How Auckland Harbour Bridge Skypath got the money but lost its name
Friday, 31 January 2020
OPINION: What's in a name? Quite a lot if it is something that has had as hard-a-fought history as the plan to build a cycle and walkway add-on to the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
Skypath as it's best known, got a confirmed construction date as part of the government's infrastructure package last week, a new $360 million price tag in its latest evolution and, by 2024, should be a dramatic addition to both the city's active transport mode network and to the line-up of tourist attractions.
The decision by the Government to take over the project from campaigners who had pushed it hard for a decade, and most-recently to give it a start date, is a triumph for people power, but with bureaucratic ownership comes also a most unimaginative renaming.
The blue-sky, aspirational-sounding Skypath has been re-named by New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), the Northern Pathway.
**READ MORE:
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It joins a family of similarly-named NZTA assets north of the Harbour Bridge, such as the Northern Motorway, and the adjacent Northern Busway.
No longer a name lifting eyes skyward, rather, one reminiscent of a cobblestone path.
The project bundles together two bits of work, the bridge structure itself, and three kilometres of cycle and walkway from the northern end of the bridge linking in to Northcote and Takapuna.
It is a stunning achievement for people power, having its origins in a 2009 storming of the Harbour Bridge by those demanding the addition of walking and cycling access to the eight-lane structure - akin to a 1946 plan that was dropped when the bridge was built.
The short version: a trust was formed, eventually designing a high-tech carbon fibre structure that was to be built as a privately-funded, user pays facility.
In 2011, Auckland's mayor picked it up as a strategic priority, the council moved to underwrite it, before NZTA took it on and re-designed it with some brief acrimony with the trust over whether some of the costs it incurred would be repaid. They were.
Hopefully 'Northern Pathway' will be just a working name, like its previous NZTA-inspired moniker, the Auckland Harbour Bridge Shared Path.
Aucklanders should be given the chance to come up with a name that reflects the far-sightedness of those who pushed the idea.
The pink-paved cycling 'viaduct' into the city centre has a proper name - Te Ara I Whiti or Lightpath.
The city is sadly lacking in flair when it comes to icing on infrastructure cakes.
Auckland Transport, without a hint of consultation, decided the city's 1300-strong fleet of buses should be the dull navy blue of its staff business cards.
The purchase of 57 commuter trains for the electrified rail network passed without so much as a brief blurb inside the carriages explaining the transformational context in a city where diesel-hauled commuter rail had almost died by the 1990s.
Skypath - yes I'm trying to keep an aspirational name alive - has the potential to be one of Auckland's most stunning attractions as well as its most future-focussed piece of transport infrastructure. Let's give it a name to match.