Beating your feet for the good of the streets
By Jamie Melbourne-Hayward
How long does it take to walk from the Petone foreshore to the CBD and do you know the local short cuts? These are questions Petone resident Jan Simmons and fellow walking enthusiasts are looking to answer with their recently launched Living Streets Lower Hutt group. Mrs Simmons says the group has formed to give a local voice to the city?s walking-way ambitions. She enjoys the Hutt River walking and cycling tracks but says a lack of signage in the area could be improved upon. ?If you are walking along the river there is no way to tell how far away you are from things, where the CBD is, it would be good to have that kind of signage. ?It would make the walks more attractive if we had good signage with maps, telling you how long it will take to walk places,? she says. The group want to work alongside and collaborate with the Council?s efforts to implement the Regional Land Transport strategy?s focus on increasing walking and cycling trips and decreasing car trips. ?It?s easier if there is an organised group in the community for the council to interact with. ?People take it for granted that we have good footpaths, but we need to be involved with the council if we want to see improvement. ?We are here to help them reach those targets,? says Mrs Simmons. The pedestrian crossings on Jackson Street are a good model of what she would like replicated throughout the area. ?They are an example of the really good work the council has done. ?The Hutt City Council walking strategy has been working to improve the area, but have not found everything easy,? she says. Mrs Simmons decided Lower Hutt needed its own Living Street voice after she first witnessed the good job they were doing near her work in Newtown. ?They were doing community strategy audits, where people would walk around the towns looking for where improvements can be made ? cracks, water not draining, trees hanging over, and things like that,? she says. She is hoping to make events like ?Walk to Work Day? more popular in the region.
