KEY POINTS:
Talk about asking the fox to redesign the hen house. Auckland City councillors have called on their bureaucrats to oversee a rethink of plans to build the $51 million Te Wero Bridge across the Viaduct Harbour.
They want the officials to consider, as an alternative, the restoration of
the mothballed, 1931 vintage "rolling lift" bridge that did the job perfectly adequately for more than 70 years.
The big problem is, it's these very same bureaucrats who have long dreamed of replacing the old bridge with a signature structure that would become Auckland's equivalent of the Sydney Opera House. They have their hearts set on putting up an icon.
To ask these monument-builders to come back to Earth and consider reviving the old Meccano-like bridge instead is unfair to them and to those of us who back this heritage option.
If you think I'm being unjust, take a look at the press release that followed the councillors' vote. It notes the first half of the resolution calling for a peer review "on the transport, urban design and amenity requirements, and navigational standards for Te Wero Bridge", but makes no mention of the crucial second clause, the one calling for consideration of the heritage alternative.
City development committee chairman Aaron Bhatnagar fell into step and was quoted in the press release as saying: "We will be spending a significant amount on Te Wero Bridge. We want to ensure we get the best value and the right outcome for the city and the Auckland region." These comments echoed earlier remarks on his blog, saying the winning design "looks great to me".
He seemed to echo his predecessor as chairman, Sam Lotu-Iiga, who when the winner was announced said the new bridge was "vital to the future success of the whole regenerated CBD waterfront" and would be "a dominant feature of Auckland's waterfront development for many years to come".
No acknowledgment here, by either politician or bureaucrats, that councillors had suddenly voted for a review of the whole project.
Maybe they didn't mean it. But if they are genuinely interested in a balanced assessment of the vintage alternative, the first thing the politicians need to do is to take control of designing the brief for the independent peer review. Top of that brief should be to consider the old bridge as an alternative to the new.
The council resolution required only that restoring the old bridge be "considered by officers and included in the final report". We already know how little regard the officers have for the neglected old bridge. We need an independent assessment.
Finally, the councillors should insist on seeing the unexpurgated report of the review panel, not just the officers' interpretation of it.
I feel sorry for the bridge designers. They entered a contest to build "a striking sculptural" lifting bridge, and while $35 million was mentioned, the brief was basically to hell with the price as long as it was "aesthetically world-class".
But what the politicians, past and present, should have asked before the contest was launched was, do we need such a grand four-lane road/cycle/pedestrian bridge, lifting or otherwise, as the main gateway into this maritime precinct.
The overriding vision for the reborn waterfront gateway "is of a world-class destination that excites the sense and celebrates our sea-living maritime history and Pacific culture".
Yet in June, the bridge-building bureaucrats unveiled a report that talked of the new bridge as a traffic bypass, funnelling North Shore and Ponsonby buses through the Tank Farm to avoid the Fanshawe St bottleneck.
It envisaged more than one bus every two minutes during the morning and evening peak hours and one every three minutes for the rest of the time. Just when there would be time for the bridge to lift and let boats through is anyone's guess. It also turned out that much of the funding for the bridge depended on its role as a throbbing transport artery.
The rest of the funding was to come from development levies. If there's a silver lining to the encroaching depression, it's that the funding base for this project is likely to be very shallow. Which provides a breathing space for everyone to ask is this the "world-class vision" we had in mind?
