What about business loading zones and people with mobility issues and others who might need general transport?

Yeah, so they, part of when we, you know, do these changes, we want to enable that, right? So this is what you kind of call that essential, access, right? So, but that is not, we don't enable that when we just let, you know, anyone drive through, right? You do that by having those special zones.

A lot of the plans were to do it around things like Wellesley Street.

There's some places on Elliott Street, you know, for pickup and drop-off and that kind of thing.

So, yeah, That's quite different to general traffic movements.

Do you understand where Heart of the City is coming from with people maybe wanting to get closer to those venues and being able to drive and the station is near the Civic and the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre? Yeah.

I'm not sure.

I don't really understand where they're coming from, right? For example, if you want to go to, say, Civic Feather, there's a great car park under Atia Square, right, where you don't actually need to go through Queen Street or Wellesley Street to get to.

care less about the heritage of the city than their own sort of views and neighbourhood and house prices but I think there's probably a strong argument to be made that we should have some rules around areas that remain largely untouched because that is the Auckland we love and you know we don't want it to become unrecognisable so how do we find that balance?

Yeah I think all of this stuff comes with trade-offs right so you know there is very much heritage that you know I guess provides value to us and we should protect that but And then there's kind of the other thing which we call special character areas.

And these are, they're really, really big trade-offs for having sort of wide swaths of especially, I mean, they're all located in central Auckland.

Because what that does is it forces a lot of growth through the outskirts of Sprawl where people are then forced to drive long commutes.

So they spend much more time in traffic.

People, especially, you know, younger generations can't actually afford to live in those central areas.

So they also either have to live in those outskirts, and again, then are forced to have to do those long commutes, or they just move overseas because they can't afford to live here, right? So there is that balance.

But is there anything to stop these 15-story buildings being ugly? Will there be any rules around what they look like?

So how do we find that balance?

Yeah.

I, I think all of this stuff comes with trade-offs, right? So, you know, um, there, there is very much heritage that, you know, I guess provides, provides value to us, and we should protect that.

Um, and then there's kind of the other thing which we call special character areas.

Um, and these are...

They're really, really big trade-offs for, um, having sort of wide swaths of especially, I mean, they're all located in central Auckland.

Um, 'cause what that does is it forces a lot of growth to the s- the outskirts of sprawl where, um, people are then forced to drive long commutes.

That's probably a separate issue, but w- is there anything to stop these 15-story buildings being ugly? Will there be any rules around what they look like?

We can't say.

Yeah, I mean this is precisely the problem and this is actually why this week we've had what it actually commends all the political parties on, a pretty mature approach to infrastructure with the agreement of the National Infrastructure Plan.

And that has explicitly called for a new approach, especially in land transport, which is more transparent scrutiny and analysis of these major projects.

this walk with the diana project has not had any of that and so yeah i get that nzta is you know saying that they're in this negotiation so they can't release you know any information but we are talking about a process that has led to the unsustainability of how we do um you know transport funding in this country so why would i know accept what they're saying about this it doesn't make sense

So would this not be a flip flop?

No, because what we want is for the political parties to sit together and actually work out what is a sustainable path forward for this, right? So if we take this and we have it, you know, be reviewed by the Infrastructure Commission as...

all parties want to see happen at the end of this year, and we get a more wide-scale agreement, say, between National and Labour or the Greens and other parties in there as well, to commit to whatever has been re-scoped, then we will get that sustainable pipeline.

We will get that certainty for the bidders who've obviously come into this wanting to build a project.

Can you talk a bit more about what you've done here and why?

Yeah, so you never want to go down the transport rabbit hole, Bernard.

It's an experience.

But yeah, so we, Greater Auckland, which is like an urban and transport advocacy group, we sent a letter on Monday to all political parties in Parliament off the back of an excellent piece of work by the Infrastructure Commission to say that this project, the Walk with Tsutana motorway, needs to be scrutinised and to be I guess, re-scopes in terms of a lot of the recommendations of the Infrastructure Commission's work.

Because currently, it's a project that is set to be the most expensive road New Zealand would ever have built.

The latest sort of sticker price public cost was about $3.5 to $4 billion.

However, NZTA and the government look to want to sign a public-private partnership, which has been used for other roads, such as Transmission Gully.

And I wonder if Chris Bishop is also getting cold feet, although Simeon Brown always has hot feet on these.