Today is a big day for the neighbourhood. Almost exactly a year after Auckland’s Pt Chevalier-to-Westmere improvements began, the road cones are being packed away and the streets – subject to finishing work in the New Year – are opening again.
The improvements, a decade and multiple iterations and consultations in the making, started only after the extraordinary rains of 2023. Meola Rd, at the centre of the route through Pt Chevalier, subsided so badly into the rubbish dumps it was built over in the 1950s that the road surface shattered into jagged pieces. It became indecent for a handful of councillors to try to block them.
Work started after last year’s general election. Had the contracts not already been signed, it would surely have gone the way of the fix for Warkworth’s dreadful Hill St intersection, which has been cancelled because, according to Transport Minister Simeon Brown, the plans contained “at least five new speed bumps” and three sections of cycleway.
Brown hinted that a revised design with no provision for walking and cycling might fare better under the general policy statement on land transport he introduced last year.
There are not, in fact, any “speed bumps” in the vetoed Warkworth design, nor any in our neighbourhood’s works. They are raised pedestrian crossings, and there are enough of them in Pt Chevalier to give Brown nightmares. Previously, there was one pedestrian crossing on Meola Rd, near the primary school – where the volunteer monitor had been hit by cars twice in recent years. Now, roundabouts included, there are seven, including where Western Springs College students were previously expected to make a run for it to get to and from their bus stop.
It is markedly easier to cross the road now. But it’s more than that. The crossings have actually changed driver behaviour: cars don’t travel as fast and drivers now expect to stop when they see people at crossings. In a neighbourhood with three schools, a large retirement village and a disabled population, this is a good thing. The streetscape is vastly better and – in a suburb with possibly the highest rate of cycling commuting in Auckland – there are finally bike lanes.
Not everyone agrees. Although most residents have found the year of street closures and endless digging wearying, but now welcome the results, a significant minority in the local Facebook group perceive impending catastrophe in every standard safety feature. Yet the crossing points were largely where they are now: which is to say, the places where people want to cross the road. The disruption being experienced by objectors is essentially that they are now obliged to think about walkers and riders.
At a time when the government has vowed to build Roads of National Significance, most of which could come in around the $3 billion mark, the $29.3 million spent hereabouts is small beans. The irony is that the 50% government contribution is a holdover from the Key government’s long-gone Urban Cycleways Programme. The new bike lanes have funded the road rebuild.
Auckland Transport and its contractors have done a largely admirable job with the engineering. The raised crossings (technically “Swedish raised tables”) are less onerous than the ones that have vexed people in West Auckland, and the complex project is being delivered ahead of schedule. AT’s communication – especially about what is happening with its own bus services – has sometimes been less admirable. It will also need to commit to proper remediation of local streets torn up by a year of detours.
But here we are, the national exemplar of an urban design philosophy that has been all but outlawed. The culture war against walking and cycling that Simeon Brown has embraced will doubtless rage on. And it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to get to the butcher’s shop.
