Proposed road safety improvements in St Heliers last year caused a backlash from locals. Photo / Greg Bowker
Proposed road safety improvements in St Heliers last year caused a backlash from locals. Photo / Greg Bowker
The long-running battle to remove 40 car parks for new pedestrian crossings in St Heliers is over after Auckland Transport gave in to local anger and a political roasting.
"You have turned a quiet suburban village into a seething mass of anger," one St Heliers resident, George Richardson, told AT chief executive Shane Ellison at the height of last year's backlash.
Today, Ellison told the Herald the way AT went about engaging with the St Heliers community was not right, but rejected a suggestion of an arrogant culture at the council-controlled organisation (CCO).
In a media release, AT said the original plan had been revisited "following the negative response from hundreds of St Heliers locals over a proposal to install 12 raised pedestrian crossings in the village, losing over 40 car parks".
Auckland Transport chief executive Shane Ellison. Photo / File
Network management manager Randhir Karma said AT had worked with community representatives to shape a new proposal to better reflect the needs of the community and meet "our safety objectives".
Ellison said AT expected the safety benefits from the latest proposal to be broadly in line with the original design.
He said AT had learnt two important things from last year - you cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach for different communities, and AT "got ahead of ourselves" when it should have talked earlier with the residents and business associations.
AT dug a hole for itself last year when it tried to implement safety improvements in the seaside village without properly consulting locals, who suspected the moves were a cover for getting cars off the road.
More than 600 people, many of them elderly, packed a public meeting in April last year and booed loudly when they heard Ellison was a no-show.
The stoush raised wider issues about the consultation practices by the council-controlled organisation (CCO) and claims of an arrogant culture.
Mayor Phil Goff told AT it was not a "dictatorship" but accountable to the people, while Orakei councillor Desley Simpson said poor communication and engagement is at the heart of why so few people have a good word to say for the CCO.
Artist's impression of St Heliers village improvements. Image / Auckland Transport
Mike Walsh, the acting chairman of the St Heliers Residents Association, said at the time nobody liked AT or admires them for what they do.
"Most organisations attempt to deliver what their customers want. I don't think Auckland Transport believes it has a customer and certainly doesn't behave like it does," he said.
Today, Walsh was pleased with the latest proposals, saying they mean the village can continue to be a convenient place for locals to use and businesses can remain viable.
"We have pretty well got what we wanted," he said.
"The need for raised crossings was supposedly based on traffic accident evidence. We disputed that.
"The accidents recorded were low in relation to the traffic volumes, were mostly not serious, and in our view, those that were serious would not have been prevented by the new raised pedestrian crossings in the village," Walsh said.
Mike Walsh and Peter Jones were concerned about the original road safety improvements in St Heliers. Photo / Greg Bowker
St Heliers Bay Business Association chairman Peter Jones, another critic of AT's original plans, today was "grateful" to AT for listening.
Simpson said AT had changed the way it goes about public consultation and taken steps to ensure they are more open and transparent.
She was pleased to see AT piloting a new process in St Heliers, saying in the past "too often AT said they were consulting and they weren't".
Under the latest proposals worked on with the community, there will be four new zebra crossings, resurfaced footpaths, a widened and lengthened shared path on the seaward side of Tamaki Drive, and some bus stop changes to reduce bus fumes for outdoor diners.
Feedback on the proposals is open from today until November 2.
