The City is Ours takes complaints.

The City is Ours has re-opened its office on the streets of Wellington this week presenting bus-commuters with a questionnaire dealing with a wide range of subjects relevant to the Willis/Taranaki Street precinct.

The effort will continue again next week while their presence is also an opportunity for members of the public to field their own concerns with traffic changes and other issues related to the precinct. One complaint was about how a motorist had spend 55 minutes trying to get out of Boulcott and into Willis Street because buses kept running the orange light and allowed for one car at a time only to enter Willis Street.

Pedestrians alike are now spending more time waiting to cross for the sake of a faster bus-service. The results from the questionnaire will reveal all but so far not everyone is convinced. The City is Ours received several complaints about the noise of buses at peak-times in what used to be Manners Mall and described by one member of the public as deafening. While the advise is that noise affects a variety of people in different ways, a call to Noise Control revealed they have no jurisdiction to monitor traffic noise levels and according to Richard Leeson.

During its presence of 2 hours or more in the precinct it became clear that traffic emissions are another problem that needs to be addressed while to date no measurements have been taken with Greater Wellington Regional Councils' 10 year plan stating: "We will implement the Regional Land Transport Strategy which has a target to hold transport emissions to 2001 levels by 2016".

The question raised by the City is Ours is how do we measure these levels when no testing prior or since the opening of the new bus-route have taken place? An urgent request to GW has been made to make a case for the purchase of Air Quality monitoring units that suit the area while 40.000 pedestrians use this precinct daily. Traffic emissions are known to cause 100.000 sick days in the Wellington regional workforce annually and aggravates diseases like respiratory illness and cardio vascular disease, particularly the young and the elderly. An earlier 2004 GW publication suggest the following: "Should the air you breathe carry a health warning?

Standing in what used to be Manners Mall the City is Ours concludes the answer is clearly Yes! These and other matters are due to be raised at a public presentation by the City is Ours to the Capital and Coast District Health Board while population explosions in Te Aro account for a 74.6% increase in the last decade, in the March 2009 Central City Apartment Dwellers
Survey 74% of inner city residents said they walk to work daily.

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