Letter to the Editor
Wellington LIVE – One Network

Dear Editor,

Last Week I had my one-on-one meeting with the WCC officers who are tasked with the delivery of the Courtenay Place leg of the “Golden Mile” project.

While I am totally opposed to the removal of private cars from the street, I had hoped that there would be some positives in the design. Unfortunately, there are not!

After 10s of millions of ratepayer dollars being spent on designing this project over the last 6 or 7 years, we are left with a design that suggests our city planners either have no idea of the logistics of what keeps our city running or just simply don’t care and are incompetent.

This does not deliver any positives to the city, let alone the business community who oppose it and will struggle to survive the 3 years of construction and is unlikely to meet any of the project’s supposed objectives.

The cycleway/scooter lane weaves amongst the pedestrian area, creating a real likelihood of conflict between pedestrians and lane users. Awful for pedestrians and city safety.

The time savings achieved for public transport are largely achieved by removing 2 of the most popular bus stops along with reducing the appeal of riding the buses.

Added to that is that nowhere for emergency vehicles to pull over, and busses will be backed up behind fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, etc. whenever there is a callout. Not great for a reliable public transport system!

With 2 loading zones in each direction along the whole length of Cp on either side, which is massively insufficient for the number of delivery trucks that need access to the street, diesel trucks will have to circle down Wakefield Street repeatedly until they are fortunate enough for a bay to become free. Carbon emissions perhaps!!!

Need a tradesman? Forget it. No provision was made.

Wakefield Street will become gridlocked with all the cars that currently use CP forced into Wakefield St. Adding congestion rather than solving transport issues.

I’ve listed 13 disastrous design flaws.

1. Cycle/scooter lane runs through the pedestrian zone all the way along Courtenay Place. This creates a huge likelihood of conflict between pedestrians and the lane users which will undoubtably see injuries to public. …. Extreme safety risk 
2. Narrow bus lanes with very little room for error. No medium strip for people crossing the roads safely. (Bus drivers hate this plan) 
3. In the event an emergency vehicle is required (which is quite regularly) …ie fire engine (false alarms and real fires), ambulance and police… there is no room for these vehicles to stop other than in the bus lanes, meaning the buses on our main public transport route will be backed up and delayed for long periods of time. 
4. In the case of a fire call out in Allen Street, which will see a minimum of 3 fire trucks attending, the fire trucks will need to reverse on to Wakefield Street to exit as the street is blocked off to Courtenay Place and is not wide enough for 2 trucks to pass each other. 
5. In Blair St. there is no turning area for private vehicles, yet they are unable to exit on to CP. (There is also a disabled car park ear marked for the exact place cars would need to turn around to make things worse) 
6. There are 2 loading zones in each direction for the entirety of CP! With so many deliveries happening at any given time this is so far below sufficient. Currently loading vehicles use car parks when the loading zones are full- which is often! With the amount of delivery vehicles that need access to CP businesses for deliveries this will see diesel trucks circling around and down Wakefield Street repeatedly until a loading zone becomes free! Carbon emissions???? 
7. Distance from loading zones to some businesses will make delivery of bulk items extremely difficult and time consuming (even once you eventually can stop). 
8. No provision for plumbers, electricians, refrigeration repairmen, air conditioner servicemen, signwriters, builders, laundry providers, rubbish trucks and other tradesmen that need close access to businesses due to the equipment, often very heavy, that is required to keep the businesses running and to allow the councils building WOF requirements to be met. With the limited parking that remains, where can they go?
9. Taxi and Uber pick-ups and drop offs have not been allowed for in an appropriate way considering the volume used in Wellingtons entertainment area. (Safe access and good accessibility is vital to ensure confidence to come to CP.)
10. No bus stops in Courtenay Place between Tory Street and Taranaki Street! Whatever the Reading center becomes it will involve a lot of people. St James theatre has a lot of patrons on show day…….no bus stop in this extremely popular area is ridiculous.
11. All the traffic that currently uses Courtenay Place, as well as the circling delivery trucks will gridlock Wakefield Street (one of the major thoroughfares across our city). This will see the route around the bays backlogged further. NB. The council are also looking to put bus lanes down Wakefield and along the Quay! 
12. Uber Eats is a major source of income for many restaurants. No sensible provision for how they access restaurants to collect orders. 
13. A pedestrian island linking the Embassy theatre to Courtenay Place has a pedestrian crossing through a bike lane. Once again, it is a probable safety issue for pedestrians. 

While those who never come to CP may think “Big deal it doesn’t affect me” it is worth noting that our council’s 49% funding of this project is at best $70 million.

This is ALL borrowed money and means that every rate-paying unit (whether you live in Tawa, Karori, or Seatoun and come into town or not ) will be paying $55 every year from here to eternity in interest-only payments to cover this debt. It impacts every Wellingtonian now and in the future.

Please pass this on and contact your local councilor to protest. We need to stop this insanity.

Nb. Apologies for the quality of the photo but it was taken on my phone. (They don’t want people to know what they are in store for!)

Karl Tiefenbacher
Advocate for Wellingtonians
karl4wellington@gmail.com