needs Agency and electric Quay Street Trams
By Joel
Cayford – ARC Councillor
Submitted
to NZ Herald – March 2005 (variant published)
Aucklanders
had a whiff of a clean Queen Street during the bus strike. Throughout the day
its air was delightfully free of diesel fumes, and quiet. Waterfront ambiance
ebbed a little deeper into Auckland city. People breathed a little deeper too,
walking a little further. The empty street attracted cars however, lots with
cut down exhausts shattering pedestrian peace, puffing their own emissions for
walkers to breathe.
Unfortunately,
Government delays in Warrant of Fitness exhaust tests, and slowness in clean
diesel regulation, will prolong this third world state of affairs. New Zealand
burns dirtier diesel than would be tolerated anywhere in Europe. And Auckland’s
waterfront wharves have become the dumping ground for cars failing overseas
emission standards. Some come fitted with air-cleaning catalytic converters,
but most are removed and replaced by thunderous free-flow accessories.
Cleaner
vehicle emissions and diesel might be on the horizon, but each day’s delay is
another day too many. And sadly, these changes alone won’t significantly
improve life for those walking in Queen Street. Auckland City Council has
decided this major pedestrian destination will continue to be used by cars and
diesel buses into the future, thus ensuring Auckland’s waterfront ambiance
stays on the other side of Quay Street.
Like other
big city waterfronts, Auckland’s Port transport systems have changed
drastically in response to technological and economic pressures.
Containerisation allows manufacturers to pack at the factory, not at the dock,
and trucks rather than rail are used for land transport. Large areas of land
may be needed for storage and handling of containers, but more traditional
dockside storage of bulk freight has moved to cheaper land. Auckland’s fishing
fleet has shrunk, its tourist fleet has grown, and its fleet of ferries are on
the increase.
Rationalisation
of surplus port land began with apartments on Princes Wharf, and the Viaduct
Basin development triggered by the America’s Cup. Sadly, poor design ensures
Princes Wharf is off limits to the public. Apart from a few bars and
restaurants its public spaces feel private. The Maritime Museum provides an
appropriately public, though pricey, pedestrian entrance to the Viaduct
development. This offers a café vibrancy downtown Auckland lacked. But
gentrification pressures exerted by the adjacent, expensive and substantial
residential development already restricts public events, and generates a club
ownership feel not present in Lisbon’s and Sydney’s more welcoming waterfronts.
A key
feature of Sydney’s waterfront design is its wide public accessibility by most
public transport systems invented: rail, monorail, bus, tram and ferry.
Wellington’s Waterfront, Stadium and Museum share similar public access
qualities. Recent public consultation by the Auckland Waterfront Liaison Group
attracted many submissions highlighting the need for transport systems to
facilitate public access to Auckland’s Waterfront and the amenities that could
be built there.
Land used
by the Port of Auckland was for industrial purposes. It was deliberately cut
off from the rest of the city by railway yards, warehouses, major roads, high
fences, and water. The task for public agencies is to integrate Auckland’s
urban port back into the physical, social, and economic fabric of Auckland
City. Any visioning should not treat surplus port land as an add-on. Waterfront
regeneration needs to be integrated and interconnected with downtown Auckland.
This is the
opportunity for Aucklanders to reclaim their relationship with the sea. The
waterfront’s location offers tranquility and space to balance the noise and
congestion of high-density city development. The historical buildings retained
in the Britomart precinct pervade a sense of the city’s trading past. These
experiences need to be physically linked, and not just by a pressured
pedestrian crossing across Quay Street.
Imagine an
open air Auckland Opera House on Queens Wharf and the Environmental Engineering
and Marine Studies Faculties of the University of Auckland in competition
winning architecture on cleaned up Tank Farm land. These facilities could be
accessible by modern electric trams typical of a self-respecting European city,
running on tracks across the Western Viaduct, past the Maritime Museum, linked
to ferrys, trains and buses at Britomart, and turning right up Queen Street,
carrying upwards of 7,000 people per hour in each direction, past Aotea Square.
This quiet,
electric powered transport would displace diesel buses and noisy cars, though
retailer freight access for vans and trucks would be permitted at certain
hours.
Auckland’s
iconic waterfront tram would run along Quay Street providing access to
Auckland’s Indoor Arena, and could loop from Wynyard Wharf to Fanshawe Street,
back into town. Transformed, Quay Street would be Auckland’s waterfront
boulevard, with tram services from Tank Farm to Mission Bay, and into the heart
of Auckland.
Visions are
great but they have to be paid for. Inevitably there will be pressure to build
more housing on surplus waterfront land. Downtown Auckland increasingly depends
on an army of unskilled workers, and it would be appropriate to develop
suitable mid-priced housing through redundant warehouse conversion. But
Auckland’s Waterfront land does not offer that opportunity. Waterfront living
in Auckland is for the wealthy.
Carefully
designed mixed development which ensures thriving street level retail, cafe and
boutique activity, combined with the 24/7 presence of local people coming and
going from their homes above, appears to provide the safe and economically
vibrant basis for a reinvented waterfront. Homeowner desires cannot be
permitted to displace popular waterfront activities and public development.
Auckland’s
downtown urban waterfront is certain to be the site of intense conflicting
pressures for redevelopment. If it is to serve a variety of social, economic
and environmental purposes, an institutional structure must be set up which
will consider the widest range of public values in the planning and management
of the whole development. A Waterfront Development Agency enabled to work with
both public and private enterprise has been central to waterfront regeneration
success in Amsterdam, Barcelona and many other cities. This is the way to
overcome Auckland’s institutional inertia and traditional patch protection.
What
Auckland is doing is not new. We can learn from other cities. In particular we
need to appreciate from the very start the importance of master planning for
transport systems, pedestrian mobility, water access connections, and linking
the waterfront deep into Auckland city. Only then will the vast promise and
potential of Auckland’s urban waterfront be fulfilled, and clean sea air waft
up Queen Street.