Mixed reaction to call for car-free inner city

Nine councillors have supported a call for private vehicles to be removed from Wellington’s central city in the next four years, as part of a move towards a fossil fuel-free city centre by 2025.

But on the city’s streets opinions are mixed, with cycle advocate Alex Dyer applauding the move, and the Chamber of Commerce hesitant to put hopes into another yet transport plan.

Councillor Tamatha Paul’s notice of motion, which was signed by eight other councillors and sent to chief executive Barbara McKerrow yesterday, requires council staff to formally report back on the idea no later than September this year. Details are scarce at this stage but it would require the council to commit to a fossil fuel-free central city by 2025 and investigate how the policy can be applied.

According to Paul, the area would include the Golden Mile (Lambton Quay, Willis St, Manners St and Courtenay Place), Cuba St and surrounding streets, Dixon St, Victoria St, and even Vivian St – which serves as the State Highway 1 route for eastbound traffic heading towards the airport.

But as part of a state highway, jurisdiction of Vivian St falls under Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, not the city council.

Co-chair of Cycle Wellington Alex Dyer was excited to see the idea being explored. ‘‘The benefits are amazing – and it is not like it is foreign to anyone,’’ said Dyer, who works at Stuff.

Malls were already an accepted structure as hubs of shopping and culture. ‘‘Let’s treat the whole central city as one big mall.’’

More space for people to eat, sit, rest and ‘‘be people’’ would hopefully make the place safer and more family-friendly. Amid recent concerns over personal safety in the city, ‘‘I can only assume more diversity of age and user groups is a thing to help that heal’’.

But Malthouse bar owner Sean Murrie said he would prefer to see the process done in stages. ‘‘I think you are better to do some areas, like Courtenay [Place] and see how it works.’’

Pedestrianising the area would go a long way towards changing the culture of the place – and it was not just about increasing police presence.

‘‘At the moment it is a late-night party zone. During the day, I don’t think it is the jewel people think it is.’’

‘‘The benefits are amazing – and it is not like it is foreign to anyone.’’

Alex Dyer

Cycle Wellington co-chair

Isabella Cawthorn, of low traffic neighbourhood project Talk Wellington, said removing cars created space for what was important. ‘‘It is about the human exchange, and movement of people and goods should serve exchange between people.’’

The space private cars took up made them ‘‘a difficult thing to justify if you were designing a city from scratch’’.

It would be easy to implement a rule that opened the streets for goods deliveries to supermarkets and other businesses for an hour or so outside peak pedestrian hours. Places like the Netherlands and Oslo were examples of successful carless centres in action.

But Stephen King of Inner City Wellington, which represents residents of the centre city, was sceptical.

‘‘These are the kinds of things you need to be considering but there are a lot of things that you have to look at infrastructure-wise that have to be in place for it to make any sense.’’

A less traffic-intensive centre city would make it easier for residents to get around but might lead to more problems. ‘‘If we want to get out to the satellite suburbs, like Kilbirnie or the airport, that would be harder.’’

Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive Simon Arcus said it would be more effective to provide positive incentives for carless transport and to focus on the existing plan, Let’s Get Wellington Moving. ‘‘We have a plan; it is not working very well but the solution is not to create another plan.’’

While there was a discussion to be had around where cars should and should not be, banning private vehicles outright would be ‘‘another punitive measure on travellers’’. ‘‘If you are going to remove them, you have to provide incentives.’’ These might include a hop-on-hop-off bus around the central city, and integrated ticketing between all modes of transport.

The nine councillors to sign the notice of motion were Paul, Fleur Fitzsimons, Jill Day, Rebecca Matthews, Teri O’Neill, Iona Pannett, Laurie Foon, Jenny Condie and Sean Rush. Paul said the final proposal would depend on council staff research, and what was deemed to be practical.

There are already plans in place to remove private vehicles from the Golden Mile through the $6.4 billion Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme.

Banning private vehicles outright would be ‘‘another punitive measure on travellers’’. Simon Arcus

Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive