No government money for fewer cars in Christchurch

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › No government money for fewer cars in Christchurch

Rikkitic

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#213884 17-Apr-2017 11:48

Don’t go to a National government with anything architecturally original or innovative. Cities in Europe and elsewhere have been experimenting for years with car-free inner-city precincts that are accessible only by public transport, walking, and cycling. These people-friendly areas where cars are banned are popular, with their lack of traffic, human scale, and intimate settings. Not in New Zealand, though.

According to RNZ, Christchurch Regeneration Minister Gerry Brownlee, who clearly has never walked anywhere in his life, is outraged by the lack of parking in the new Christchurch inner city plan. So incensed is he by the thought that he might actually have to consider exercise, that he is threatening to pull government funding from the inner city rebuild. “It’s absurd”, he is quoted as saying between mouthfuls, “I'm hearing all the time from people who are going to have lunch or coffee in the central city and simply can't park their car.”

This is clearly the stuff of National nightmares. Just imagine not being able to drive right up to the doorway of your destination. Picture a time when the building of more new roads is no longer seen as the answer to every transport question. Actually, this is probably the trend of the future, at least in every country except New Zealand. More and better public transport, fewer private cars, fuels from sources other than oil, uncongested cities.

But not, of course, if any of it means the Minister has to walk.

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#1765271 17-Apr-2017 12:17

Hey dude, are you from ChCh?

This is a popular topic at the moment.... inner city designers have certainly got the design wrong for a few of the shared streets (people/cars/bikes/buses) and the public are taking them to task for it. As for parking, the buildings will come but the on street stuff is dwindling by the minute which is not good for retailers/businesses nor the general public wanting to do a quick 'stop' in town (rather than having to find a building and plan well ahead about what they are going to do and how).

In time the parking buildings will get those long termers off the streets and there might be some balance but the insantity about the actual practicle real life use of the shared streets is what needs to be fixed and that I believe is what the minister is trying to talk about.

BTW, I dont vote for the minister or his party.

Oblivian

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#1765272 17-Apr-2017 12:19

It says parking. Not parking outside the premesis. Double edge sword. The latest carpark building opened houses 1500 cars. 2 levels taken up by the CCC. The new BNZ centre that opened, has 2300 people expected to be in it. Similarly with the hospital saga. It had a building for staff and visitor parking. Condemned, now its fight for yourself. (and apparently get mugged or ticketed from a distance away)

The maths isn't adding up with height restrictions on buildings meaning no internal carparks available for staff they hope to get back in. Its why the hospital park n ride exists, and is as popular as a cup of sick.

People forget not everyone is a standard office worker too. Couriers, Service people (I'm in that lump) and emergency requirements mean not everyone can walk or bike. (hell I would if I could but try making urgent server part swaps other side of the city on a peddly) But even if those that could do so switch to biking its a hazard presently and most would need parking on the outskirts to make use of it. And these new cycle lanes put a stop to that pushing things farther afield where people wont bike the distance from. Catch-22

tehgerbil

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#1765273 17-Apr-2017 12:20

Mate, that's bullcrap.

The Government used its own Earthquake powers to enact the 30km/h which allowed them to do so without any public consultation whatsoever. If it was all for more cars, why enact such a stupid damn idea?

It's been compounded by dodgy AF dealings by CERA though, they gave $600,000 to the team making the Crossing building to drop an entire car park level off their final plan for instance.

And the Council have also had a hand in, I swear to God someone there has shares in Wilsons - I mean they took away hundreds of car parks, and then when a poor nurse got assaulted with an armed offender the CEO himself proceeded to calmly say there was nothing they were going to do about it, and even admitted he knew about even more parks that were going to be lost in the coming days.

And that's just the hospital!

Tried going to the Museum lately? You have to drive around and around and around for at LEAST 10-15 minutes to find a park.

This is incompetence from Lianne Dalziel who's only ever coming forth to bitch about the 'mess the previous council left her in'.

She's been silent as a mouse on all the parking issues, seriously, she's utterly incompetent to run this city, or at least she's competently running it into the ground.

No, this is one of the very very few things that Chch people and Gerry can agree with - our Council and developers incompetence is costing this city dearly.

[Mod edit (MF): removed ad hominen]

PaulBags

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#1765274 17-Apr-2017 12:22

They already did a pretty good job of damaging Christchurch public transport, with a directive to increase the ratio of funding from fares routes were altered or cut altogether, with the result being fewer busses on the road and more overcrowding. They did well with arterial lines, but if you don't live on one - or need to take more than one bus to get somewhere - expect it to take 3~4 times longer vs private car. I never used to see the need, but now I'm very much looking forward to get my license.

Walking across our CBD district actually takes a fair bit of time, it's quite large. And when the shuttle did exist it could take longer than walking.

I'd love public transport to be an option, but it's just not. There's a lot of things we apparently can't fund that have a higher priority than shuttling rich people between expensive restaurants and bars for free - and the only reason poor people have to go into the cbd is to use the bus exchange, or the fancy playground.

afe66

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#1765279 17-Apr-2017 12:43

The government should have compulsory purchased all the land within the 4 avenues, held a world wide architectural competition and rebuilt the whole centre.

Instead by keeping the same layout as per earthquake the centre of town will stagnate as it was previously.

Before earthquake, parking was horrible so mall with their parking boomed.

Post earthquake with the same arrangement, the same problem persists.

Not really sure what any local government politician can do when central government keeps interrupting.

Central government is pro car and doesn't want pro public transport projects in other cities to spread to the only city Auckland.

A.

tehgerbil

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#1765292 17-Apr-2017 13:21

PaulBags: They already did a pretty good job of damaging Christchurch public transport, with a directive to increase the ratio of funding from fares routes were altered or cut altogether, with the result being fewer busses on the road and more overcrowding.

True! I'd forgotten that they'd introduced the Orbiter to run rings around the central city, while having as many as possible take the same route into town and back out again.

All while increasing fares and decreasing frequency and even cutting of the main trunk lines.

Then factor in allowing contractors to shut down main arterial routes for months on end (E.g Durham Street) and well.. You've got what you've got now.

MikeB4

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#1765294 17-Apr-2017 13:26

Inner city parking is essential to allow access to the businesses and shops. Then there is the issue of mobility.

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#1765312 17-Apr-2017 14:05

I won't necessarily only blame the Nats govt for the state of the country's infrastructure; the Helen Clark regime before were equally as short sighted in their development, say of Auckland's housing and transportation deficiencies.

In my experience, governments are only capable of a 3 year plan, but takes 5 years to execute them, by the time which they are 5 years behind the times. Longer term plans are worse. Any attempt for a 10 year solution takes 5 years of proposing, 5 years of consultation, 5 years of delay, 5 years of execution, leaving us 10 years behind.

JaseNZ

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#1765316 17-Apr-2017 14:12

The whole thing is a farce and is forcing business's to close due their complete incompetence in redesigning the CBD. Its all good on paper but the practical reality of it is something very different. Such a massive opportunity to turn it into a world class CBD instead they just stuffed it.

The amount of new buildings that are going up that are just sitting with for lease signs on them because nobody wants to go into them due to the nature of the transport infrastructure in the CBD.

Opportunity lost.

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Talkiet

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#1765318 17-Apr-2017 14:36

Rikkitic:

Don’t go to a National government with anything architecturally original or innovative. Cities in Europe and elsewhere have been experimenting for years with car-free inner-city precincts that are accessible only by public transport, walking, and cycling. These people-friendly areas where cars are banned are popular, with their lack of traffic, human scale, and intimate settings. Not in New Zealand, though.

According to RNZ, Christchurch Regeneration Minister Gerry Brownlee, who clearly has never walked anywhere in his life, is outraged by the lack of parking in the new Christchurch inner city plan. So incensed is he by the thought that he might actually have to consider exercise, that he is threatening to pull government funding from the inner city rebuild. “It’s absurd”, he is quoted as saying between mouthfuls, “I'm hearing all the time from people who are going to have lunch or coffee in the central city and simply can't park their car.”

This is clearly the stuff of National nightmares. Just imagine not being able to drive right up to the doorway of your destination. Picture a time when the building of more new roads is no longer seen as the answer to every transport question. Actually, this is probably the trend of the future, at least in every country except New Zealand. More and better public transport, fewer private cars, fuels from sources other than oil, uncongested cities.

But not, of course, if any of it means the Minister has to walk.

Dude, disagree all you like, but that sort of immature, personal attack is disgusting. Next time calm the F down before responding publicly to something. It badly weakens any credibility you might have had as been able to present a reasonable argument.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Rikkitic

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#1765335 17-Apr-2017 15:49

Talkiet:

Dude, disagree all you like, but that sort of immature, personal attack is disgusting. Next time calm the F down before responding publicly to something. It badly weakens any credibility you might have had as been able to present a reasonable argument.

Cheers - N

For reasons that may or may not stem from our colonial history, we seem to have a culture here of being excessively deferential to politicians and other ‘authority’ figures. There have even been ‘anti-satire’ rules that tried to restrict the freedom to make fun of parliamentarians.

In spite of this, even in New Zealand no-one has ever tried to censor a political cartoonist for satirising the physical characteristics of a politician while making a point. Caricature is all about exaggerating (and poking fun at) physical characteristics, as well as gestures and behaviour. It would be poor form, as well as pointless, to do this to a private person merely going about his or her own daily life, but politicians, by the very nature of what they do, are another matter. I would seriously argue that making fun of them is both a necessary and important part of democratic political dialogue. If they can’t handle it, they don’t belong in politics and should look for another job.

I was making fun of Brownlee’s corpulence as a satirical device to criticise him for threatening to withdraw funding from Christchurch, while also commenting on National transport policy. You don’t have to agree with me, or with the way I did this, but it is a valid and legitimate use of political caricature, which has a long and noble tradition. Britain’s Spitting Images is a classic example. There are many others, though regrettably not so much in New Zealand.

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Dunnersfella

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#1765336 17-Apr-2017 15:57

The point to remember when comparing your efforts at satire with those of Spitting Image and other such satirists...

Is...

They're funny.

Geektastic

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#1765338 17-Apr-2017 16:06

I must say that the sooner Queen Street and Lambton Quay are pedestrianised the better.

Talkiet

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#1765340 17-Apr-2017 16:08

As Dunners fella said, they're being funny, you're either really NOT funny, or you're just being insulting. In either case, I'd stick to your day job.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Rikkitic

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#1765342 17-Apr-2017 16:11

You are, of course, fully entitled to your opinion.

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