Brian Rudman: Bridge fume-trap looks like stab at pedestrian asphyxiation

COMMENT

It will be reassuring for Grafton Bridge pedestrians to discover that when it becomes a bus-only corridor, ambulances will escape the other-traffic ban.

It's always nice to know that when you collapse from carbon monoxide poisoning halfway across, an ambulance will be able to whip you along to Auckland City Hospital.

Just 18 months ago, Auckland City spent about $1 million sheathing the old landmark bridge in Perspex anti-suicide barriers.

The aim was to trap potential jumpers within the confines of the bridge. The downside was, the enveloping curved walls also trapped the noise and fumes of passing traffic.

Now, not just content with making the bridge walk a totally unpleasant experience, councillors seem set on a policy of pedestrian asphyxiation.

When the bridge becomes a two-way bus lane, pedestrians and their cycling friends will be allowed to stay. With promised peak-time throughput of about 1500 buses a day it will be like walking or cycling up a belching exhaust pipe.

Despite this, the report presented to councillors somehow was able to claim cyclists would benefit from sharing the bus lanes.

Personally, I've never been able to accept Auckland traffic planners' belief that buses and cycles are natural partners. That requires the faith of one who believes lions will one day lie down with lambs, and sharks graze peacefully with seals.

Of course it's also part of the lip service in favour of the pedestrian and the cyclist that has become de rigueur in any roading or transport report. To road planners and builders, it's their very own little treaty clause, to genuflect towards, then ignore.

The provision of pedestrian access across Grafton Gully illustrates my point.

Less than six months ago, then Transport Minister Paul Swain launched a draft strategy document called "Getting there - on foot, by cycle." He pointed out how 30 per cent of car journeys were less than 2km, and said how much healthier we'd all be if we walked or biked instead. To say nothing of how less clogged the roads would be.

But a few days before, he'd opened the fancy new Wellesley St extension which sweeps under Symonds St to join up with Grafton Rd and the Grafton Gully motorway.

Sadly it came with not a footpath or cycleway in sight, even though it could be the perfect pedestrian route in and out of the Queen St gully across to the Domain, the museum, Auckland City Hospital and Grafton.

Pedestrians and cyclists were left instead with the long and hilly route via Grafton Bridge. Now, as added disincentive, they're expected to share it with fume-belching buses.

The Central Transit Corridor, of which the Grafton Bridge link is part, is a last-ditch vestige of a once grand plan involving light rail and underground tunnels.

Like buying reject trains from an Australian rail museum to keep the crumbling commuter service going last year, it's part of Auckland's piecemeal stumble towards a solution to the public transport crisis.

The fall of the Christine Fletcher regime ended the flirtation with light rail and marked a stagger back to the cheaper option of busways.

The Fletcher regime plan had a combined light rail-bus corridor from Britomart station up Queen St to Wellesley St, across Grafton gully on its own bridge then, under the new hospital - with a stop there - then on to the western rail line at Boston Rd. The present council opted for buses, abandoning Queen St for fear of asphyxiating shoppers with diesel fumes, and routing the buses up Anzac Ave instead.

There was talk of incorporating bus lanes into the new Wellesley St interchange, but Transit New Zealand got tired of waiting and went ahead without them.

That left Auckland City with the less-than-perfect Grafton Bridge option. The experts say this bus-based plan will get east-bound commuters in and out of the city more quickly. It's also cheap and flexible. But it relegates the social costs to the afterthought department.

Meanwhile, patients in the new hospital complex and Grafton's residents are being told to like it or lump it. As for cyclists and pedestrians, the message is clear. If you value your life, catch a bus or drive.