Getting your take on travel

Late last year we got people into the summer barbecue mood with a sausage sizzle at one of Lower Hutt’s regular Saturday markets.

This was an opportunity for us to get a clear understanding from locals regarding places you visit, how you travel, the routes you use and why you use them. The aim was to find out what people’s recent travel experiences have been, what the problems are for travel in and around the Hutt CBD and what some of the potential opportunities might be to improve access to the City, riverbank area and local suburbs.

These conversations, along with in-depth face-to-face interviews with local residents and business owners, have given us valuable insights into different customers’ points of view and provided us

with an important piece of the puzzle to understand what the issues are and how we might address them.

Some key themes that came out of our conversations included that:

1. Lower Hutt is a great place to live and bring up families with excellent schools, services, retailers and recreational activities.

2. People avoid using the Melling area and come up with a variety of workarounds to get where they need to go.

3. Some of the reasons people avoid using the Melling intersection include safety concerns, congestion issues and traffic delays.

4. Talking about Melling train station was polarising – some favoured it for being easily accessible and a pleasant open space while others were concerned about the limited frequency of the train service and limited parking.

5. The Melling intersections with State Highway 2 create a complex set of interactions between people travelling along State Highway 2 past Melling, and others who use Melling to get into and out Lower Hutt.

These insights have helped shape our thinking so thank you for taking the time to talk with our team.