Brian Rudman: Overarching is fine - if it's for verandas

COMMENT

It's nice to think that the bureaucrats are listening. In April when Auckland City unveiled its draft plans for a $23.4 million tart-up of Queen St, it was full of "overarching strategic objectives" such as reinforcing "the north-south linearity" and recognising "the cultural significance in the streetscapes".

But, as I wrote at the time, it said nothing about the one overarching truth of Auckland life - that it often rains, and that when it does, Queen St verandas are about as effective as a rusty colander.

Announcing the revised version of the draft this week, project manager Mark Kunath acknowledges that in a city "where it rains one day in three", people want to walk from one end to the other without getting wet. As a result, the new plans offer improved pedestrian shelter.

"This will require us to work with property owners up and down Queen St."


Mr Kunath and his team are right to put shelter high on their list of priorities.

Who in their right mind, after all, would choose Queen St over the air-conditioned, car-friendly mall alternative, on a wet and blustery day, when you know a trip down the Golden Mile risks running the gauntlet of water pouring down on you through derelict verandas, and muddy water squirting up your trouser legs from loose paving slabs?

The good news is the wobbly red paving slabs are to be replaced by bluestone paving. Anything has to be better.

As for the water from above, a good start would have been to order - not "work with" - property owners to ensure that existing verandas are watertight. Surely, some part of the building code or a by-law requires this.

Slapping a code violation on a slack landlord or two might have a salutary effect on them and other offenders, to say nothing of drying out stretches of Queen St overnight.

And the recommended exclusion clause on weather protection outside heritage buildings should get short shrift.

Why should Town Hall patrons, for example, have to get soaked dashing up Queen St to a concert because some heritage fundamentalist has decreed that a veranda is verboten for reasons of taste. Forbidden to pedestrians, ironically, but not to motorists who have parked in the civic carpark below ground on the other side of the building. For them, a fine glass canopy links the Town Hall with the carpark exit.

The same silliness can be found outside the BNZ facade near Fort St and outside the Britomart station.

If Paris's historic Louvre can survive the erection of a giant glass pyramid alongside, then Auckland's ye olde relics can live with some user-friendly, glass-covered ways.

The rest of the revised plans contain little to get over-excited about.

The proposal to reduce traffic lanes to one each way has sensibly gone. Why change something that works perfectly well as it is?

There's also a knee-jerk call for more native trees.

With the kauri forest in the Queen Elizabeth Square disaster zone looking like a sad parade in a displaced persons camp, and the struggling tree ferns in Wyndham St, a symbol of arborist mind over plant matter, I would have thought the planners would have learned their lesson.

I'm all for the promised bright white lighting, especially if it floods the footpath as well as the roadways.

Having improved the environment, there's also the small matter of access.

It's all very well organising a party, but what if people decide it's too hard to get to it?

Bureaucrats were sceptical of the free City Circuit electric bus when it was proposed by the CBD lobby group Heart of the City.

It went ahead despite them and is hugely successful, carrying 1.1 million passengers in its first year.

More buses running the length of Queen St then looping back downtown are an obvious extension of this service.

They're more likely to entice people downtown than any specimen tree - native or otherwise - or fancy paving stone.