Risk of serious incident outside Birkenhead Primary Carpark

John Gillon from John Gillon - Kaipatiki Local Board

Last night the Kaipatiki Local Board supported member Adrian Tyler's motion calling on Auckland Transport to remove the angle parks from in front of the shared Birkenhead Primary School and Bowling Club carpark on Mokoia Road, and reinstate parallel parking, before there is a serious injury or death.

As you can see from this video, there is very little visibility when leaving the carpark, and this is of particular concern at school drop-off and pick-up times. There have already been numerous near-misses.
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At the meeting, letters were tabled from Birkenhead Primary School, Birkenhead Bowling Club and the Birkenhead Village Town Centre Association supporting the removal of the angle parks.
Auckland Transport have previously been alerted to this situation, but have said that is not a current priority, and would require an audit of the wider school vicinity. The Local Board has said that it would support an emergency interim response of planter boxes until the reinstatement of parallel parks could be completed.
Hopefully AT will respond adequately to this situation soon.

Resolution number KAI/2021/27
MOVED by Member A Tyler, seconded by Member M Kenrick:

That the Kaipātiki Local Board:
a) note its concern that there will be a serious injury or death outside of 95 Mokoia Road, Birkenhead, due to the angle parking blocking the view of vehicles exiting Birkenhead Bowling Club and Birkenhead Primary School’s shared carpark.
b) request that Auckland Transport remove the 5 angle parks in front of 95 Mokoia Road and located between the shared vehicle access serving Birkenhead Primary School & Birkenhead Bowling Club and the vehicle access at 97B Mokoia Road and reinstate the parallel parking that was previously in this location as soon as possible to prevent a serious incident from occurring.
c) note that the angle parks in front of 97B Mokoia Road are not included in the scope of this motion and should be left as they are.
d) note that as an emergency interim response the board would support the use of planter boxes or plywood boxes such as those recently used by Auckland Transport in a ‘Safer Streets’ project in Onehunga to block off the two angle parks closest to the school carpark entrance (as long as view lines for exiting drivers were not impeded by these) until full reinstatement of these carparks to parallel is able to be completed.
e) request that the portion of Mokoia Road outside Birkenhead Primary is included for investigation in tranche 2 of the Safe Speeds Programme, which is considering lowering speed limits on roads outside schools.
f) table letters and video footage in support of this motion provided by Birkenhead Primary School, Birkenhead Town Centre Association and Birkenhead Bowling Club.
- CARRIED