Welcome to Papakura District Council

The $6.1 million upgrade of the public parts of the town centre is about to enter its last stage. We’ve transformed O’Shannessey Street, Great South Road, Broadway, the town square and the section of Elliot Street between Great South Road and East Street. New street lights, seats, rubbish bins, trees and more, create a warm and welcoming environment for shoppers. In addition we have upgraded stormwater pipes and the road surfaces.

The next stage of upgrade focuses on Railway Street West and the sections of Wood Street from Railway Street West to East Street, and also Great South Road from Wood Street to the monument. You can expect to see a very similar “look and feel” in these areas as in the work that has already been done. More details on this next stage – due to start after Christmas – will be available soon.

Alongside the upgrade we changed intersection formats and installed traffic signals at the corner of O’Shannessey and Broadway and also at the Clevedon Road – Railway Street West intersection.

Some residents have asked whether we could return Broadway to one way traffic and re-install a roundabout at Clevedon/Railway Street West. After thorough investigation, our engineers have determined that these changes would not be possible. The main reasons for this are:

Physical constraints: To install a new roundabout in the old location is not possible under current safety design standards. A new roundabout would require Council to purchase and demolish newly built private commercial property in the area. In addition the coming electrification of the regional rail network is likely to require the lifting of the Clevedon Road rail overbridge which again would not be possible with a roundabout.
Road safety: The new intersection at Clevedon/Railway Street West has significantly reduced all accidents at that point, and there have been no injury accidents there since the new intersection opened.
Congestion: With more than 1,000 new residents arriving in Papakura every year, increasing volumes of traffic are using our road network. Any roundabout would soon start to struggle to cope and changing Broadway back to single direction traffic would significantly constrict traffic movement in the town centre.

Council roading engineers are continuing to monitor traffic volumes and fine-tune intersection layouts to further improve traffic flows through the town centre.

Traffic signals
The new intersections make it safer and easier for pedestrians and cyclists to access and use the town centre. Traffic signals at the intersections have now been optimised, and the next step will be to install traffic monitoring cameras so the Traffic Management Unit can observe local traffic conditions and fine-tune signal phases accordingly.

Parking
Council voted in late September to revert to 60 minute parking times
in O’Shannessey Street and Averill Street. At the same meeting, parking times in Accent Point car parking building were amended to make the second level unrestricted, retaining 180 minute parking limits on the ground floor.

Streetscape Newsletters

Further information is available in the Newsletters below. Please note, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the PDF's. If you do not have the latest copy installed, you can download it here.