Editorial: Queen St tree plan flawed

The Auckland City Council appeared to think that, with people having had time to cool down over winter, there would be no opposition to the felling of another 70 trees on Queen St. Presumably it foresaw last summer's angry opposition being succeeded by a nodding acceptance of its long-term upgrading plans. It must now think again. The opposition to the council's new scheme may be less vociferous, if judged by correspondence to this newspaper, but it is no less hostile to council policy and no less merited.

Under the new proposal to create an "avenue" of liquidambars interspersed with groups of native trees, Queen St would be largely denuded of greenery for up to a decade. Seventy of the 77 trees between Wellesley and Customs streets would be cut down and replaced with 95 new ones. Twenty-seven of these trees are healthy, according to arborists, and some are more than 30 years old and up to 15m in height.

The most obvious objection to this proposal is the long period during which Queen St will be denied the ambience provided by trees. That suggests a skewing of priorities. While the council's desire to reinvigorate Queen St is commendable, would it not be best to regard the trees as fixtures, and to develop around them? Otherwise, there will never be a time when they are not at the whim of civic design.

Nothing is more certain than that council proposals for the street - and the grand design for creating a "word-class, 24-hour city" - will change considerably over the next 10 years. One need look only at the current plan, and the revisions to it as the varying demands of businesses, traffic and pedestrians have been calculated and reassessed. It is not stretching too long a bow to envisage a scheme for Queen St in, say, six years, that takes a vastly different view of the trees which the council now proposes to plant. Indeed, those trees may be compromised or condemned before Aucklanders have enjoyed the promised long-term bloom. As such, the destruction of the trees currently standing, particularly those robust enough to thrive in such an alien environment, seems, at best, shortsighted.

The council has invited further antipathy by excluding public input from the new plan, and saying there will be no u-turns this time. In the eyes of Mayor Dick Hubbard, people had their say during the outcry last summer. "They asked us for more trees and we are delivering on more trees. They asked us for exotics and we are delivering on exotics. They asked us for a boulevard of trees and we are delivering on a boulevard of trees," he says.

If the mayor were a boxer, he could charitably be described as punch-drunk, such is his apparent bewilderment about the renewed opposition. However, the concept put to the public in January did not mention that as many as 70 trees would be felled. It referred to removing trees in poor to average health, or trees likely to prevent pedestrian access or affect canopies. Further, it did not point out that Queen St would be practically devoid of trees for 10 years. And nor did it indicate that healthy specimens would be cut down. Indeed, Mr Hubbard pledged that healthy trees would not be removed from the thoroughfare. How, then, can he be surprised that people are unimpressed by the new plan?

In sum, Mr Hubbard and the council seem to have learned nothing from the summer debacle, and people's anger at what they perceived to be sham consultation. Now, they want non-notified consent, so they can start felling the trees as early as next month. Never mind the clear indications that their proposal is seriously flawed. The council must step back, encourage public examination, and give Queen St's trees the pre-eminence they warrant.