A new community group in Kāpiti was formed at the weekend by residents who are hurting from the noise of the new Kāpiti expressway.
Spokesman for the group, Nick Fisher said, “Residents who are in close proximity of the new Kāpiti expressway are getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of action from NZTA to reduce the severe adverse impacts. Many people can no longer sleep through the night without being woken by the noise from trucks thundering through the district, some even using exhaust brakes on the downhill sections. We believe residents should be able to be outside and hear the birds and wind in the trees, without the incessant roar from the road. We are asking NZTA to honour their advertising pre-Board of Inquiry, where they emphasised how concerned they were about reducing the adverse impacts of noise. Now we find many sections of road have no mitigation at all.”
Residents have complained to NZTA but have been fobbed off, said Mr Fisher.
“NZTA are hiding behind a totally inappropriate NZ standard for road noise, and need to consider real life situations.”
In some cases, the recommended mitigation was not incorporated in the design because NZTA thought ‘the measures would have been visually intrusive’. Residents were not consulted in these cases.
“Some sections of the road have bunds and sound walls; all we asking of NZTA is to extend those measures to all affected sections of the road. A screened wall and planted earth bund is less visually intrusive than a convoy of Mack trucks,” said Mr Fisher.
If you are adversely affected by the road and would like to encourage NZTA to act, the group can be contacted at [email protected]
