‘Cities change’: Car companies are behind legal challenge to cycleway

Wednesday, 1 June 2022

The Newtown cycleway is being constructed with adaptable materials like these tiles, which will form a pedestrian crossing from the bus lane.

Car companies are trying to fight progress by bringing a legal case against the Newtown cycleway, sustainable transport advocates say.

Six businesses are seeking judicial review of the Wellington City Council project to build a cycleway between Newtown to Courtenay Place, which is already under construction. Their case is scheduled to be heard on Thursday morning.

Four of them are car dealerships or repairers, prompting criticism that they are trying to keep Wellington beholden to cars.

The four car-related companies are behemoth Gazley Motors, which has multiple dealerships along Kent and Cambridge Tces; Capital City Cars on Adelaide Road; the Novus Glass franchise on Adelaide Road; and the Midas franchises in Newtown and Te Aro.

* Construction of controversial Wellington cycleway gets under way

* The Island Bay cycle way is up for discussion. Again.

Isabella Cawthorn, sustainable transport advocate, says it is not surprised that car businesses would challenge the cycleway.

None of the car businesses would discuss why they were bringing the case against the council and the cycleway. On the phone, Myles Gazley said he would not comment on the case as it was before the courts. John Dudley, owner of Capital City Cars, also declined to comment.

John Weaver, owner of Novus Glass Wellington, said: “As this matter is before the court I cannot comment at this stage.”

Cycling advocate Patrick Morgan (left) says it is disappointing that car-focused businesses are bring a judicial review of the Newtown cycleway. (File photo)

Midas Newtown’s owner, Thinus van Greuning, said he could not talk about the case at this point because of his lawyer’s instructions. “I’d like to get as many people involved as possible, but I’ve got to honour that,” he said.

The Newtown cycleway is already under construction, but several car businesses are bringing a court case to pause the project.

The two other applicants are the Resene ColorShop on Cambridge Tce and Newtown General Grocer on Riddiford St. They also declined to comment. Urmila Bhana, who operates Newtown General Grocer, said her shop was taking a break from the media.

Jaycar’s assistant manager, Lenton Neale, said they were expecting a drop in customer numbers as a result of the cycleway.

Isabella Cawthorn, a sustainable transport advocate who runs the Talk Wellington website, said that the auto-related companies were failing to keep up with changing times.

Newtown is a central part of a city with a housing crisis, and it was no longer feasible for car dealerships to take up a lot of land that could be used for housing, she said.

“Some streets in central Hamilton used to be cattle yards, that doesn’t mean they have to always be cattle yards. Cities change,” she said.

Repco workers are concerned about the impact of the cycleway on their car-focused business.

“Frankly, this case is a waste of energy and money. I hope they look around and go, this isn’t worth it.”

Cycling advocate Patrick Morgan said the legal challenge from car businesses was disappointing, but it was not a surprise.

“It might be convenient for their businesses to have free use of public land with car parks, but the city has decided that space is needed for improving bus and bike lanes,” he said. “Change is hard, but to meet our climate goals we have to rapidly transition to a zero carbon city. I urge Wellington businesses who are committed to Wellington to embrace this as an opportunity.”

Cawthorn said judicial reviews set a high bar for applicants, as the airport’s failed Cobham Drive case showed. The applicants had to show that the council made a mistake in the way it made the decision on the cycleway, rather than attempt to litigate the rationale for the path.

This case would be even more difficult because the cycleway is installed with temporary materials, not as a permanent change to the road, Cawthorn said, citing the precedent set by the transitional pedestrianisation of lower Queen St in Auckland, which was unsuccesfully challenged in court because it could easily be reversed.

Other car-related business owners in Newtown are sceptical about the cycleway, mostly because they rely on customers driving to their store. The cycleway will remove most carparks from the main stretch of Adelaide Rd, and relocate loading zones to side streets.

At Jaycar, the electronics shop, assistant manager Lenton Neale said he was expecting a drop in customer numbers.

“We've already had customers mentioning their trouble getting parking on the road. Not many people come strolling down here on a Saturday afternoon,” he said. “I agree that we need cycleways, I just strongly disagree with how they're going about it.”

Repco workers were also concerned about the impact of the cycleway on their car-focused business, said employee Charlie Benson. “Not many of our customers come by bicycle,” he said.

Research around the world has shown that improved cycling and pedestrian infrastructure has a largely positive impact on business. In some studies, there was no impact on business, but in the majority of cases from more than three dozen cities, earnings increased after the introduction of cycling lanes and removal of street parking.

Cawthorn compared car businesses to being a horse salesperson during the mode shift when people started buying cars.

“If I was a car dealership I would have been looking to move out of the Newtown area for some time, since the council started talking about intensification,” she said. “Owners of land are going to make more money from intensification and going upwards … Mixed use of those large pieces of land is more valuable.”

*CORRECTION: The retailer Jaycar is an electronics shop. This story originally reported that it was a car parts company . (Amended June 2, 2022. 3.34pm)