KEY POINTS:
The long-awaited planning hearings into the redevelopment of the Tank Farm begin tomorrow and already the dreaded sniff of second-best is in the air. Doing the rounds is a copy of a transport assessment, commissioned by Auckland City, for the planned Te Wero Bridge, which clearly sees the area not as "a world-class CBD waterfront to be proud of" but rather, a new traffic artery out of the CBD to the North Shore and Ponsonby.
It envisages more than one bus every two minutes passing across the bridge in the two-hour morning and evening peak hours and more than one bus every three minutes in off peak time. The report talks about savings of up to five minutes from avoiding the congested Fanshawe St, although this saving could be lost if the new bridge happened to be up, letting a boat through, when the bus arrived.
In trying to meet the regional transport authority's mission "to deliver a world class transport system that makes Auckland an even better place to live," the boffins from Flow Transportation Specialists seem to have lost sight of the over-riding "vision for the Auckland waterfront [which] is of a world-class destination that excites the senses and celebrates our sea-living maritime history and Pacific culture".
With that many stinky, noisy, commuter buses planned to pass by, the only senses that will be excited will be those linked to the nose and the ears - and not quite in the positive way the spin-doctors are hoping for.
We're told the diversion of some North Shore services will reduce pressure on bus stops along Fanshawe St, the main route between the harbour bridge and the CBD. Ominously, routing some buses through the Tank Farm "will reduce the pressure on layout space in the vicinity of Britomart". Could this mean the intention is to lay over some buses down on the waterfront instead?
Now I'm not averse to a little compromise. The occasional bus from the North Shore or Ponsonby being diverted through the area is an eminently sensible way of getting people from those areas wanting to work or play in the bustling new precinct, to their destination. But what's being proposed here, is not so much destination traffic, as it is through traffic. It's exploiting the new development to avoid Fanshawe St.
Leafing through the various publicity documents from Auckland City and the development agency, Sea and City, promoting the redevelopment, there's not a bus to be seen in all the pretty visuals. The pictures are of broad wooden boardwalks, with pedestrians sharing the leafy green spaces with the odd cyclist and car. As for the proposed Te Wero bridge, it was promoted by Auckland City as "a landmark sculptural structure" which "will provide convenient access for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport between Quay St in the CBD and Jellicoe St in Wynyard Quarter". If there's any reference to it being the new short-cut for buses to the North Shore, it must be in such small print I can't read it.
The Tank Farm development is supposed to create a special place. You only have to wander down to what was once Queen Elizabeth Square in front of the resurrected Britomart train station, to see what happens to a special place when diesel buses are injected into the mix - the noisy, fume spewing buses that serve most of Auckland anyway. If the Tank Farm is to be anything other than another Auckland missed-opportunity property development, we have to try harder.
Some pine for a dedicated tram service, tootling around the area and even along the waterfront to Kelly Tarlton's and perhaps Bastion Point. Others talk of an electric bus service. With the first stage redevelopment concentrating on an entertainment area fit for followers of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, an emphasis on visitor-oriented public transport such as that sounds sensible. From the beginning it would stake out a claim for the area as somewhere special.
The timetable for redevelopment stretches out to the middle of the century. If we let this special place become just another highway for public buses now, it will take the melting of the Antarctic icecaps to shift them.
