Midtown Trial: Who wants to ruin Queen St?

Earlier this week, I detailed how Auckland Transport is messing up Midtown with a proposed trial on Queen Street and Wellesley Street.

AT’s trial will:

Reopen the section of Queen St between Wakefield and Wellesley to general vehicles, from 7pm – 7am (Currently, this is a 24/7 AVO zone – Authorised Vehicles Only – used by buses, bikes, mopeds, motorbikes, emergency vehicles, and registered goods vehicles.)Propose that bus lanes on Wellesley St, one of the busiest bus corridors in the city, and on the brink of completing a major upgrade, only operate between 7am – 7pm.

These changes go against official advice from AT’s Public Transport team, and the visions and strategies that govern the city centre – as well as all previous public feedback, plans, consulted projects, expert advice and evidence underpinning normal decision-making

If the trial goes ahead, it will run for two years, starting in March and overlapping with CRL opening.

Bizarrely, as confirmed by documents I received via LGOIMA request – AT has done a total U-turn on its initial intentions.

And as far as can be gleaned from the documents, as well as not reaching out to city residents via the City Centre Residents Group, nor trusted voices from the on-hiatus City Centre Advisory Panel, it also seems that AT didn’t speak with walking or cycling or disability advocacy organizations, nor with the Waitematā Local Board (other than telling them in December it was happening, with no opportunity for input), nor with FENZ, who may have concerns about adding overnight traffic to that stretch, nor with Police whose job it would presumably be to keep an eye out for boy racers.

Or if they did, it’s not recorded.

So why would AT pull such a dramatic U-ey on their original direction?

Or to put it another way: who is making AT do this?

Maybe the Mayor?

One of the loudest voices on the city centre is former city-centre resident Mayor Wayne Brown. He often shoots from the hip, irritated over things he identifies as dysfunctional and poorly thought out. He’s not always wrong.

In September and October 2025, emails went back and forth between the Mayor and Auckland Transport on various matters, including a callback to the mayor’s request in his Letter of Expectation that AT inform Council about ‘ways to traverse the CBD east to west by car‘.

Auckland Transport’s response was pretty good for what it was: it defended the core principles of the City Centre Bus Plan and the idea of improving circulation plans (a core component of Access for Everyone). But it lacked a lot of details, leaving that up to further discussion.

And so, as the Mayor continues to pressure AT, combined with AT’s ongoing struggle to explain and deliver Access for Everyone… it makes me suspect that senior leadership just don’t understand, like, or care about these key strategies enough to be able to explain what needs to happen and why.

See for example this November 2025 memo to AT’s Design and Delivery Committee from AT senior leadership. All of a sudden, the traffic circulation plan is about giving priority to the ‘20% of general vehicles’ that cross the Queen Street valley, instead of to public transport, walking, and cycling.

Excerpt from November 2025 Memo (cropped and edited as this section crossed over multiple pages)

If AT were following the Access for Everyone plan, they’d have moved the east-west traffic onto Mayoral Drive and Customs Street, as planned. Which is better for public transport, better for pedestrians in the area, and crucially better for people driving as it provides clear, logical ways to get around the City Centre without disrupting other people in the network.

A properly ‘integrated’ approach to transport, to use AT’s own terms. But instead, AT folded, completely against the advice of their own public transport team.

Such a wasted opportunity, especially given the Mayor is known to change his mind when given a proper technical explanation – and is fond of saying buses are the only good part of AT.

Excerpt of key issues the Mayor raised about Wellesley Street from November 2025 Memo

Excerpt of key issues the Mayor raised about Queen Street from November 2025 Memo

But the Mayor, while important, is only one person, and he seemed to care a lot more about Wellesley Street than Queen Street, with AT seemingly bringing up the AVO of their own volition.

So who else was pushing AT to do a 180?

The Beck in the room

As highlighted in the November 2025 Memo, the only parties AT consulted in detail about the trial proposal were Heart of the City and Auckland Live.

(The City Centre Advisory Panel had been stood down after the 2025 Local Elections, and is still waiting for the Mayor to reform it, leaving no official channel for broader views of city centre stakeholders.)

With Auckland Live, my gut feeling is they may have expressed genuine concerns – Pick Up and Drop Off, access for those with disabilities – and that they either suggested, or were given, poor solutions. They’re not the transport experts, after all, and while AT has decent plans for these concerns, they didn’t make it into the current trial.

So that leaves Heart of the City. HOTC represents over 15,000 businesses in the city centre, and as with the City Centre Advisory Panel, there’s bound to be a variety of views.

But you wouldn’t know that if you just heard from its Chief Executive, Viv Beck, who consistently paints a relentlessly negative portrait of the city centre – with an apparent tendency to go rogue, as covered by Hayden Donnell in an in-depth piece on The Spinoff yesterday.

Take the unrepresentative and misleading survey, released without approval of the HOTC board:

The Spinoff understands Heart of the City’s board didn’t approve the survey’s release and were blindsided when its results were sent out to the media. The story’s timing caused consternation. Businesses rely on Christmas sales to see them through the year and headlines about drug use and crime don’t exactly paint the picture of an alluring shopping destination. There have also been questions raised about the survey’s methodology. A Heart of the City statement said it sent its questionnaire out to 500 businesses of “varying types and sizes in and around Queen Street” and received a “statistically sound response rate of 18%”. But those 102 respondents only make up a sliver of the 15,500 businesses in the area Heart of the City is tasked with representing.

Or the marketing approach that’s making people scared to come to the City Centre:

Heart of the City board member Les Morgan told The Spinoff he had seen first-hand how much some of the city centre coverage had impacted people’s perceptions. Though he works in the city as chief operating officer at Sudima Hotels, he lives in Pukekohe. His wife went for a stay in town recently with friends. “They decided to go out of the hotel for dinner, and they were both clasping my wife’s arms,” he said. “People out here are afraid of the crime.” Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick, meanwhile, recounted a conversation with a Wellington Uber driver. “He said ‘you’re from Auckland central. Isn’t it dangerous?’.”

HOTC’s work is part-funded from public money, a significant chunk of which goes on wages:

Auckland Council’s planning committee chairman Richard Hills echoed the sentiment. “It constantly makes me confused that someone who is in a position called CEO of Heart of the City, which is about promoting how great the city is, usually does the opposite,” he said.

Hills said his confusion was compounded by the amount the council was investing in Heart of the City. It received $5.9 million from Auckland Council last year, most of which was levied through a targeted rate on central city businesses which is meant to go toward efforts to “develop economic activities… and provide value to the business community”. According to Heart of the City’s audit report, the largest share of that funding went towards events and advertising, but the organisation has nine staff members and a wage bill of $1.59 million. That averages out to $180,000 per employee, though The Spinoff understands some staff are part-time. “The public and especially the city centre residents and businesses are investing significant amounts of money into promoting positive things in the city. So when it is undermined, sometimes on the day that money is being spent, it does call into question the return on investment,” Hills said.

Most relevant to the Midtown Trial mess is Beck’s unwavering belief that the only way to fix things is to bring back cars and parking everywhere. In pursuit of this mission, as Donnell notes, she has helped set up a new incorporated society (possibly in rivalry with HOTC?): the Lower Queen St Association Incorporated which is focused on… you guessed it, bringing back cars and parking.

Beck seems undeterred. Recently she’s been helping out a new incorporated society set up to represent lower Queen Street businesses. The Spinoff understands the society’s goals include restoring car parking outside luxury stores like Louis Vuitton and Dior along that stretch, which could mean scaling back some of the council’s pedestrian-friendly upgrades to Queen Street. In a text to The Spinoff, Beck said she was working with the group “and will continue to support them as we do with other precincts”.

And if the only voice AT is listening to is Viv Beck’s, you get the mess that is the Midtown Trial.

It seems the AVO zone on Queen Street is Beck’s enemy number one. Take this email from June 2025, which builds on previous actions including a presentation to the AT Board in late 2024.

June 2025 email from Viv Beck to Richard Leggat, chair of AT, about the Queen Street AVO zone.

Usually, Beck’s views are balanced by the broader, more holistic views of the City Centre Advisory Panel. But with the CCAP silent since the election, from November 2025 Beck’s voice has roared into the vacuum.

The exasperating thing is, her claims are totally disconnected from the data she has access to. HOTC’s own footfall counts show Downtown bouncing back after its people-friendly transformation – suggesting Midtown will experience a similar bounce, if it’s allowed to.

Footfall around Downtown, via HOTC’s counters.

Footfall around Midtown, via HOTC’s counters

As Midtown’s streets reopen – Wellesley St, Victoria St/ Te Hā Noa linear park – people will return. And once CRL opens, they’ll be a direct train ride right into the heart of the city. Thousands of people per day, pouring into Midtown, without the need for a single extra car on Queen St.

And as AT’s own monitoring shows, people driving across the Queen St valley are only about 20% of all vehicles, and there’s no reason those trips couldn’t move to Mayoral Drive.

Moreover, the number of people driving into the city centre has been stagnant or declining since long before the Queen St AVO was added – and still, the city centre GDP outpaces the rest of the country

A fun graph from pre-Covid, showing the decline in people going into the City Centre by car between 2015-2017 – before the Queen Street AVO, before Access for Everyone.

Even the number of infringements (people driving into and through the AVO zone by mistake) is steadily falling – so the grumbles about “confusion” and “revenue grabs” just don’t stack up.

This has continued through 2025:

Long story short, Beck’s constant claims have no factual basis, and show a flawed understanding of what makes a 21st C city thrive. So why is AT prioritising her views over everyone else’s?

And let’s be clear. This isn’t about urbanists and advocates versus hard-nosed business people.

You just have to look at how buildings are being marketed in Midtown. The key selling points are access to public transport, and walkability (which equals high foot-traffic). We’re told “retail is returning”!

An article in the NZ Herald, fittingly published on 14 Feb 2026, brimming with love for Midtown.

When places let people thrive, businesses thrive too. Just to give a few examples:

1. The space left by the closure of Smith and Caughey’s is being filled with Faradays… a retail store:

You won’t be standing there looking for someone to help you out; you’ll be engaged with immediately. The digital to retail language and energy will be almost seamless. We’ll be very focused on an amazing digital and in-store experiences, we’re investigating the way those two things speak to each other, and dedicated to hospitality because we understand retail is an experience; it’s like an event. The product you leave with is only part of the product that you’re kind of purchasing. I feel that’s been lost in the past,” Von Dadelszen said.

2. The owners of Queens Arcade are spending $5 million transforming the historic building into a retail and well-being hub. If you listen to the interview on RNZ, there’s not one mention of cars – instead, extolling the value of things like the City Rail Link.

3. Look at the billions invested into Downtown Auckland from various businesses redeveloping the precinct around the CRL.

Of course development and recovery are discontinuous. We should have empathy for business owners who are struggling, and they should be supported through disruptive changes. But knee-jerk reactions and blanket pushback – inflamed by people who should know better – hurt us all.

So I have no idea why senior leadership in AT have acquiesced to Viv Beck.

Because the real answer for Midtown is to keep going, and get on with the transformations that we can see are already working elsewhere in the city. Build it, and they will come.

Te Komititanga: a crossroads of transport, people, and shops. No traffic. (Image: Patrick Reynolds)

Want to help save Midtown? Take action!

The shape of the trial is currently being locked in, so we need to speak up now, and demand:

The trial is adjusted before it starts (or can be adjusted when it inevitably leads to bad outcomes – unreliable buses, congestion, unpleasant vibes for people walking and biking, etc.)The trial delivers the kind of transformations people continually ask for and support – a more pedestrianised Queen Street, 24/7 priority for buses on Wellesley Street, etc.

As with Project K, we can absolutely win this round – but it takes people power!

You can help by emailing the following people:

Mayor Wayne BrownDeputy Mayor Desley SimpsonWaitematā and Gulf Ward Councillor Mike LeeChair of the Transport and Infrastructure Delivery Committee Andy BakerCEO Auckland Council Phil WilsonAT Chief Executive Dean KimptonAT Chair Richard LeggatAT Acting Director Network Performance Melanie AlexanderAT Director Public Transport and Active Modes Stacey Van Der PuttenAT Engagement Email Address

To: mayor.wayne.brown@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, desley.simpson@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, mike.lee@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, andrew.baker@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, phil.wilson@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, chief.executive@at.govt.nz, Richard.leggat@at.govt.nz, Melanie.Alexander@at.govt.nz, Stacey.VanDerPutten@at.govt.nz, atengagement@at.govt.nz

And feel free to cc:

What to say? Firstly, state your opposition to:

the undemocratic process that has led to this trialthe trial’s premise – prioritising general traffic over public transport and people-friendly places.

You may also wish to mention:

the trial as proposed doesn’t follow the vision of the City Centre Master Plan and its circulation plan, Access for Everyone.the timing is premature – with CRL opening later this year, a trial like this should have been considered only after we see how CRL changes the area.the trial is pushing for things that are the total opposite of what we, the people, have consistently said we want in every previous consultation.

So we’re asking Auckland Transport (and/or Auckland Council) to immediately adjust the trial, and:

Implement 24/7 bus lanes on Wellesley Street, to prioritise public transport reliability and maximise the value of CRLKeep pedestrianising Queen Street – extend the AVO to Customs Street, and keep it 24/7Introduce logical pickup and drop off (PUDO) plans for ubers and taxis in MidtownMake Midtown mobility accessible, without allowing a free-for-all of private vehicles

It’s always great to include your own personal experience and perspective. For example:

What do you like about the City Centre?What do you enjoy about people-friendly areas like the Waterfront, Te Komititanga, Freyberg Place, Te Hā Noa/Victoria Street Linear Park?If you take public transport, especially via Queen St or Wellesley St, is reliability important to you?Do you want to see Queen Street even more pedestrianised? If so, say why!

You can also mention that you value things like:

public transport reliabilitywalkabilityless noise pollutionless air pollutionpedestrian safetycyclingthe quality of the street environment for public lifeand more

As always, remember to be polite but firm in your views.

We can win this, just like we won Project K – but only if we take action!

So flick off an email and share this post and Monday’s post as widely as you can. Thank you!

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