Councillors and council officers are forever going to public meetings to receive bad advice from angry people who mostly don’t know what they’re talking about. Hayden Donnell asks why. In Takapuna last week, Mayor Phil Goff, councillors and council officers stood in front of a packed meeting and got yelled at. They’d committed the crime … Read more
A protest against the relocation of 15 mature trees from Quay St to nearby parks is continuing to prevent work on the cycleway extension. Jolisa Gracewood and Max Robitzsch of Bike Auckland sigh deeply, and explain how we got here. Having ended 2017 with a story about the opposition to the Grey Lynn cycleway, we … Read more
There are protest signs all over Grey Lynn, but who do they really represent? Jolisa Gracewood and Max Robitzsch present the case for better bike riding and good planning in Auckland’s inner west. Decades from now, we’ll look back on 2017 and say: that’s when it changed. That’s when Auckland reclaimed its urban mojo, stared … Read more
Auckland Transport is busily wrecking the suburbs of the city’s inner west. Simon Wilson takes a good hard look at the plans – and at the protests about those plans. Just look at what Auckland Transport has done to the West Lynn shops. A new bus stop sits right in front of a pedestrian crossing, … Read more
After the disappointments of West Lynn, Simon Wilson proposes some principles to help the council with its suburban town planning. The possibilities for Auckland are no better expressed than on Great North Road: that wide slow slope down the ridge from Karangahape Road to St Joseph’s, the views across to the upper Waitemata and to … Read more
The council has been remaking the West Lynn shopping village on Richmond Rd in Grey Lynn, putting in bike lanes, calming the traffic and, they say, enhancing the shopper experience. What, asks Simon Wilson, could possibly go wrong? You can’t laugh. It seems pointless to cry. But Auckland Transport (AT) has just spent a couple … Read more