Brian Rudman: Look out for slips in hazardous inner-city thoroughfare

A police-commissioned survey reports that drunken teenagers, dangerous drivers and the homeless make central Auckland streets a scary place for the nervous nellies among us. You'd better add "flying eggs" to that list.

Yesterday morning I was standing at the bus stop, mind in neutral, when something flashed past my leg followed by an odd explosive noise. Seeing nothing odd on the shelter behind me, I was about to put it down to a brainstorm, when I noticed a car had suspiciously slowed just past the stop. I looked around and there, under the seat, were the shattered remains of an egg - a miserably small egg to be sure - but an egg.

By then the car was pulling away and the number plate unreadable. I decided it wasn't personal. The only person I've wronged this week was expat businessman Doug Myers, who I erroneously knighted. I doubt that would have upset him and I'm certain he wouldn't be seen dead driving around in an aged Jap import with a carton of reject eggs.

Still, as far as feeling safe on the streets, it could have been worse, I could have slipped over in Vulcan Lane.

Seems Auckland City officials have noted an outbreak of slipping and sliding on the lane's old cobblestone pavers since opposition erupted to their plans to replace them with blocks of bluestone.

Until now, the worst safety crime officials could pin on the old cobblestone was that "gaps in the pavers have created trip hazards".

In the latest report, dated September 22, we learn that people are "slipping over" as well.

I'm not certain where this slip problem came from. Perhaps the authors have got themselves muddled with the results of the most recent round of consultation which records that among the most common reasons for opposition to the officially desired bluestone paving, was that "it is slippery". In other words, most respondents saw bluestone as the slip-prone surface, not the existing paving.

Call me suspicious, but it's hard not to see officials' latest plan for Vulcan Lane as one last sour grapes attempt to get one over their opponents - who have really won.

Unkind? Then how about this from an internal memo of last November, released under the Official Information Act to my colleague Bernard Orsman in August, in which CBD project leader Jo Wiggins noted prior to the so-called consultation process about Vulcan Lane that "we should establish our preference and not present to stakeholders anything we don't want".

Since the revolt against the ripping-up of the existing 40-year-old cobblestone paving erupted in July, there's been a steady, if reluctant, backtracking by the officials.

The latest report by Wiggins admits that "the level of opposition, particularly to the use of bluestone (basalt) paving, was greater than the level understood through the consultation process and the project team did not listen to or respond to the views and concerns raised as well as it could have".

She notes "the general consensus of people in the lane is that they want it restored using existing pavers or something similar in order to keep the existing look and feel. The key issue is how to achieve high quality whilst achieving the notion of 'restoration' ... "

It's the "or something similar" which has the lane dwellers up in arms, and I sympathise. It reads as though if we officials can't get our bluestone, then we're going to make damn sure you troublemakers don't get what you want either!

The officials say the old pavers have to go because they're not expected to "last the distance". But they admit, when asked, that no strength-testing of the existing pavers has been undertaken.

Earlier, the official line was they had to be removed en masse because you could no longer get replacements. That was enough to get the original manufacturers, Ross and Brian Scarborough, on the phone to say they still had the moulds and could make as many as needed. They claimed they'd been built to last and "would never wear out".

A stroll down Vulcan Lane would back that up. Yet the city officials are set on pursuing "the notion of restoration".

Why seek the notion, when you still have the real thing?