The Shack is one of Raglan’s most popular cafes with its combination of great location, great food and great staff. The cafe’s success has created a problem for the Raglan Community Board. When patrons dine at the footpath tables outside the cafe, they often spread their chairs across the footpath creating a bottleneck for people trying to walk past.
Often people have to step onto the road contending with trucks and other traffic to get past. Strollers and mobility scooters can not get through the bottleneck without going on the roadway where heavy trucks and other traffic can drive at up to 50 kph making this very hazardous. Raglan 23 has heard stories about mobility scooters having to cross the road to get past.
During the course of the last Community Board, Linda Cole raised the matter of the Bow Street footpath bottleneck outside The Shack. A solution to this initiated by the last Board was the Bow Street place making project which would have redeveloped the tatty corner garden area at no cost to the ratepayers and allowed the cafe to continue with its footpath tables.
At the Supper Room meeting on the night of Thursday 1st, it was decided to end the Bow Street place making project. This means that now there is no action under way to resolve the bottleneck problem.
The problem was very bad over the Easter period and during that period people often had to walk on the roadway to get past the corner.
The WDC Parking & Traffic Control Bylaw is very clear. Cafes must leave 1.5 metres or 2/3 of the footpath unobstructed- whichever is greater. Outside The Shack, the tables are spread out over more than 2/3 of the footpath leaving less than 1/3 for walkers.
The problem is now back with the Community Board to come up with a solution. Hopefully they will be discussing this issue at their meeting tonight (Tuesday 6th May) and letting Raglanders know what the Board has decided on as a way of solving this problem.
Who owns the footpath? I would have thought it was council, which means the café unless they are paying lease for it, shouldn’t be on the footpath. The café is allowed 1/3 of the footpath giving pedestrians 2/3’s, problem solved, there should be space for everyone. Good luck, hope you can solve the problem.
That is certainly a way for Linda Cole and the Community Board to solve the problem.
An easy solution is for The Shack to only serve coffee outside on their benches and remove the tables and chairs from which people spill over. The corner garden is great it protects pedestrians from turning traffic. Another solution would be for the Shack to lease the car space immediately before the corner on Bow Street and use that space for dining overspill.
While in some towns, cafes pay a per table fee for each table on the footpath, that isn’t the case in Raglan. There would not be any way for The Shack to pay to lease a parking space.
With the place making approach it would be possible. Certainly what you suggest is exactly what was done to one parking space in Palmerston North to solve a bottleneck problem outside the cafe.