COMMENT
Just when you think the Mt Roskill cone is safe from the barbarians, along comes Auckland City, the volcano's official guardian, with revived plans to scar the northern slopes with a 2m to 3m wide cycleway.
It's as though the planners involved are latter-day Rip van Winkles, who, having slept through the long battle to save the mountain from the bulldozers, suddenly woke and thought Auckland volcanos were still fair game. Well, they're not.
On May 6, a historic agreement between the Auckland City Council, Transit New Zealand and the Auckland Volcanic Cones Society signalled this. In it, the three parties agreed to work together on the redesign of the northern slopes of Mt Roskill adjacent to the proposed extension of State Highway 20.
Top of the list of handwritten pledges printed out from the meeting whiteboard was that "mutual outcome is the most important thing". The signatories to this, and a series of other commitments, were John Duthie, manager of planning, ACC; Rick van Barneveld, chief executive, Transit; and John Street, chairman, Auckland Volcanic Cones Society.
Such was the spirit of co-operation that Transit retained the cone society's landscape architect, Richard Reid, to, in effect, lead the effort to achieve a design that in Transit's words, "provides for a sympathetic treatment of the slope and curvature to reflect the natural footprint of the cone".
After the years of conflict between the cone society on one side and Auckland City and Transit on the other, it seemed too good to be true. And it was.
On Thursday last week, Auckland City planners invited the cone society and other "interested parties" to a briefing on various route options for the cycleway. To the horror of the cone society, the new preferred route follows the same basic route as the old discarded one, cutting a brutish line right across the slope the three "partners" had agreed, less than two months before, to treat sympathetically.
The deal also talked about working mutually. But the first gesture of mutuality was last week's meeting, well after the city had come up with its preferred solution.
Janine Bell, Auckland City's manager, transport planning, says last week's meeting was the start of the consultation process, and "we've given them a three-week time to come back to us so we can add [their comments] into our design process".
Mr Reid says the lack of prior discussion is disappointing "given that the cycleway is integral to the design of the interface between the mountain and the motorway" .
Transit's aborted road plan had been to drive the motorway through the northern face of the cone, creating a disfiguring sheer retaining wall up to 11m high. Auckland City planned to add to the vandalism by running a cycleway, cut into the side of the mountain along the top of the retaining wall.
The cone society's victory was to force Transit to redesign the motorway to avoid the worst of the ugly scarring. Auckland City responded by shelving its cycleway plans. Now it's dusted them off, modified them a little, and wants us to back them.
So much for the city's "volcanic landscapes and feature management strategy", which declares a mission "to protect, preserve and enhance" all parts of the Auckland volcanic field "and to prevent any further alterations to [its] physical structure and outline".
For Mr Reid, putting the cycleway in a sharp line across the north face "is almost like reinstating the retaining wall". A safety fence on the motorway side, and a higher stock fence to keep cattle on the mountain side of the cycleway, will accentuate the break in the "rounded face" trying to be achieved.
There are a variety of alternative routes, including streets to the south and the north, or along the railway corridor immediately north of the motorway. One of these should be chosen.
No longer is it acceptable to treat our volcanic heritage as waste land, or the easy option for such a project.
Officialdom now accepts it can no longer hack into a cone to build a road for cars, so why do they think it okay to carve out a 2m to 3m wide road for bikes?
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