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Buses can be a relaxing way to get home if you have a seat and enough space. However, it can be off-putting when someone is taking a phone call next to you.
Do you think it's inconsiderate for people to have lengthy phone calls on a bus? Vote in the poll, and add your comments below.
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Kitten season has arrived, and over the next six months, over 8,000 cats and kittens will come into SPCA’s care. Please help us give these babies the best start in life and sign up to be a foster parent today! It's not just cats and kittens - we are also urgently seeking foster homes for … View moreKitten season has arrived, and over the next six months, over 8,000 cats and kittens will come into SPCA’s care. Please help us give these babies the best start in life and sign up to be a foster parent today! It's not just cats and kittens - we are also urgently seeking foster homes for dogs and small animals.
Fostering saves lives and helps these tiny babies grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults, ready for adoption. We cover all training and costs. All you need is time and love to spare!
Sign up today and save a life!
Kitten season has arrived, and over the next six months, over 8,000 cats and kittens will come into SPCA’s care. Please help us give these babies the best start in life and sign up to be a foster parent today! It's not just cats and kittens - we are also urgently seeking foster homes for … View moreKitten season has arrived, and over the next six months, over 8,000 cats and kittens will come into SPCA’s care. Please help us give these babies the best start in life and sign up to be a foster parent today! It's not just cats and kittens - we are also urgently seeking foster homes for dogs and small animals.
Fostering saves lives and helps these tiny babies grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults, ready for adoption. We cover all training and costs. All you need is time and love to spare!
Sign up today and save a life!
Kitten season has arrived, and over the next six months, over 8,000 cats and kittens will come into SPCA’s care. Please help us give these babies the best start in life and sign up to be a foster parent today! It's not just cats and kittens - we are also urgently seeking foster homes for … View moreKitten season has arrived, and over the next six months, over 8,000 cats and kittens will come into SPCA’s care. Please help us give these babies the best start in life and sign up to be a foster parent today! It's not just cats and kittens - we are also urgently seeking foster homes for dogs and small animals.
Fostering saves lives and helps these tiny babies grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults, ready for adoption. We cover all training and costs. All you need is time and love to spare!
Sign up today and save a life!
A nationwide campaign to have horse-riders officially recognised as vulnerable road users has been offered supported by the West Coast’s Regional Transport committee.
The committee heard a presentation this month from equestrian safety advocate Julia McLean, who recently took a petition to … View moreA nationwide campaign to have horse-riders officially recognised as vulnerable road users has been offered supported by the West Coast’s Regional Transport committee.
The committee heard a presentation this month from equestrian safety advocate Julia McLean, who recently took a petition to Parliament on behalf of riding associations across the country.
The petition, signed by close to 9000 people, asks the government to recognise the vulnerability of horse riders in transport legislation.
“Currently we sit in the ‘other road user’ category and that gives no benefits whatsoever and most critically we are not included in education or road safety-messaging,” McLean said.
Horse-riders were continually dealing with reckless and dangerous behaviour by motorists, she told the committee.
“We get reports from our rider groups of horses being killed: there was one in Reefton, and another in Ruatoki; just two weeks ago a horse was hit and killed by a truck and the rider was taken to hospital."
Riders were also put at risk by aggressive drivers tooting their horns, winding down their windows and shouting, and passing at speed and too closely, she told the committee.
But unlike accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users, such incidents involving horses were not captured in the statistics.
When she had asked NZTA for data, said said all it could tell her was that it had issued 13 infringements in 13 years, for failing to take care around a ridden animal or stock.
“When someone comes so close they touch your stirrup, or they hoot their horn as they go past ... it’s the abuse - it’s everywhere."
In a case down south, a truck driver refused to slow down despite hand signals and the rider fell off just in front of him, she said.
She had asked the road safety director for NZ Police to look at providing a ‘tick-box’ for horse-riders in incident reports, Ms McLean said.
“It’s a small, low-cost measure that would allow us to have some proper data, an informed understanding of what’s happening out there on the roads, and in turn some targeted road safety messaging.”
She was motivated to become a safety advocate by her own experience at the age of 25, when she fractured her skull in a near-fatal riding accident on a Kaiapoi road.
“I lost all memory of my childhood; my sense of taste and smell is gone forever. I was in a coma for week, I lost my career and it’s taken me 16 years to fully recover,” she told LDR.
Her accident had not been caused by a car: her horse had shied and thrown her when a piece of paper on the verge moved suddenly in the wind.
But the incident was a grim reminder of what could happen if a horse were startled, she said.
The UK and Australia had recently changed their road codes to give drivers explicit instructions on passing horses.
“It needs to be explicit. We can’t assume people just get it anymore. Common sense is not a thing. We actually have to tell people what we require, to pass a horse wide and slow - wide is two metres.”
A total of 37 organisations were now endorsing her campaign, including police, trucking companies, pony clubs and 10 other regional councils, McLean told the committee.
Transport Committee chairperson Peter Ewen was supportive of Ms McLeans safety campaign.
“In rural New Zealand we have a lot of narrow roads, and we do have riders on them – I would like to think that courtesy is given to those riders."
Regional council chairperson Peter Haddock said he sympathised with the cause but had reservations about riders on state highways.
“I would encourage it on low volume council roads but would struggle to support riding on highways where you’ve got traffic following closely behind.
“It’s difficult to find you suddenly have a horse in front of you and slowly pass it and go from 100kphs to 10kphs. It’s a dangerous situation."
McLean said horse riders did not want to ride on highways, and accidents were happening on 50kph local roads.
She appealed to West Coast mayors and chairs present to consider horse riders when they built shared pathways like cycle trails.
“We don’t need a hard surface, just a bit of dirt or grass at the side.”
The Transport Committee agreed to draft a letter to the national transport authorities, endorsing McLean’s safety campaign but stating its reservations about horses on highways.
Love gooseberries? Share your favourite way to enjoy them. We're looking for our readers' favourite family recipes for this delicious crop. Send yours to mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz, and if we use it in the magazine, you will receive a free copy of our December 2024 issue.
Tomy train track sets x2.
I inadvertently brought the wrong size.
$30 set 1 and $25 set 2
While it is a fun occasion, fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night has caused much conflict over the years, upsetting our pets and disrupting the sleep of neighbours.
How should we celebrate Guy Fawkes Night? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts below.
I have a outdoor picnic table and chairs for sale need gone asap today please
By local democracy reporter Lois Williams:
West Coasters with mobility problems will soon be able to use a swipe card for subsidised taxi trips, instead of paper vouchers.
The regional council, which administers the Total Mobility scheme on the Coast, is switching from taxi chits to a card … View moreBy local democracy reporter Lois Williams:
West Coasters with mobility problems will soon be able to use a swipe card for subsidised taxi trips, instead of paper vouchers.
The regional council, which administers the Total Mobility scheme on the Coast, is switching from taxi chits to a card system, bringing the region into line with the rest of the country.
More than 900 people on the West Coast are Total Mobility users.
The scheme is 75% subsidised by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), 20% by the regional council and the user pays the remainder, with a cap of $30 per trip.
A staff report to Tuesday's Resource Management Committee said the paper vouchers were outdated.
“The chit system is unreliable, difficult to administer, susceptible to fraud and poses problems for those who wish to travel between regions.”
Staff were proposing a change to a digital system, and contract with three companies to provide software, print the cards, and supply card readers for taxi companies as needed.
It would cost $35,000 to make the change but with NZTA subsidies of $21,500 the set-up cost to the regional council would be $14,354 plus GST.
The council’s ongoing costs with the new system would be an extra $3 per taxi trip - $1159 a year.
Council chairperson Peter Haddock told LDR the West Coast was one of only two Total Mobility operators in the country still using paper vouchers.
“The swipe card system brings us into line with most other regions and it’ll be more convenient for people with mobility challenges - and it’ll save our staff time and be lot easier to administer.”
CCS Disability Action’s West Coast manager, Kelly Blomfield, is welcoming the change.
“Having a card will make it much easier for our people, not having to trek back and forth to the council asking for vouchers when you can’t get around easily to start with.”
The cards had the approved user’s photo on them, making them much less vulnerable to fraud, Blomfield said.
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Congratulations to the winners of our $100 Mitre10 vouchers:
Justine Terrill from Mount Albert
Suzette Gibson from Nelson
Soumya Manoj from Lower Hutt
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By local democracy reporter Lois Williams:
West Coast councils spent close to half a million dollars working on speed limit changes that the coalition Government has now binned.
The West Coast Regional Transport Committee was forced to withdraw its draft regional speed management plan on … View moreBy local democracy reporter Lois Williams:
West Coast councils spent close to half a million dollars working on speed limit changes that the coalition Government has now binned.
The West Coast Regional Transport Committee was forced to withdraw its draft regional speed management plan on Thursday, after Transport Minister Simeon Brown signed a new Speed Limit Rule that overrides it.
It also strips councils of their ability to submit their own safety plans in future, staff have reported.
The four councils on the West Coast had written a single regional plan to improve efficiency and coordination, including some small, fixed-speed zones around schools.
It also proposed to lower speeds limits on several roads causing concern for locals.
But the minister’s new rule allows only variable limits outside schools and requires councils to reverse any speed limits that were changed.
The draft West Coast transport plan was publicly consulted on over four weeks in March and April, and cost the regional council $78,000 to develop – not including staff time.
But Transport Committee chairperson Peter Ewen says there were bigger costs for the three district councils, in completing their sections of the plan.
“Buller spent $172,000 and Westland would have been close to that ; when you add them all up, you’d be pushing $500,000, and it’s gone."
There was no way the government would be reimbursing councils for the wasted time and money, Ewen said.
The speed limit changes made by the previous government had been “a little rushed”, he said.
“But if there’s another change of government in a few years, are we going to be spending more money we can’t afford – all for nothing, because the incoming government throws this out?”
It would be nice if the major parties could agree on policy like speed limits, Ewen said.
“We live in hope, but meanwhile the ratepayers have to grin and bear it.”
Under the latest changes, reduced speed limits of 30kph will apply to urban schools during high-risk pick-up and drop-off times, and there will be a similar limit of 60kph or less on roads that pass rural schools.
The speed limit on roads of national significance will rise to 120kph.
The minister has said it made no sense to slow down a tradesperson passing a school at 5am on the way to work, and the changes would improve traffic flows.
A staff report to this week’s Regional Transport Committee meeting said district councils could still submit individual speed management plans.
But they would have to do a separate cost-benefit analysis for each road being considered for a speed change, followed by a six-week community consultation.
The government had now removed the NZTA subsidies that previously applied to that work, policy manager Max Dickens reported.
And there was still a significant chance that a council’s proposed change would be rejected by the director of land transport if the proposed limit did not abide by the government’s new speed limit classifications, he said.
The new national rule meant that all the work on the draft West Coast speed management plan was now a sunk cost.
Safety outcomes were likely to become worse and the largest risk was that councils would lose the ability to control the roads they had authority over, Dickens said.
The transport minister recently told Local Democracy Reporting that Kiwis had rejected a blanket and
untargeted approach to reducing speed limits.
Consultation highlighted “broad support” for the Government’s new rule with 65% of submitters supporting the reversal of blanket speed limit reductions, Brown said.
The new speed rules apply from July 1, next year.
In October, the fine for parking in a designated mobility car park without a permit has jumped from $150 to $750—a 400% increase!
The goal is to keep these spaces open for those who truly need them. Do you think this big increase in the fine is fair? Share your thoughts below.
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