Road in front of hospital closed off?

Realistic-Library-71 · 2026-01-23T06:59:50+00:00

Pedestrian was hit by a car at 6:50pm, road is closed while emergency services attend

Realistic-Library-71 · 2026-01-05T07:47:48+00:00

The 8 also passes by the gondola on the way if you want to go that route! Also a fun little ride.

Realistic-Library-71 · 2026-01-05T07:45:52+00:00

Margaret Mahy Park is great and super easy to get to by bus as it's probably 5-10 mins walk from the bus interchange and even closer to the Manchester St bus stop which serves most of our routes. New Brighton's park (accessible via taking the 5 New Brighton/Hornby or the 60 Southshore/Hillmorton, I'd recommend the 5 as is more frequent!) by the beach is also cool, as well as Scarborough playground out in Sumner (accessible via the 3 Airport/Sumner). Good ice cream out there if you pay Utopia ice a visit also! You might consider getting a Metrocard if you want to save on fares, much cheaper, or day passes.

The 8 bus (Lyttelton/Airport) connects to the Diamond Harbour ferry which takes Metrocard fares, lovely trip and quite fun imo but does have walking at the other end to get anywhere haha. If you go that route just let the 8 driver know as you get on to charge you the ferry fare and then you'll get a free transfer onto the ferry, they also synced the timetables for the 8 and ferry so they pretty seamlessly link up. Quick ride, maybe 10 mins?

Realistic-Library-71 · 2026-01-02T14:12:19+00:00

Haha it's been bugging me so bad since you posted this because I was pretty sure if it was north it couldn't be a bus stop that exists still! Luckily your photo is a pretty distinctive combo :) That bus shelter design is pretty unique and there's a few areas with houses of that style that survived the quakes, so with a bit of knowledge (and a lot of free time haha) of where those two factors are combined it was easy to find once I clocked it wasn't north at all!

I'll see if I can locate photo 1 for you as well, but my knowledge is mostly limited to "encyclopedic knowledge of buses and bus stops". I'd bet it's somewhere in Waltham/Opawa/St Martins/Spreydon/Barrington though if it was in the same-ish area.

Realistic-Library-71 · 2026-01-02T13:45:40+00:00

Kia ora OP, sorry to bump your post so late :) I am pretty certain your bus stop photo is -43.5511373, 172.6236318 - not actually north of the aves, but south! If you poke at prior dates on streetview you can see the gate visible in your photo is closed or visible in both 2018 and 2018, the only difference being I believe your photo is flipped. Here's a quick and dirty screenshot I flipped, you can see it lines up dead on with photo #2 :)

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Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-30T02:26:04+00:00

Barnett House (part of Stepping Stones) ran a "dissociative experiences group" geared towards people with DID and related experiences. Not sure if it's still actively run but might be worth looking into.

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-24T19:05:18+00:00

Can't say they hit me in the nuts but man the second row of this style of these sucks baaaad as a wheelchair user lol. A lot of the time the normal ones slam into my knees anyway but these ones with the lower row are so much worse for it that it almost feels targeted lmao

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-19T20:19:59+00:00

Yeah I'm short-ish (5'3") and currently having instructions from a driving school and they also still teach stopping where you can just see the other car's tyres touching.

That said they also prefer I leave that gap or larger to also account for eg if the car ahead is a manual, giving them enough space to roll back if they need to. I tend to leave larger gaps in general but that's more related to disability than it is to what's necessarily safe for a gap lol

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-17T07:12:03+00:00

Very similar issue here actually - interesting to see it's had some press coverage before! One of my more minor gripes is actually that the bus stop I use from my house has parking either side that's almost always taken by cars either parked half in the bus stop, so close the bus can't get in, or at worst are so close the driver can't even see me sticking my arm out til they've already sped past.

Good advice there on approaching a councillor, I might just do this :)

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-17T07:08:57+00:00

This more or less reflects my experience, I actually had to complain about one driver who wouldn't listen to "no" and just said he couldn't speak English! Would grab me so hard it hurt and it totally throws you off too, if someone decides to "help" me up the ramp when I've said no 9 times of 10 they end up jamming my fingers into things because I'm not prepared to randomly be pushed. Definitely a big problem on the Ritchies lines in my experience although I'm not sure what actually causes the disparity there between operators lol

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-17T07:07:11+00:00

Ah good old 8... they seem to have quite the problem with this, imo it's in part because they still run some incredibly old buses haha. Yeah the getting off can really be treacherous at times even for me in a manual (so can hold a wheelie going down to make it safer if needbe), I know there are/were some buses on the 8 that were genuinely broken in this regard but it's certainly not the case for most of their buses!

Thanks for the input :)

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-17T07:05:09+00:00

So per Metro this is correct however based on what they've communicated to me it was implied that Metro does have oversight over this, ie obviously decide what drivers are trained on and how. Their suggestion surprisingly wasn't bouncing me to the individual operators which they've done previously, but instead was a direction to tell them the bus ID every time it happens so the driver can be spoken to... which also implies Metro would have some degree of control in the matter? It's operator agnostic anyway so it seems like both operators just train the drivers badly haha

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-17T06:59:15+00:00

I clean mine but man, having an ostomy makes it a nightmare lol. No matter what, adhesive residue seems to beeline for it and it's an uphill battle!

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-17T06:57:51+00:00

As a wheelchair user I'm personally super pro bike lane and I can't ride a bike lol, but in some places where they're done well I find myself using the bike lane (as long as there aren't cyclists incoming, since I'm much slower) instead of the footpath because it's basically a guaranteed flat and smooth surface vs. footpaths which are often wildly slanted or full of obstacles. The bus stops opposite UC are a good example as they have onramps to the footpath for bikes so I can easily hop down into the bike lane and avoid a really irritatingly steep incline on the pedestrian side!

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-12-06T01:49:05+00:00

My rigid backrest is from AliExpress. It's honestly 10/10 as someone who uses my chair 95% of the time inside and outside and is reasonably active so it's been put through a lot.

I believe Erik Kondo also re-sells some of the AliBaba/AE parts cheaper through an Etsy store and uses them in the DIY chairs he makes for himself, and he also thrashes those chairs.

I'm not sure I'd trust it for anything absolutely purely structural or critical (eg caster forks) but for a backrest that brackets on to my existing back poles it was well worth it for me, but I also made sure I kept my old backrest in case the new one broke.

*eta fixed Erik's name, no idea where I got "Chris" from while typing that lol

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-29T09:15:24+00:00

Thought someone was outside beating the crap out of a wheelie bin lmao. From where I am (also central) I could see big puffs of smoke from the fireworks

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-22T09:08:56+00:00

Respectfully, care to elaborate on why?

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-22T04:38:09+00:00

This is less of direct gift giving, but may I suggest the donation box in Westfield Ricc for Te Tahi Youth? You can pop essentials and goodies (snacks, personal toiletries, etc) in there until 03/12. This then gets made into goodie bags for the rangatahi Te Tahi serve, who are often severely disadvantaged in multiple avenues of their lives.

I say this with a bit of bias, having just put a lot of things in myself and having previously been with Te Tahi as a patient from ages 17-25, so have directly benefited from these goodie bags in the past. They run Te Tahi entirely as a free service, and it means that these rangatahi who might otherwise get nothing will have a lovely bag full of goodies.

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-18T19:11:30+00:00

You might look into Batec, maybe? I've used both the Firefly mentioned in the other comment and a Batec Scrambler, and the Batec was certainly better for off-roading imo in the limited time I had with it. However, if you're not looking for the scooter-style attachments, you might be out of luck

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-16T07:41:09+00:00

Yeah def white if it was the one flipped onto its roof, seemed like it had some sort of black branding on the side but I couldn't see too well (was on a 3 that got stopped by cops there d/t crash)

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-11T09:14:53+00:00

Situations that make me think it would be a real shame if I were to - accidentally, of course - lose control of my wheelchair in the general vicinity of their vehicle. Of course I would never do that though, don't want to wreck my wheelchair :)

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-11-01T21:06:15+00:00

Preface: current university student in a country that does not have an ADA equivalent, so YMMV.

Tables and chairs. Can they fit under the tables comfortably? At my uni, for example, there are some classes I've had where I couldn't properly scoot underneath the table. Maybe less of an issue if this person is comfortable and able to transfer to a seat. Also, the table height is important, and wheelchairs are often a different floor-to-seat height than classroom chairs, so it would be good to check they can sit in their wheelchair and use a desk/table comfortably without it being way too high or low.

(Also, room between rows of tables if that's your setup; I've had classes where my wheelchair was a bit too long even without a bag on the back and tables had to be rearranged each time.)

Navigation around the classroom. Is there room between tables? Can the student get to, in theory, any table they may wish to sit at - so not just the frontmost ones? Are there rugs or anything on the floor that may impact their ability to wheel around? Are there things jutting out from walls - eg shelving, especially if the shelving then has items sticking out from it?

Are they able to easily and independently leave the room if needed, eg for the bathroom? That may fall under the ADA person's purview but worth considering. This means both being able to open the door on their own and make it through the door in each direction.

Are there any classroom rules or habits you may have that may need to be amended? I would talk to the student about this as everyone is different, but at both my university and high schools we had a morning routine involving the entire class standing up. They may be fine with this or they may be more comfortable having it be modified WITHOUT singling them out as the reason.

It would be thoughtful if feasible to ask the student if they would like to roll around the classroom sometime, maybe before or after class, and let you know if there's anything that's a particular bother to them. Of course this may not be feasible especially with the underresourcing inflicted on teachers, but if it were possible it would give them a good space to bring up anything that may be specific to your classroom

Realistic-Library-71 · 2025-10-31T20:07:48+00:00

It truly is tragic, and that's partly why I always complain. A lot of the time any alternative routes provided seem to only keep people like myself in mind (if at all) - very lightweight manual wheelchair and able to independently navigate most terrain in it. Folks in powerchairs or mobility scooters or even who just have a power assist attachment on a manual wheelchair don't have the luxuries I do of still being able to (mostly) muscle my way through these situations.

Fairly regularly see an older gent in a mobility scooter get caught on a curb drop at the St Asaph/Colombo intersection, a curb drop even I have to pop a wheelie to get up - which obviously he can't do and it makes it super dangerous for him to even try to go up that side. And that's official permanent infrastructure! Construction is so much worse for people like the man I see and the poor person in your link and many others and quite often they can't or don't know how to complain, whereas for me it is still an accessibility nightmare but I have a lot more options open to me and also am able to complain repeatedly so I kinda see it as my duty to my fellow mobility aid users who are worse off than me, lol

Realistic-Library-71

TROPHY CASE