KEY POINTS:
Today, a tale from the "it could only happen at Auckland City Council" file. Nine years ago, city officials decided to brighten up Karangahape Rd with matching pairs of nikau palms on both sides of the road outside historic St Kevin's Arcade. Five years on, new precinct manager Barbara Holloway made it her first project to persuade the council to install a controlled pedestrian crossing at the same site.
In due course, a symphony of traffic lights was installed, and the safety of shoppers was, all agreed, greatly enhanced.
Unfortunately, despite all their intricate planning, the traffic engineers somehow managed to plonk one of the light standards on each side of the road in front of the palms - 18-year-old teens when they went in and still happily streaking upwards and outwards.
It's not clear when the engineers realised their mistake, but when they did, they didn't say, "Oops, we'd better do the decent thing and move the lights."
Instead they blamed the innocent trees, and demanded that two of the four go. To show they meant business, they trussed up the offending fronds of the two doomed trees, leaving them like artificial Christmas trees, branches all pointing skywards, waiting to be popped back in their cardboard boxes.
And that's how they've been left, humiliated, for several months.
On the eve of Christmas, the bureaucrats went in for the kill, obtaining a non-notified resource consent from themselves to have the trees removed.
They also approached Brent Hubbard of Oceanic Palms, the Onehunga company hired nine years ago to provide and plant the trees, and said he could take the palms away for free. They even offered him $350 - the cost they'd been quoted to chop the trees down - if Mr Hubbard got on with the job quietly and without delay.
But the best-laid plans of mice and bureaucrats often go awry, and instead of saying thanks and scarpering with this valuable windfall, Mr Hubbard was affronted.
"There are so few trees up on K Rd, and so few gardens, that what's there should stay and they should build on it where they can."
After planting these palms, Oceanic Palms went on to plant the grand avenue of nikau further along K Rd.
After that came the palming of the Queen St valley. So you could say the St Kevin's palms sparked the nikau-ing of the CBD.
Mr Hubbard says he's been battling officialdom for five months now. Yesterday he was given until Monday to reconsider his refusal to remove them. The unspoken alternative, he fears, is the chainsaw.
Auckland City traffic general manager Don Munro admitted yesterday the council "obviously made a mistake and in hindsight could have done things a lot better."
He had also given an undertaking to Councillor Ken Baguley, traffic committee chairman, that he would "have one last look ... to see if there is no other better option." He added that it had to be "cost effective".
The problem is that of the five sets of lights facing in each direction, the one on the pavement on the driver's right-hand side in both directions is obscured by palm fronds. But as the driver has four other sets of lights to view - two on the left-side pavement poles and two on overhead lights, cantilevered from left and the right, you wonder what, short of Mr Munro popping out with a red flag as well, could be done to improve the signs.
The pedestrian crossing outside the Rialto arcade on busier Broadway in Newmarket has only four lights in either direction. As for the two crossings in downtown Queen St, one has four lights in each direction, the other has four in one direction and only three in the other.
So why the need for five on K Rd?
Mr Munro admits to not being "totally familiar" with the "standards" but says his technical experts tell him it's not an issue of the number of lights, rather "the positioning of lights".
At least he agrees it's about the positioning of lights, not of trees.
Councillor Baguley agrees it's "a cock-up" and "if I had my way I'd take the [blocked] lights off and put them into store. There are still four lights and there are always two that are visible to you ..."
Only a traffic engineer would disagree.
