Auckland Transport doubles down on diluting Project K
Last Wednesday, Greater Auckland sent an open letter to Auckland Transport about last minute U-turns on designs for the area around Karanga-ā-hape CRL station. Our letter was co-signed by over a hundred people including many local residents and businesses, Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick, and organisations such as the City Centre Residents' Group, Bike Auckland, Campaign for Better Transport, and more.
(We also provided some more context for the widespread disappointment in a follow-up post.)
I've been waiting for an answer from AT before writing an update, but it's been a week and we are yet to receive a direct reply. In the meantime, there has been an indirect response... in the form of a very public doubling-down on AT's backwards move.
In the last week Auckland Transport’s director of infrastructure and place, Murray Burt, has popped up in the media to offer explanations. Yesterday, AT sent out a Project K newsletter update. And at least one person who individually contacted AT got an email in reply (see here).
All of AT's communications have defended their drastic last-minute changes to this project. For example, here's what the Project K newsletter said:
Project design
Some aspects of the project design have recently been discussed in the media and among concerned individuals. Here's what you need to know:
Auckland Transport developed changes to the design in response to feedback from business owners and residents during and following public consultation on the design.
We could have done better at managing this process, and explain the rationale for proposed changes more clearly.
AT must balance the needs of visitors, residents, and business owners - creating streets accessible by all modes of transport.
The design includes significant pedestrian priority while maintaining smooth access for vehicles and maximising the benefits of CRL.
Where vehicle access has been added, features have been included to maintain pedestrian safety. We continue to optimise the design, balancing support for the original design with the specific local feedback.
Future improvements will be possible after City Rail Link opens in 2026, including footpath and accessibility enhancements on Cross Street. We will continue to involve stakeholders and the Local Board in this work.
This smooth, faux-reasonable language is flim-flam. The thing is:
There is no justification for AT to unilaterally throw out a design supported by the public and by its co-funders
This represents a considerable breach of trust, as well as a flouting of the strategies and principles AT is meant to be guided by.
Senior leadership shows a complete misunderstanding of how to make a good city, to the point where you have to wonder who's calling the shots here.
We'll dig into all three of these issues, but let's start with the mention of co-funders in point 1: AT's actions could risk this project's funding.
The total cost of Project K is approximately $18.3 million. Around a quarter of that, $4.5 million, comes from the City Centre Targeted Rate, which is conditional on alignment with the City Centre Masterplan and Access for Everyone. The investment of this targeted rate is guided by the City Centre Advisory Panel. And from my understanding, they have not been consulted on any of AT’s unilateral last-minute changes.
So yeah...
On Trust and Consultation
As previously covered in detail, the Project K team consulted extensively on this project, revealing strong support for their plans. In 2023, AT's team held community workshops to shape the plans. And while there were minor issues to resolve, the overall design was well supported. Additionally, the original designs matched the guiding vision outlined in Access for Everyone (A4E) and the City Centre Masterplan (CCMP).
This was a good project.
And it's currently being gutted by senior leadership in Auckland Transport using a small number of voices who are vehemently opposed to the core direction of the project as an excuse.
We've obtained a response from AT to someone who contacted them about the changes to Mercury Lane and Cross Street. AT justified the Cross Street changes by saying:
The changes to the design on Cross Street have been developed following feedback from businesses located on the block between Cross Street and Karangahape Road, and the Karangahape Business Association.
From our understanding, only two businesses are pushing for these recent changes. We've seen nothing along these lines from the Karangahape Road Business Association – not from KBA, or via AT, or in the media.
Meanwhile, our open letter attracted over 130 people and organisations. And as AT itself reported, hundreds of people engaged in the public consultation in 2023:
We received 349 responses to our online survey, 391 individual comments on our Social Pinpoint site, 45 postal responses, 11 email submissions, and one in-person submission.
The majority of people loved this project and the direction it was going.
So why would senior leadership at Auckland Transport throw away a funded and popular design that fits the official strategies for the City Centre?
I want to be clear. Businesses and residents have understandable concerns. These can be addressed. George Court residents want access to their building, so AT's original design enabled that with retractable bollards and loading zones, while keeping Mercury Lane as a pedestrian mall. Cross Street businesses want loading zones for delivery and servicing, and again, the consulted designs provide for this, with minor adjustments always possible.
These genuine needs and proportionate design responses should never have led AT to essentially ditch the whole Project K design and purpose.
The current outcome of the changes is not, as AT, puts it, a “balanced” design. It prioritises through-traffic in an area that should prioritise walking, cycling and local access. AT is literally pulling out an existing protected cycleway on East Street, to enable two-way traffic.
If AT refuses to return to the consulted plans, I would ask why anyone would trust future engagement from Auckland Transport. If senior leadership can pull the rug from under a project while it is under construction, what is the point of spending time and resource on asking people what they want?
On design and the failure of imagination
What's conspicuously missing from AT's responses and media comment so far is vision. Specifically, the core vision for the City Centre, which is underpinned by strategies that should be on every desk in the building.
The City Centre Masterplan, plus its transport aspect Access for Everyone (A4E), specifies clever traffic circulation plans that remove busy through-traffic from the city, while maintaining access for delivery and servicing.
The plans put people first, creating places Aucklanders will want to go to. We already have great localised examples of how this works: Te Komititanga square, Freyberg Place, Vulcan Lane – tantalising tastes of the overarching vision for the whole city centre.
The Karangahape Precinct is scheduled for the same glow-up. As the Karangahape Road Plan 2014-2044 lays out, the CRL works will result in:
a more pedestrian and cycle friendly, accessible and vibrant place that caters to the needs of the community and is a prosperous part of the city
And as the 2020 CCMP notes: Cross Street will become a vibrant secondary laneway linkage in the future, complementing the main street status of Karangahape Road.
So what gives? How has AT so badly lost the plot?
Conspicuously missing from all of AT's responses so far is any mention of Access For Everyone, the underlying movement plan for Project K. Have they forgotten it exists? Is this why the last-minute design changes they're trying to ram through so drastically unbalance the priority, away from the people who'll be pouring in and out of the new CRL station, and back towards pouring non-local traffic through these narrow streets?
Look at some of the claims the latest comms are making:
“AT must balance the needs of visitors, residents, and business owners - creating streets accessible by all modes of transport”.
But the already-supported designs provided access for all modes of transport! What kind of transport planning “balances” a busy station plaza with free-flowing through traffic? Have these people travelled anywhere else in the world?
“The [re]design includes significant pedestrian priority while maintaining smooth access for vehicles and maximising the benefits of CRL.”
But the original designs enabled local vehicle access while prioritising the thousands of people who will be coming from the CRL station. AT fails to mention their latest move is drastically reducing pedestrian priority on Cross Street.
Besides, "smooth access" for which vehicles? They're also removing cycleways on East Street and replacing them with sharrows to enable two-way traffic, binning existing infrastructure and putting people on bikes in the same space as rat-runners.
“Where vehicle access has been added, features have been included to maintain pedestrian safety. We continue to optimise the design, balancing support for the original design with the specific local feedback.”.
What does that mean? It means they're replacing funded, best-practice infrastructure with paint, as confirmed in their reply to the individual who enquired about Cross Street:
“Speed humps have been replaced by other traffic-slowing measures (surface painting and narrowing the entrance to the street), due to concerns about damage to goods during deliveries”
Oh so 'generously', AT is offering to create a deck over the horrid "trench" alongside the parking building. But they've decided not to expand the southern footpath on Cross Street, so they can keep loading zones. The original plan was to have loading zones on the north side of the street – where the major businesses are. So far, there's been no reason put forward why this suddenly doesn’t work.
But cheer up, folks - here's the 'good news':
“Future improvements will be possible after City Rail Link opens in 2026, including footpath and accessibility enhancements on Cross Street. We will continue to involve stakeholders and the Local Board in this work.”.
Sure, the original designs on Cross Street and East Street were always intended to be no-dig low-cost solutions. However, nowhere does Auckland Transport explain what's preventing them from immediately implementing the funded and well supported design that would remove through-traffic and create the future precinct now. Low-cost, cheap-and-cheerful solutions can have a huge positive impact, and Project K's design was set to do exactly that!
Ya know, the design that was a result of engaging with stakeholders and the Local Board in 2023...
So what's the justification for ditching the agreed design?
Auckland Transport's latest update says they “could have done better at managing this process, and explain[ed] the rationale for proposed changes more clearly” – while failing to explain how the changes deliver the agreed outcomes for this area.
AT has never explained why they are prioritising through-traffic despite all the technical work showing that's illogical in this particular space.
AT has never explained why they are prioritising a few loud people over the hundreds of people who support this project and who engaged in good faith – let alone the hundreds of thousands of people the CRL will bring to the area.
AT has never explained how this last-minute watering-down delivers the politically-agreed, publicly-supported, partly CCTR-funded vision for the area.
The reason they haven’t, is because there is no justification for their actions.
In an interview with Simon Wilson a few weeks ago under the headline "Auckland Transport sabotages its own City Rail Link plans at Karanga-ā-hape Railway Station", the senior leader in AT who is driving these changes said Federal Street (presumably the block alongside SkyCity) is a good example of a ‘shared space’. As Simon Wilson stated: “He couldn’t have chosen anything worse. Federal St is not a proper shared space, it’s a street for cars that doesn’t have clearly marked footpaths.”
If that's the vision now for Mercury Lane and Cross Street, it's not good enough. It's not a "balanced plan", it's a return to rat-runs.
What's most worrying is that such senior leaders have such little understanding of both transport and place, let alone how to earn and build trust by delivering on promises. Is it any wonder that public confidence in AT is so low?
Project K can still be saved... if we keep up the pressure
The most insidious part of AT’s response to the individual's email was this:
“We will provide an update on the design to the Local Board and the community next month, and will not make further design changes after that, as construction is already underway.”
How conveniently this glosses over the fact that unilateral design changes have already been made while construction is already underway! One rule for me and another for thee. In other words, AT hopes to lock in these awful changes and prevent a return to the original designs. This is egregious nonsense, and people can see right through it.
These firm protestations tell us we've made a dent. AT has received a lot of feedback on this, and is under a lot of pressure to return to the plan. We believe this project can still be saved. With our open letter in AT's hands and still awaiting a reply, there is still plenty of room to write personally and let AT know you want the original design.
Bike Auckland has a great guide on who to contact – we recommend you also cc in Auckland Councillors Richard Hills (who has been pushing to return to the original plans) and Andy Baker. Keep your emails polite, but be resolute because we need AT to return to the original course - especially given concerns around funding.
If they get away with evaporating the soul of Project K, what else is next?
This post, like all our work, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack!