Music proposed as way to calm bus hub conduct

Otago Daily Times

06-06-2025

Music could be used to soothe savage behaviour at Dunedin's city centre bus hub, a regional councillor has suggested.
Cr Kate Wilson said she was not suggesting following the lead of former speaker Trevor Mallard, who blasted music in an attempt to deter protesters camped outside Parliament to protest government control during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But she questioned the absence of music as one of the "actionable insights" contained in Collective Strategy principal consultant Angela Davis' 29-page report on developing and refining the approach to safety in the central city.
"Sound can be very calming," Cr Wilson said.
"We often build 'traffic calming' areas into design, but we don't do 'people calming'."
She said she was "intrigued" the report had not canvassed the concept, which she understood was used in hospitals.
Council regional planning and transport general manager Anita Dawe said it appeared not to be one of the strategies used elsewhere, which Ms Davis examined in the report.
"I do know it's successful in supermarkets — it changes shopping behaviour," Ms Dawe said.
The Otago Regional Council's public and active transport committee yesterday received the report, commissioned by the council for the central city advisory group — the multi-agency group created in the wake of the fatal stabbing last year of 16-year-old Enere McLaren-Taana.
Cr Alexa Forbes, who chaired yesterday's committee meeting, said the report appeared focused on "preventing crime through inclusion and visibility".
"It doesn't actually rule out sound, or music."
Council chairwoman Gretchen Robertson said there were benefits to working on safety issues with other agencies in a collaborative way.
It was a "privilege" for the regional council to run public transport, and the council wanted public transport to be "welcoming and [a] preferred mode of travel", she said.
The council had taken a close look at what it could do in the short term to improve safety and had taken "well reported" steps to improve safety at the bus hub.
But the report also contained statistical analysis showing the bus hub was not the only problematic area in Dunedin's city centre.
The report revealed most documented "victimisation" in the city centre occurred very early on Sunday morning.
" I don't think that's a youth issue," Cr Robertson said.
"This is a whole-of-community issue.
"I think it requires collaboration," Cr Robertson said.
"It requires looking at the hub.
"It requires looking broader than that as well to the central city."
Council chief executive Richard Saunders suggested there was more of a leadership role for the Dunedin City Council in safety issues than the regional council.
"The issues largely arise in public space, which are the responsibility of the territorial authorities," Mr Saunders said.
"So they have a critical role to play in the management of that public space and any bylaws that may seek to change behaviours in that space.
"The fact that the group is focused on inner-city safety, not bus hub safety, speaks to the role of DCC in terms of that overall management of that public space through the city.
"They won't achieve anything on their own, but the leadership, I think, is quite a critical piece.
"And I suspect the reference in here points more to leadership in the public space than it does within the transport network."
The city council has been approached for comment.
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