Brian Rudman: V8 fumes addle city council brains

COMMENT

Before V8 street race mania hit Auckland City, you could usually rely on the accuracy of the council's press releases. But the latest race offering seems to have been penned under the influence of petrol fumes - or worse.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm of the opinion that it's outrageous for bureaucrats to jump into bed with an applicant for a controversial event while pretending to be engaged in a consultation process with you and me over the merits of said coupling.

Monday's media release, headlined "8700 northern suburbs vehicles main key to make V8 International run smoothly" is a masterpiece of misinformation.

It begins: "One of the major keys to managing traffic during the running of Auckland's V8 International race in April 2006 involves the closure of the Fanshawe Street motorway on and off ramp. Traffic modelling shows this is achievable and will involve deterring 6am to 1pm travel by only about 8700 vehicles from the northern suburbs."

It says that the co-operation of these commuters means journey times won't change, adding "the numbers whose co-operation is required is substantially less than the 155,000 two-way 24-hour harbour bridge vehicle trip figure previously reported".

But the traffic impact assessment report released on Monday as part of the joint resource consent application says nothing of the kind. Nor does the summary and explanatory document prepared by the city's traffic safety manager, Karen Hay.

The reports do not say that if 8700 cars remain garaged each morning of the four days everything will be hunky dory. The 8700 is the theoretical estimate of cars that will have to remain off the Victoria Park viaduct going south to avoid that bottleneck lurching from "saturation" into "congestion". Congestion being gridlock.

But keeping 8700 drivers off the viaduct is not necessarily going to save Auckland. Karen Hay says preliminary modelling shows that on race Friday there will need to be 18,000 fewer vehicles on the motorway, "comprised of up to 9000 vehicles each way".

She also points out that not only motorway traffic will have to stay away. Traffic from other areas of the CBD "will generally need to be significantly reduced".

The traffic impact assessment says two of the worst-affected areas will be Fanshawe St, which will close, leaving 43,000 weekday drivers and 33,000 weekend drivers to find new routes, and Victoria St, used by 27,000 drivers daily.

It notes that alternative harbour bridge on and off ramps have little spare capacity and other arterial and motorway routes are close to capacity in peak periods. To maintain existing journey times from the North Shore, peak period trips to the CBD from the North Shore would have to drop by 40 per cent and trips between the northern and southern motorways would have to drop by about 20 per cent.

Then there will be the fans coming into town: 30,000 on Friday and 60,000 on both Saturday and Sunday. The organisers are predicting the incoming petrolheads will come by bus. Sure they will.

Traffic chaos has always been my biggest worry, but the fate of Victoria Park is also alarming. The city council says the private occupation will be only of "short duration". But is banning league players and the public from a public park for one month a year acceptable?

I'm also alarmed at the support for butchering many of the park's protected plane trees. Any twig or branch hanging lower than three metres will get the chop to make way for temporary garaging. How unnatural it will look afterwards.

There's no mention of oil and fuel spillage on to the roots either, despite the park becoming a temporary fuel storage and garaging site.

Of course, to the publicity flaks, I'm in the minority. And they've got the figures to prove it. They claim 65 per cent of local residents are positive. They're basing this on 165 returns they've received from a circular sent to 6000 residents. Funny thing is, the questionnaire doesn't ask any such question. The closest are two asking how this event will affect you and whether you have any more questions about the race.

Pass the petrol bottle quick.