Island Bay cycleway ‘nail in the coffin’ for dairy owners
After 27 years of running Chappies Dairy in Wellington, owners Sandy and Ken Patel are shutting up shop because of a drop in business they partly put down to the controversial Island Bay cycleway.
A lack of short-term parking outside their shop on The Parade, Island Bay, has proved to be the ‘‘nail in the coffin’’ for their business, they say.
Four short-term parking spaces directly outside the dairy were removed to accommodate the $1.2 million cycleway. It left the Patels with just a single car park.
‘‘It’s been a decision that has been coming for a while. Business has just been getting slower and slower without the parking spaces we used to have,’’ Sandy Patel said. ‘‘People just keep driving.’’ Two 10-minute parking spaces were placed around the corner to compensate, but Patel said people often parked there all day.
Wellington City Council had paid little interest when asked to intervene, and it was only now that closure was imminent that discussions had begun, she said.
‘‘They didn’t care until now but we won’t be the last ones to close.’’
The cycleway’s layout, which places cyclists between the footpath and parked cars, has drawn criticism from some who argue it has made The Parade too narrow for vehicles and reduced visibility for motorists entering and exiting driveways.
According to a 2014 council report, there had been about 315 car parks along The Parade before the cycleway.
The cycleway saw 35 of them disappear.
Councillor Paul Eagle, who has been a staunch critic of the cycleway’s design and consultation process, believed the dairy’s closure could have been avoided.
‘‘Dairy owners were upfront from the start about what a lack of car parks would mean for their businesses,’’ he said.
‘‘They have evidence that business is down 40 to 60 per cent and the only change has been the cycleway.’’
Eagle met with Wellington Mayor Justin Lester and council chief executive Kevin Lavery yesterday to discuss the situation and a follow-up meeting with dairy owners in the area has been planned for next week.