We can all agree that keeping children safe in our community is paramount. However, using child safety as the excuse to justify narrowing Surrey Crescent to a single lane is simply an abuse of power.
There was never any congestion on Surrey Crescent until Auckland Transport shortened the traffic light sequence, narrowed the road, erected 118 fluro orange hit sticks, built asphalt humps and dumped concrete planter boxes over meaningless painted coloured fragments on existing parking spaces. All this without even bothering to repaint the original faded pedestrian crossing so critical for the safety of the Grey Lynn Primary school children. Parents are now forced to compromise their children’s safety, stopping in the middle of the road to drop them off. A dangerous dance that plays out twice a day before and after school.
In 2018, the Cohaus development commissioned a traffic report from Flow Transportation Specialist Ltd as part of their Resource Consent, it said, “In the section of Surrey Crescent between Richmond Road and Prime Road, for the five year period 2012 to 2016, a total of seven crashes were reported including three that resulted in minor injury only. The reported crashes are all low severity, appear random in nature, and do not indicate any specific safety concerns".
Auckland Transport then suddenly announced that there were major road safety issues outside Grey Lynn School opposite the new build!
Without any consultation or engagement with local businesses, apartment dwellers or the wider local community, Auckland Transport, Auckland Council and NZTA deployed their favourite new tool, 'Innovating Streets', a technique to disrupt the safe, smooth, flow of our roads under the guise of being more people friendly.
Despite all their failures - Queen St, High St, the City Rail Link, West Lynn Village, Henderson Town Centre, Karangahape Rd, Mt Albert and now Surrey Crescent, their Orwellian plan is spreading like a concrete cancer of lumps, bumps and humps in our city streets.
It is no secret that creating congestion is Auckland Council’s policy. They believe disrupting people’s ability to move around will force us to flock onto privately owned public transport.
We all know public transport in Waitematā/Western Bays is a shambles. No buses go to Westmere shops from Grey Lynn, they simply turn around at the Meola roundabout and head back to where they came from, leaving the young, the elderly and disabled with no way to access Westmere Village or to continue on to Jervois and Ponsonby Road.
Under CEO Shane Ellison, Auckland Transport has gone rogue, over spending and wasting our money on vanity projects like this, that are more about social engineering than child safety. Meanwhile local and multi-national infrastructure companies are laughing all the way to the bank, as these trials called 'Tactical Urbanism' get built and then demolished as public outrage grows.
As a local resident and small business owner and a regularly user of Surrey Crescent, I was appalled to find Sandy Webb of Auckland Transport directing traffic as concrete cutters screamed and the road gangs in high visibility gear looked embarrassed when we insisted they stop work destroying our neighbourhood.
All this proves is that Auckland is now a battle ground between the coneheads in local and central government and citizens who juggle busy lives and struggle to pay ballooning rate bills while bureaucracy turn our streets into a three ring circus.
Lisa Prager, Community Advocate, Save our Streets
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Published 3 September 2021