{"id":622252,"date":"2026-10-06T12:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T12:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/622252\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T12:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T12:10:09","slug":"mayor-wayne-brown-paints-out-aucklands-dumbest-car-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/622252\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Wayne Brown paints out &#8216;Auckland&#8217;s dumbest car park&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  [&amp;_p]:tit-sub-xl tit-sub-xl md:[&amp;_p]:d-tit-sub-xl md:d-tit-sub-xl mb-[1.3rem]\">Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has personally taken to a road with a roller brush to remove what people had told him was the city&#8217;s &#8220;dumbest car park&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Five days ago, Auckland Council <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/10\/01\/at-no-longer-runs-aucklands-roads-from-today-so-who-does\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">took over as the region&#8217;s road controlling authority<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Auckland Transport, keeping its branding as AT, remained a council-controlled organisation but as a much smaller entity, tasked only with running public transport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;Here we are out in New North Rd where we have a totally unnecessary car park,&#8221; Brown declared in a social media post on Tuesday. &#8220;One single car park on a really important road that blocks up traffic and causes a traffic jam.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Brown said one &#8220;poor bugger&#8221;, who lived next to the car park, was in touch with his office about the road markings that permitted one vehicle pull up and block traffic every weekday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;This single spot on New North Road blocked an entire lane and held up cars and trucks every single day,&#8221; Brown posted. &#8220;It&#8217;s the sort of thing that&#8217;s been annoying people for years, but with nothing done about it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;Instead of building another bloody road, we&#8217;re going to so something sensible,&#8221; he said, grabbing a roller with black paint and and painting over the white lines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;My first move at getting rid of dumb stuff. Goodbye dumb stuff. Hello, smooth traffic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Auckland Council took charge of all local roads on October 1 under the the Local Government Amendment Act 2026, which passed its third reading in April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">The Government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2025\/09\/05\/major-shake-up-of-auckland-transport-confirmed\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">agreed last year to change the law<\/a> to give elected officials more direct control over transport decisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Standing next to his roadside handiwork, Brown added: &#8220;We&#8217;ve taken back control of Auckland Transport which means we can actually fix these things. No endless paperwork or bloated budgets. Just simple, common-sense stuff that makes a real difference to people&#8217;s lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;This is just the beginning. We have plenty more of these in the pipeline.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has personally taken to a road with a roller brush to remove what people&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,111,43,139,69,112],"class_list":["post-622252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-auckland","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}