Golden opportunity or fool's gold - the campaign to kick the car out of inner-city Wellington

Friday, 24 July 2020

Three proposals revealed earlier this year to revamp Wellington's Golden Mile have caused controversy.

Over six surreal, often bizarre weeks, something strange happened in Wellington.

People in lockdown appeared to reclaim the streets.

They abandoned the footpaths and wandered onto and along the roads, soaking up the solitude and safety of normally busy thoroughfares emptied of vehicles.

It was the temporary realisation of a vision shared by many in the capital, who look to numerous cities around the world that have turned their backs on the car and embraced the boot and bicycle.

* Bus users and pedestrians the big winners from Wellington's Golden Mile revamp plans

Lambton Quay was eerily quiet during lockdown. It was disconcerting for some, but a vision of a better future for others.

* Feedback sought on proposals to revamp Golden Mile and reduce central city speed limits

* Cars removed from Golden Mile within two years as part of Let's Get Wellington Moving

San Francisco is one of the latest. In January, it banned private vehicles from its Market Street spine, in much the same way that Wellington is considering with its proposals for the city’s Golden Mile.

First Retail Group managing director Chris Wilkinson says the business community could have helped design the proposals for Wellington’s Golden Mile.

Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM), a joint initiative between Wellington City Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council and the NZ Transport Agency, has put forward three plans costing between $15 million and $80m.

Each of the plans removes vehicles from the Mile, with two of the proposals excluding all vehicles bar buses, bikes and scooters.

The public gets a say until August 9, with a final proposal developed in September and construction planned to start next year.

The plans have excited urban planning academics, cycling proponents and environmental advocates, but others are concerned that such changes ignore the regional drivers of the city’s success, unfairly disadvantage those who cannot afford to live in the CBD, and may even kill the goose that laid the Golden Mile egg.

More than 70 retailers raised those concerns at a recent meeting with LGWM.

Access to side streets was one problem, a lack of consultation another, but the bigger issue goes to the heart of the proposal, according to Chris Wilkinson, managing director of business consultancy First Retail Group.

“We have infrastructure based on large numbers of people coming into the city on a Monday to Friday basis,” he says, “who sit below the radar, and no one really talks about, that have been a very large part of the commercial make-up of Wellington.”

Working with retailers, property owners and the hospitality industry to help “co-design” the plan would have provided LGWM a stronger understanding of the commercial environment, he says.

“A large part of Wellington city’s audience is its regional customers: people from the likes of Kāpiti and Wairarapa, Horowhenua, but also our suburbs. We need solutions for those people, and they’re not necessarily coming on public transport.”

And more parking options are needed for those vehicles potentially forced off the city’s spine and surrounding streets, he says.

Road safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson says the Golden Mile development will be great for the wealthy, inner-city dweller but not so much for everyone else.

“We lost 1800 parks after Kaikoura. They haven’t returned.”

That’s in addition to the hundreds of others removed around the city to create cycle lanes.

Wilkinson sees the lack of consultation as an example of the “silo-ed thinking” and a “fixed mindset” that is promoting the pedestrian-focused plan while ignoring issues with the city’s inadequate parking and public transport. The potential impact on businesses struggling in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic are also not given enough consideration.

“When Wellington changed its public transport providers about three years ago . . . that was the golden opportunity for the city to be completely transformed, to shift people on to buses confidently, to get these modal shifts happening that everyone around the world aspires towards.

“It didn’t work, it has gone down in a global sense as an example of what not to do. As a city we are still trying to recover from that.

“Let’s get the confidence in public transport first, let’s encourage more people on to these types of transport modes.”

Clive Matthew-Wilson goes further.

The motoring commentator and road-safety campaigner challenges the city’s leaders to “bike from Lambton Quay to Island Bay at 8pm on a wet winter’s night with a gale blowing off Cook Strait”.

Ralph Chapman, director of Environmental Studies at Victoria University, believes cars have no place in the inner-city.

“I’m willing to bet most of the councillors would prefer a warm, safe bus, assuming they can find one.”

He believes those promoting the Golden Mile changes and other initiatives care little for people living outside the relatively wealthy enclave of the CBD.

“Neither government nor the transport companies really give a toss about the average commuter,” he says.

“The poor people who clean the apartments of wealthy inner-city dwellers often live in areas where the streets are unsafe. Cars are their lifeline.

“Shift workers are particularly at risk. It’s not reasonable to tell vulnerable commuters such as nurses that they have to take a taxi to and from work simply because there are no late night buses and the city is closed to private cars.

“To simply ban cars without filling this gap is madness.”

It’s not madness, according to Ralph Chapman. Or ideology. It’s “important for a city evolving in the direction of a low carbon, compact city”.

The director of Environmental Studies at Victoria University says LGWM’s plans “reallocate street space to its highest and best use”.

“Individual cars are not a very good use of that space. They … create congestion. Public transport is a much more efficient use of road space.

“In fact, bikes and walking are also a very good use because you move a lot of people per unit space.”

Chapman knows this well. He lives in the inner-city and walks to work.

Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme director Andrew Body.

“All the cities in the world are gravitating in the direction of what the European cities have been doing for a long time, which is dense, compact city centres with lots of active travel, lots of public transport, not many cars. Car parks are not very sustainable in an inner-city.”

He concedes those living outside the city would need to rely on public transport, which is being wrestled “back into shape after a traumatic period of disorganisation and service reduction”.

”That did a lot of damage. You need a very effective system.”

But you also need to provide choice.

“There will be some people who, say, work in the hospital and live in the suburbs. One good solution for that might be to locate somewhere nearer where they work, so avoiding trips is actually a very effective solution . . . making the city more efficient and effective.”

He wanted a “nice quality, liveable city”, one that kept up with international trends and remained attractive to the many Kiwis moving back from overseas. Including a daughter living in New York.

And he believed car drivers should pay more for the costs imposed on others.

“If you want to drive your car into the city centre you can pay a hefty fee . . . you don’t want to set up a system that subsidises people to use their car by failing to pay the real cost of their travel.”

Those costs include slower trips for bus commuters and more risk of injury to the public, says LGWM programme director Andrew Body.

His organisation will be emboldened by the early results of San Francisco’s move to take cars off its Market Street: as of March bike ridership had jumped by 25 per cent and public transport was running between 6 and 12 per cent faster.

The increase in congestion in surrounding streets was described as “minor”.

Body did not appear too concerned about issues with Wellington’s public transport and parking.

“Public transport patronage continues to grow year on year [and] the potential parking loss from the Golden Mile project is around 0.5 per cent of all parking in the central city, and 1 per cent of public parking.

“By removing some carparking we can give buses more priority. This project will help us bring more people into the central city in fewer vehicles.”

That will mean benefits for all, he says, and not just those lucky or wealthy enough to call the inner-city home.

“It benefits everyone from the wider city and region who comes into the city to work, visit, shop or play.”

Body says that far from being “silo-ed thinking”, the Golden Mile concepts were part of “a number of projects which together will help us create the kind of city Wellingtonians have told us they want - a great harbour city that is accessible to all, with attractive places, shared streets and efficient local and regional journeys.

”The Golden Mile project, together with other projects in the programme, such as Thorndon Quay and Hutt Road, improvements to bus priority on core suburban routes into the city, and Mass Rapid Transit will support Wellington’s growth while making it safer and easier to get around.”