Some comments for Auckland Transport on Project K and our open letter

This is a bit of a progress update for our open letter asking Auckland Transport to return to the consulted and support plans for the Karanga-a-Hape Station precinct integration project after their last-minute changes.

So far, we’ve had over 80 people and organisations sign on. Thank you to everyone who’s reached out, and if you would like to sign on please email us at: admin@greaterauckland.org.nz

We will be sending the letter next week.

For today, I’m going to do two things with this post.

First, I will explain why it is important that this project, even though it is quite small, is restored to its original plans.

Second, we felt it valuable to share some of the comments that we’ve received from people who’ve signed on to our letter. (These have been anonymised below.)

Why is this situation important?

I recall a conversation, shortly after AT first announced they were not going ahead with what was a highly supported pedestrian mall on Upper Mercury Lane where someone asked me, “Isn’t it a good compromise to turn it into a shared space now, and later turn it into a pedestrian mall once CRL opens?”

My response, was no. No it’s not.

On its face, this staged approach sounds fine, but it’s actually extremely problematic. When you enact any change in a city, it is far far better to use the period of turmoil it brings to enact the vision you want to see, rather than some halfway state that makes nobody happy.

We need a pedestrianised public square outside the Mercury Lane CRL station because CRL (the largest transport project in NZ at $5.5b) will cause thousands of people to spill out onto the streets. This will happen, and so the street needs to change to accommodate that. Project K had done the right thing – it aimed to achieve a vision of a pedestrian-friendly area, and the supported consulted plans would achieve this vision.

If you wind that back to a halfway point, you create a new status quo – which the same people who originally opposed you will likely demand to remain unchanged.

Simon Wilson, in his article last week about this whole debacle ($$$), had some great lines about this:

Mercury Lane will reopen ahead of the CRL opening, with the bollards permanently down. Once the trains are running, they’ll assess whether they need to apply what they call a “modal filter”: put up the bollards to stop the cars.

But, I said, this will allow traffic to re-establish the habit of using the street, and instead of creating a welcoming environment for commuters ahead of the CRL, they’re going to set up a dangerous one.

That’s exactly the opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing.

Burt responded that shared spaces work better than that and gave the example of Federal St, by Sky City. He couldn’t have chosen anything worse. Federal St is not a proper shared space, it’s a street for cars that doesn’t have clearly marked footpaths.

Additionally, this idea of a ‘compromise’ ignores the bigger picture – this is not the only time this has happened.

In fact, time and time again, people in senior leadership roles within Auckland Transport delay, undermine, and water down plans. Hayden Donnell’s article from 2022 in Metro about AT’s issues is an amazing look into this, and I cannot recommend it enough. But I want to extract this passage:

These managers are often described as a “layer of clay” obstructing progress. Sources inside AT say junior employees regularly put forward ambitious plans that meet strategic goals, only to see them suffer a “death by a thousand cuts” as they filter through the strata of management. “You’re working with middle managers, line managers, and executives. At each stage, the strategy gets watered down,” says an AT contractor.

Project K is a textbook example of this ‘clay layer’ at work. The project team has worked with the community, and developed a well thought out plan that will transform the area in line with wider strategy, community desires, and what will be the practical realities on the ground.

The team has also worked with the local community and stakeholders to make reasonable compromises to address concerns and realise peoples aspirations. It’s never going to be perfect, e.g. there might be a few loading zones on Cross Street which still need to be adjusted slightly, but the core of Project K was solid.

And then, like they have done time and time again, in comes senior management, this ‘layer of clay’, first with the pedestrian mall and now with the walkbacks on Cross Street, Canada Street, and East Street, to crush the wider vision of this project.

Since these last-minute changes have produced such a public uproar, what we could see happen next with Project K is Auckland Transport might look to do ‘redesigns’, to address the concerns of a majority who are angry they have been hoodwinked.

But if you take plans that are 10/10, then turn them into 1/10 plans, only to then ‘redesign’ them to be 4/10 plans as a ‘compromise’ – you are not actually fixing things.

Frankly speaking, this is what AT will probably try and do.

And this is the ‘death by a thousand cuts’, only this time we’ve blown it up to be far more visible.

Our letter asks for the restoration of the highly supported and consulted upon plans and designs. It does not call for a ‘middle-ground’, because the AT project team had already done the hard mahi required to implement trade-offs as compromise, while ensuring the core vision of the plan remained.

The 10/10 plans (i.e. the consulted ones) were the ‘middle-ground’.

Who knows how much time, energy, and money is being wasted because of this debacle, within AT and outside it. Yet right now, AT could reverse course, and just deliver the consulted plans for this project (which let me remind you is currently under construction right now).

We would happily support them in doing so, and defend them against the vocal minority.

I also know that, right now, people opposed to changing our city for the better will be pressuring AT to continue with their awful changes.

But there are many more people who, like us, would want to support AT in doing the right thing, because they wanted the original project.

And here’s what some of them have said

We want to reiterate why the original plan was so supported, why people are so concerned about these changes, and why AT should feel safe in returning to its original course. So we will be including these comments, along with others people have sent (all anonymised) as an appendix with our letter next week.

Here are some of the voices that AT needs to hear:

I’m a Mum with 2 school aged kids who regularly cycle or walk around the area and along cross street. 

Our apartment looks over cross street, and I’m horrified to think about what the chaos down there will look like, especially in the evenings on Sat or Friday when there are already a lot of drunk pedestrians and cars with less than sober drivers causing chaos. Refusing to make the street friendlier to pedestrians will definitely result in injuries or accidents during the busy night-time hours, not to mention the through traffic during the day.

The lack of transparency and subversion of the political process to satisfy a minority goes against what I stand for. The question I would be putting to AT is who are they more scared of legal action from, a minority or the broader public. I’m fairly sure there are a number of people willing to hold AT to account over this.

The K Rd district is where I live, work, play, and cycle, and I’ve been utterly dismayed at the progressive degradation of what was a great plan for my neighbourhood.

It is not only disappointing that safer and more attractive features are suddenly being jettisoned, but it seems highly irregular to materially change parts of the plan without further discussion or analysis. As a long time rate payer, user of public transport, roadways and cycle paths I am concerned that a process that seemed robust and transparent is flawed and open to manipulation by what seems to be a handful of individuals.

I fully support the original plans for AT’s urban integration of the station. I travel out west every weekend, and so informed by my field of study and personal lifestyle I believe any decision to roll-back on the original plans will negatively impact the social accessibility and thus my own use of the station.

While I am in the Otara Papatoetoe area, just the other day I was thinking how useful it will be to be able to get the train into town and get off at K-Road if I am heading towards a destination on Great North Road. I think Auckland Transport are seriously underestimating how many people will use the K-Road station as a means of getting bikes up the hill – this makes the cycle lane very important.

Project K provides a unique opportunity to capitalise on the City Rail loop and that should not be wasted

It challenges the mind that we spend $5b on a public transport system to then focus on cars for where people access it.

It’s such a a waste of time and money if sensible collaborative planning gives way to a last minute ill conceived patch up design that only one or two stakeholders support.

I am similarly hugely dismayed by AT’s U-turn on the fully consulted and agreed plan.

I currently work on K Rd, and bike into work from Avondale. Once the train station opens I will be either training in (on those rainy days) or biking in (on those beautiful sunny days). The change in design for the station affects me rain or shine, and I would love for the original plans to be reinstated.

I get that AT is being reformed, so maybe this stuff will finally stop. But if we want to ensure these reforms are effective and not merely some bureaucratic shuffling, this culture, system, and the way senior leadership have operated has to be actively and intentionally changed.

The only way to do that is to call it out, each and every time it’s practically possible to, and hope those shaping the reforms will see and understand what the core problems of AT are – because most of the folks in AT are actually pretty great, and anyone is capable of changing for the better.

For now, AT needs to do the right thing and restore the original Project K plans. If they do so, I promise I will be the first one to celebrate them for it, and will be the first one to stand up to defend them against those who do not seem to want a better city.

If you’d like to join me in asking for this, please reach out to add your name to our letter:

admin@greaterauckland.org.nz

This post, like all our work, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack!

Share this