Manners Mall’s busway gets bigger
By DAVE BURGESS – The Dominion Post
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3008162/Manners-Malls-busway-gets-bigger

An $11.1 million plan to rip up Manners Mall and turn it into a bus-only road has hit a snag – the bus lanes will have to be wider and the footpaths narrower than those first proposed by Wellington City Council. Opponents say the footpaths may have to be even narrower yet to accommodate bus wing mirrors, though the council says that is untrue. The hiccup has opponents of the plan requesting that the council extend the public consultation period.

Council documents previously released state that the two-way bus lane would be six metres wide, with footpaths on either side spanning five metres. However, the council’s urban development and transport director, Greg Campbell, now says the bus lanes would be 6.5m wide, with footpaths reduced to 4.75m.
“If you are being picky, then the figures in the consultation document aren’t exact, but it is not designed as a construction planning document,” he said. But Richard Tingey, from Levin, said the misleading information was a serious oversight.
“It’s only Kiwi fairness that the city council should extend the time for submissions by a month to November 30.”
But Mr Campbell said the figures used by the council were “indicative” and the consultation period should close as scheduled on Friday.
“The key issue here is can a busway and wide footpaths be accommodated [in Manners Mall] and the bottom line is yes it can.”
Members of lobby group The City is Ours have measured the width of buses and claim the bus lane may have to be as wide as 7.1m to accommodate wing mirrors. Mr Campbell said that figure was wrong. “It is a bit dangerous for amateurs with tape measures to go out and measure stuff – 6.5m is the standard we use for bus lanes.”

Abrakebabra restaurant manager Stewart Zaya was “really disappointed” with the entire project.
“I don’t know who came up with the idea but it is really pathetic and they should be using the $11m to do other projects.”

The Manners Mall area, between Cuba and Victoria streets, stopped being a street used by vehicles in 1979 when the council created the mall.
The council also recommends lower Cuba St be transformed into a shared space for pedestrians and vehicles, with a speed limit as low as 10kmh. It would feature super-wide pavements for outdoor dining and street furniture. There has been considerable opposition to the proposal. A Save Manners Mall Facebook page has 4730 members, while two petitions have a combined signature total of more than 3300.

ACTION THROWN OUT
The Wellington man campaigning to stop a plan to run buses through Manners Mall, has had his High Court case to halt the proposal thrown out. Benjamin Easton, a beneficiary, could not come up with $8000 to show he could make a contribution to the legal costs of Wellington City Council in the event that he lost his case against the council. He had until last Friday to pay the money or show how it could be paid. His application for an injunction against the council has now been struck out.

Unclearly (to the wandering public / tourist at least), it then zips through Manners St, through Manners Mall also, doesn’t quite leap up Cuba St despite the temptation, and then somehow reconnects to Courtenay Place at Taranaki, whence it continues to the Embassy and dies, violently, in a massive Harley pile-up, outside the Deluxe.

Presumably the Manners Mall redevelopment is meant to clear all that up some how. I believe the Council want a nice coherent path for tourists and shoppers to follow. Presumably, they want the tourist to wander through Manners, along with the buses. They’ll probably look at similar paving aka “follow the yellow brick road” for the Golden Mile to visually signal the ‘main’ route.

However, the new route pedestrianised and enhanced along lower Cuba and along Wakefield will bugger all that up. No doubt top architects and urban designers are working on it as we speak.

I think it will definitely take bold moves to redirect such an established urban route, I don’t think what is being offered, or even the simple alternative of an extension of Cuba Mall, is going to achieve this. The city will simply become less legible as a result of said interventions.

A bold move might be to slice the MFC-side edge off the Town Hall (it’s just offices and loos isn’t it?, and aside from the actual auditorium, a bit of a dog of a building in its current form anyway) and make a proper entry to the square there. Then have each of the buildings that surround the square actually open into the square in a much more publicly active and permeable way – including the gallery… Consider pedestrianisation of Mercer Street (or at least a redesign to make it the obvious legible continuation of the Golden Mile, and have much greater priority for pedestrians at the Victoria and Wakefield entries/exits to the Square (which are the real weak points of any plan to include Civic Sq in the Golden Mile.

But I think you have overlooked the point of the lower Cuba upgrade. I’m convinced that it is part of a plan to get Welligtonians connecting to the sea and to the Civic Square much more, although the pinch point between the MFC and the Town Hall is a major stumbling block. If they really want it to work, they need to have more going on in Civic Square – some shops in which to buy lunch at the very least, and vast tracts of outdoor seating and restaurants as well unless they want it to remain moribund.

Thus, as Manners all is pretty crap in terms of design quality (except as a pedestrian transit space), poorly maintained and the rest of it, I have no real problem over its demise.

A replacement pedestrian mall on lower Cuba really isn’t going to work unless there is considerable investment in creating a legible and high quality pedestrian environment between it and the Willis/Lambton part of the Golden Mile – especially given how the city’s retail environment is rather established along its current path. That pinched exit from Civic Sq. between the Town Hall and the Fowl House certainly isn’t up to it, and I just don’t think that Civic Square itself currently has the vitality to be that route. While this is a chance to integrate the Sq into the Golden Mile at last, without demolishing either the Town Hall or MFC, and introducing greater mixed use into the environment, there really doesn’t seem to be much point.

Which of course leaves the Mercer/Wakefield route (which seems to be indicated above), which, lets face it, is currently pretty average. This would take some time before the natural urban processes caught up to support any ‘design’ effort to create a pleasant environment that provides a successful replacement link in the Golden Mile.

A far easier, and cheaper, option would be to ensure that the new Maner’s Mall is well designed, supporting not only public transport, but pedestrians, and existing businesses as well, so that the transition is rather less grand an intervention. I’d have the ex-Mall for buses only, and retain the existing route through lower Cuba Street for private vehicles. This would reduce the amount of Dixon traffic that crosses Cuba Street in the above schema. Closing of lower Cuba only to increase traffic at that part of the existing Cuba Mall would seem a very short-sighted gain to me…

The truth is though that it’s a pretty tired and ugly space to be in at present and the bricks are failing and the seats and trees never worked and actually Athfields entire scheme failed dismally. The real question will be if they can make a shared space (peds AND buses) work. Questions arise such as kerbs or no kerbs, and whether bollards and asphalt will be an improvement on what is there now