Rudman's city: Not enough street in that sandwich

By BRIAN RUDMAN

For a while yesterday I succumbed to the fantasy that inner-city retailers had finally twigged to how much we customers hate their pavement-blocking sandwich boards.

Walking along narrow little High St, normally one of the worst trouble spots, there were so few that you could actually pass someone without having to step into the gutter. Even the usual clutter outside the major Queen St arcades seemed thinner. To me anyway.

However, Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney was not so sure the end was anywhere near nigh.

Curiosity aroused, he went for a quick spin to check out my report. He rang from outside the Strand Arcade to burst my bubble. There were 11 sandwich boards lined up in front of this little mall and another 30 or so within a 40m radius. "I suspect there are no fewer."

Not yet, anyway.

But I hope the city's regulatory committee will endorse the Hobson Community Board's recommendation and ban the boards totally at its mid-June meeting.

That the present anarchic situation has been allowed to develop unchecked is something of a disgrace.

A survey by Mr Swney's organisation reveals that of 589 inner-city sandwich boards, 61 per cent broke the bylaws.

The rules stipulate that the boards can be a maximum of 60cm wide, have to be at least 2m from the shop front and no closer than 40cm to the kerb.

Given that High St's footpaths are not much more than a metre wide in most places, few, if any, sandwich boards should be there.

Other rules have also long been flouted with impunity. There is supposed to be only one board every 10m of street frontage. There is supposed to be a maximum of five boards outside the entrance to any mall or arcade. Go to any and you are likely to count more.

Most nights on my way home I have to clamber around a Wilson Parking sandwich board at the corner of Wyndham and Albert Sts to reach the crossing buzzer. There are supposed to be no boards within 2m of any road corner or intersection.

Just why the city council has failed to police these rules escapes me. In similar bylaw breaches involving noise regulations, the excuse has been how costly it is to mount a prosecution.

My response to this cop-out has always been the old justification for public hangings - that they discourage the others.

I do draw the line at hangings, but my bet is that one well-publicised fine or prosecution in the matter of a sandwich board would clear the rest pronto.

To an extent that has already been proven.

The recent disappearance of boards from High St was not totally an illusion of mine brought on by the high-octane coffee from our new office machine.

Their removal began following a nudge given to offending retailers by council compliance officer Chris Barratt.

He tells me that as part of "general monitoring" he visited High St a few weeks ago "to tidy it up."

Whatever he did, it seems to have proved my point.

In March, planning and regulatory committee chairwoman Juliet Yates declared it was time to act on "visual pollution."

Enforcing existing bylaws would have been a good way to start. Instead, in the case of sandwich boards, it was tossed back to community boards.

The board overseeing central Auckland duly banned them.

But that was not good enough. Next month it has to go back to Mrs Yates' committee for approval.

After that, who knows? More consultation? Advice from sister cities?

While this goes on, a more practical solution springs to mind. Get a street-cleaning truck and process up Queen St, removing any law-breaking sign.

It's done with wrongly parked cars stopping the traffic flow. Why shouldn't sign boards blocking pedestrian flows get similar treatment?

That would get most of them. Then when the ban is finally passed, the rest could be cleaned up.