Recently, under its new Mayor Andrew Little, Wellington City Council voted to delay the Golden Mile street project for yet another review.
This is despite the Golden Mile being well supported in (repeated) consultations, with a benefit cost ratio of 5.8, and with millions of dollars of central government funding sitting there ready to use – plus the obvious fact that this part of Wellington really really needs the spruce-up.
It says a lot about Little that he thinks another review is a good idea, and that it will result in anything but the project becoming either more expensive due to delays, or worse, cancelled due to being more expensive due to delays.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand’s primary city Auckland, our own Mayor has recently starting ramping up the anti-urban-improvements rhetoric. But because it’s Wayne Brown, it’s a little different.
You see, whenever Wayne Brown speaks about Auckland’s City Centre, it’s like flipping a coin. Will you get urbane Wayne, or small-town Wayne?
Half the time he sounds like someone who loves and understands cities and all the potential they bring. And other times, he sounds like like an even more extreme version of Andrew Little.
If the coin lands heads-up, he’ll laud our city centre, boast happily about great projects such as Brownie’s Pool, spread the glad news about the virtues of a compact city, and support popular street upgrades like Te Hā Noa, the Victoria Street linear park.
But if the coin lands the other way, as seems to be happening more often lately: Brown will grumble on tediously about preserving the flow of preserving the sacred flow of car traffic. moan about road cones, or suddenly turn tail and claim to be against popular street upgrades, like Te Hā Noa, the Victoria Street linear park.
And this is the paradox of Brown, when it comes to the City Centre.
I think this paradox is best represented by the almost completed works on Victoria Street.
Te Hā Noa/Victoria Street Linear Park has transformed Victoria Street from a glum traffic sewer into a beautiful and welcoming green street, which is now pumping with people every day of the week. It was extremely popular when first proposed in the City Centre Masterplan (check out this 2016 post by Patrick on the subject) – and despite repeated attempts to stop it over many years, it’s been funded and built (well, almost).
In fact, in 2023 Wayne Brown was almost fanatical in his support of the project.
In response to Councillor Mike Lee putting forward a motion opposing the project, Brown exclaimed: “Anyone who seconds that is going to be threatened within an inch of their life”.
And to the naysayers speaking against starting construction, due to funding coming from the City Centre Targeted Rate, the Mayor proudly state that “as the only city resident and the only one who has contributed to it, I have to declare an interest, I think it’s a bloody good thing”.
It is indeed a bloody good thing that this project has happened – especially with City Rail Link set to open next year, which will pour thousands of people out onto this very street. Not to mention all those getting on and off buses, or biking or walking from one side of town to the other, and of course those who live and work in the area.
So it’s bizarre that more recently – in the first Governing Body meeting, and on his social media accounts – Brown has suddenly taken to attacking the Victoria Street upgrades, among other projects in the City Centre Masterplan. In particular, he’s taking issue with how cars travel around the city centre, and seems to be more concerned about the flow of traffic, than about the thousands of people who move through this area daily.
Given his previous support, it’s hard to know how seriously to take these latest fulminations by our Mayor. And, if he’s serious, it’s hard to know exactly why he’s suddenly flipped to be so adamantly against projects like Victoria Street.
The Mayor keeps saying he has never got a proper explanation of how transport is supposed to work with the changes.
It is all there in the City Centre Master Plan, essentially people walking and lingering are the key economic force in city centre’s not high volume or speed vehicle traffic flow. It could just be that the organisation in charge of delivering much of these transport projects – Auckland Transport – has struggled to explain the transport strategy outcomes of the City Centre Masterplan, let alone deliver them. And so, projects like the Victoria Street upgrades are taking shape in a bit of an information vacuum.
When I was writing about the City Centre’s transport issues a year ago, I always came back to this fundamental issue.
We have a world-class transport strategy for the City Centre as part of the Masterplan, known as Access for Everyone. And there are a lot of really capable staff in both Council and AT, who are in the perfect position to tell the story of what’s happening and why. And yet, as I wrote a year ago:
When we look at all these issues in the City Centre, and we think about how we are currently able to travel within (not-withstanding construction), it feels like a hodge-podge of things that has no logic to anyone – however you travel. Bringing order to this chaotic approach is found in A4E’s circulation plans.
A4E is a pertinent example with how we seem to keep doing transport in Auckland – a lack of boldness and will to truly transform our city. This lack of vision, and refusal of our agencies to accept any, creates a vacuum that wastes our cities potential (and money).
In my opinion, A4E is currently trapped in the cycle of business case hell. In other words, it’s being delayed out of existence. If we lose it we lose the foundation of the circulation plans that will create areas that can unleash our streets as spaces for people. A4E is vital as it will make our City Centre the place to be and create an intuitive transport network for everyone.
And fundamentally, while individual projects and individual AT staff are valiantly trying to solve problems – they are doing so without a solid foundation. This means any actions are merely tinkering on a flawed system that no one is happy with.
In short, while individual staff in Auckland Transport work hard on delivering great pieces of the full puzzle, the overall picture has been blurred by the rudderless management in AT.
In a situation like this, we are lucky that a lot of transformational work has already happened in the City Centre, so people can see for themselves what’s possible, can experience the difference, and can get on board with the plans to expand these great vibes even further across the city.
But this good luck was created via very hard mahi from a wide variety of people and groups, which made it easy and logical to make the right calls at every step of the way. It was the right call in 2023 to push forward with the Victoria Street Linear Park, and it was the right call even earlier to proceed with Quay Street.
Nobody would voluntarily go back to how things were before. And those who made the right calls can rightly bask in the reflected glory of the completed projects.
It’s still the right call today to continue with the rest of the planned transformations in the City Centre Masterplan.
With the Mayor calling for a review (or a refresh?) of the City Centre Masterplan – which isn’t itself a bad idea, as time moves on, and we learn more about how to do these things – there’s a really important lesson to keep in mind.
But it would be completely bonkers and wasteful to reverse amenity designed to optimise new pedestrian patterns shaped by the CRL before the stations even open. It is best practice to evaluate new (and existing) work but only once they’ve been in operation for a couple of years.
If you hit pause on projects, momentum will stop. Even under favourable circumstances, it’s hard to start up again – and harder still to keep the momentum going when times feel tough.
After its transformations in the 1990s, Wellington hit pause on investment after the turn of the century. The resulting stagnation means that even when momentum starts to rebuild, as it has in the last few years, and progress gets going again, it’s a lot more vulnerable to being stopped in its tracks.
Which is exactly what is happening right now, with the Golden Mile Project, under Wellington’s new Mayor Andrew Little.
So I have a simple question for Mayor Brown.
Do you want to make the same mistakes as Andrew Little, and delay progress, wasting time and money and miring our country’s premier city in suburban gloom, by stopping the momentum for positive change?
Or: will you continue to be bold, backing the popular plans and projects that are so visibly transforming our City Centre into a livelier, lovelier place – thus ensuring Auckland continues to lead this country and become the efficient green city you so proudly aspired to, in your inauguration speech?
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