Mayor Little and the new Wellington City Council are off to a good start on one issue – the fencing of the waterfront. To the credit of the last Council, one of its last decisions was to reject by a majority vote an officers’ recommendation to spend $7m fencing the inner harbour adjacent to Queen’s Wharf.
Oriental Bay Residents Association, in a written and oral submission, pointed out that the officers’ advice contained no substantive analysis of the safety benefits of the expensive fencing versus the much cheaper and aesthetically pleasing benefits of additional lighting, ladders, life buoys, alarms, signage and, when there are higher risk events such New Year or Matariki, employing and deploying safety staff and temporary fences. There were just naive statements that people had, sadly, drowned and that fences would reduce that – at least in the area proposed to be fenced.
The officers’ paper noted the drowning deaths over the years but didn’t note that most (of the few) were in areas from the railway station to Clyde Quay not proposed to be fenced, and that coroners had identified significant other contributing factors.
We were suspicious that the $7m was just the start and then many millions more would be requested to finish the job.
Quite simply, the analysis was poor.
Safety is important, but not at an uncapped price. If that were true the road speed limit would be 15km/h and/or all the city streets would be fenced from traffic. Sadly, many more people are injured and die on the city streets than drown in the small area proposed to be fenced.
The decision not to fence wasn’t a rejection of the importance of safety, but an endorsement that there were smarter and more effective ways to achieve it.
Our submission didn’t have the courage to request the removal of the temporary fencing near Te Papa – we didn’t want to push our luck. So to see the decisive action to remove that fencing is an appreciated bonus.
Mayor Little has shown sound, balanced judgement in endorsing the prior Council’s approach.
Paul Ridley-Smith is President of the Oriental Bay Residents Association.