No charges for ARC's bridge pair

Two Auckland Regional Council chiefs will not be prosecuted for joining a mass protest crossing of the harbour bridge, even though the police say everyone who did so acted illegally.

Superintendent John Kelly, the Waitemata road policing manager with responsibility for motorways, has told a meeting of the Auckland Regional Transport Committee that none of the 2000 or so people who crossed the bridge on May 24 did so lawfully.

"I feel compelled to say that none of the people who walked across the bridge did that with the sanction of the police or the Transport Agency," he told fellow committee members.

Committee chairwoman Christine Rose and regional council chief Mike Lee earlier said they had walked on the bridge.

But the said they believed the agency had bowed to public pressure and had authorised the police to allow the protest crossing.

Mr Kelly's statement to the meeting followed a commendation by Ms Rose to the police for being "very amicable" on what she said was a great day of celebration for pedestrians and cyclists who had been denied access to the bridge for 50 years.

Asked yesterday whether the police would charge Ms Rose and Mr Lee, Mr Kelly said he accepted their explanation "that they didn't know what had happened up the front" of the bridge protest.

But Mr Kelly said police were still examining video images in considering whether to prosecute some in the front line who forced their way on to the structure.

A group of cyclists is understood to have outflanked police who had been holding back pedestrians on the Curran St on-ramp, at which point officers had to break their lines to rush to the main motorway lanes to slow down traffic.

"Our whole function was to try to make the whole event as safe as possible for everyone concerned. When people started running out into live traffic lanes among cars doing 80km/h we had no choice but to shut the motorway to save those people from their own actions."