tam’s. Is the NZTA going to put their hand up and take full responsibility if the lack of safety of this cycleway means a fatal accident occurs ? We absolutely doubt it. Someone at the Council who has failed to take action will have this firmly sitting on their shoulders.

The last thing anyone in the community wants is a fatal accident to happen. That is why people are trying to get real safety data recorded.

We can completely understand people who have participated in both petitions, attempting to have their say, totally giving up.

What on earth is the point of so many people talking common sense and warning a government system about the massive safety risk they have created, if they are just continually ignored ?

We’d like to say – Please don’t give up.

• If the NPDC doesn’t want to gather real safety data – then we can do their job for them.

If you, or anyone you know, experience or witness any type of incident on this cycleway – anywhere from Morley Street to Barrett Road – please tell us about it.

We will document it – and we will produce the data that the NPDC officials prefer to hide and not discuss.

Send us an e-mail, or a message, with what date and where on the cycleway the incident happened and a brief outline of what happened. Please encourage everyone you know to do the same if they witness anything.

Bear in mind –

• There was ONLY ONE serious bike accident along this entire stretch of cycleway in 11 YEARS before this cycleway was put in
• There were FOUR incidents requiring hospital treatment in the ONE MONTH we captured data in June 2025.

Let’s not give up – let’s do the Council’s job for them.

Please share this with everyone you know affected by this cycleway.