It’s been one hundred and twenty days since the City Council elections and progress has been lacking. Issues from the election campaign trail remain live and problems unanswered. Shelly Bay, traffic congestion, ageing infrastructure, housing, and the continued closure of buildings in the CBD due to earthquake issues, all are in no better state and some are worse.
The Council voted this week on something to do with congestion charging, in what is possibly the most confusing forum the city has seen in some time.
Wellington City Council will now not ask the government, as it had been about to, whether it could investigate congestion charging in the city. Any debate on Wellington actually getting congestion charging will be for another day but it will ask the government to look at ways it can pay for infrastructure.
Tragedy, comedy, and bureaucracy as council meeting turns interesting
Congestion charging is a contentious issue, and it seems that some of the Councillors had not done their research on its potential benefits and impacts. If they had, they would have wholeheartedly voted in favour of the idea.
Why? Not because congestion charging is the answer to traffic issues, but because it would give the Council another potential lever to draw on in the distant future.
And distant future it will be because congestion charging costs millions to design and years to execute. In more advanced cities with more mature councils that have implemented congestion charging they found that a) it took a minimum of five years to plan from inception to first delivery and b) that it required excellent public transport, preferably rapid transit, to make it work.
That means that congestion charging must be a minimum of ten years away given the Council record on this stuff and the fact it is inexorably tied to “Let’s Not Get Wellington Moving Any Time Soon.”
So, it should have been a no brainer for everyone to vote on this one.
That activity this week has been the only thing of substance that the Council has done in the last one hundred and twenty days, it’s not a great start. It’s also a good example of what we can expect from Council meetings in the future.
If we go back to Andy’s 150-day plan, then he’s only got a month to complete a tonne of work. So far, he’s completed approximately 5% of his list. Just 5%, and frankly, those completed items were given at the time of writing.
We are heading backwards on several key issues.
Shelly Bay is getting downright nasty behind the scenes, and the Council is right in the middle of the entire mess. We are likely going to see this explode back into the public arena in the next three months with documentation that I have viewed, putting an entirely new spin on the entire issue.
Local councillors, despite being repeatedly asked their opinion, have vanished. Councillors Free, Rush, and O’Neill are nowhere to be seen and nor is the Mayor, who campaigned on (literally) Shelly Bay. New revelations that are likely to come out soon are going to have Councillors and Mayor scampering around the place; you can be sure of that.
Traffic has got worse. Between road works, road closures, a poor bus system, a poor highway network, lack of alternative transport options, and a general inability for the Council to pull any levers to assist, the city is quietly grinding to a halt.
Traffic post the holiday break is now at all new highs at certain places in the city, you guessed it, motorway to the airport, and growing worse. It was common to see 45 minutes plus traffic jams on that route before Christmas, that number is closer to 50 minutes now and traffic jamming in off-peak far more common.
Sarah Free and Jenny Condie are the Councillors in charge of transport as portfolios, and both, in my opinion, are failing to display the leadership we need and the communication we demand, in the area.
People have been warning for years that the infrastructure is creaking, ready to self-destruct and that we’re not putting enough money into maintaining it, let alone allowing for growth. Sure enough, the city has had several failures, “bad luck” according to the Mayor, which have seen harbour and coasts polluted and no fixes in sight.
As we know, when one part of a complex system starts to fail, it exerts pressure on other parts of the system, and you often end up with a domino effect that causes increasing failures until a total collapse occurs.
The Council just isn’t communicating on what is a significant disaster to the city and our natural environment, with many, many roll-on consequences occurring, including traffic jams and impact on local businesses. Sadly, there is no “wastewater portfolio”, so there appears to be no one who can be held to account.
That leaves it to the Mayor, who has said: “it’s just bad luck.”
Not good enough.
Housing is at peak madness in the city with no sign that it will slow to normal levels anytime soon. There are levers that the Council can pull to help with this, but the Council seems to content to ride the crazy train rather than do anything about it.
Part of the plan was to set up an Urban Development group of some kind, which I think won’t have any power to make a difference regardless, but, still, nothing has been forthcoming about this. This portfolio belongs to Sean Rush who seems more content to do handstands and cartwheels than get things moving.
We know that homelessness is increasing in the city and Fleur Fitzsimons, who holds the social housing remit, doesn’t appear to have had much success in that area.
Climate change is the task of the younger members of the Council, O’Neill and Paul, who have been noticeably silent. Climate Emergency was at the top of the agenda at the end of last year and now, like a lot of placards and promises, appears to have been relegated to the Council basement, doomed to die a slow death.
And let’s not even talk about public transport, which had many plans heralded during the election and absolutely no progress of any substance since.
It’s a poor start to the triennium if nothing else; Councillors could be more present, engaged, and communicate about what is going on as opposed to the endless feel-good selfies and social media posts that perhaps show they’ve not managed to move out of electioneering mode and into doing mode.
Inside Wellington 
On the money Ian in every regard. Although you forgot to highlight the terrible cost of party politics over what is best for the city. The actions of the Labour Party councillors in killing off any further debate about congestion charging were irresponsible at best. When will voters stop Party voting and simply elect the people with Wellingtons best interests at heart?
We have already seen one Labour councillor blame everything on previous administrations after only three months in the role. A role I might add thst came with a 14% salary increase. To do what?
Another long serving councillor was absent from the congestion vote. This happens to be someone with a track record of playing both sides but always backing down and going with the status quo. This councillors seems to always go missing when the heat gets turned up. Obviously couldn’t stay at the meeting for a controversial vote and be publicly held accountable. Couldn’t even give a proxy vote. His constituency must be overjoyed at the sterling representation they get.
As for the rest well apart from Nicola who does take a public stand on issues eg Victoria University, and Ionna who is frequently outspoken, all we seem to get from the rest are pointless selfies. A selfie is not an achievement.
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