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Roger Rabbits with |
We missed a trick.
Definitely missed a trick.
And every time I use that dog of a cycleway over the Wairoa River I am cruelly reminded.
I cycle beneath the State Highway 2 road bridge – while overhead po-faced ‘Omokoroans’ are creeping bumper-to-bumper at 20km towards purgatory in the city – and I gaze up river at WHAT might have been.
And WHERE it might have been.
‘Design announced for ‘iconic’ Wairoa Bridge’ the headline screamed at the time.
Something of ‘distinctive excellence’.
And damned right it would have been.
A sweeping $6.5 million cycle/walkway bridge – curved, single span, no piles and a spectacular arch soaring to about 40 metres at mid-point.
A unique creation.
A visionary gateway to the city.
Breathtaking, amazeballs, visionary, fantasticular, bangers.
People would have paid to cross it, stand on it, gaze at it, or from it, walk on it, pee from it, run over it, jump from it.
People love bridges.
Especially iconic ones.
Especially this one.
I can sense Western Bay eyes rolling, along with a chorus of “let it go, drop it, move on why don’t yuh?”
The fact we didn’t get our bridge doesn’t make it acceptable and right.
And after all this time, the compromise still stinks. So why not relitigate a bit?
Landmarks
Bridges are landmarks that identify cities – London Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Sydney Harbour Bridge – things of great beauty and standing. And for us pontists, it’s important they be more than functional.
They have to be elegant and welcoming, sources of great civic pride.
Because bridges change lives by traversing gaps, creating passage and offering opportunity and connection.
Bridges, as in arches, have inspired music – ‘The 59th Street Bridge Song’, ‘Under the Bridge’ and Pink Floyd’s ‘Burning Bridges’.
Kokomo would have enshrined our ‘iconic arch’ in song by now.
Even Bridges loves bridges.
At the time, Simon Bridges, who the polls are touting to be next Mayor of Super City Auckland, stammered in his own endearing way that the Wairoa arch bridge plans were “...stunning...incredibly exciting.”
But not exciting enough to push the project over the line.
A $6.5 million icon blew out to a $14-$17 million icon.
But why not spend a few ‘mil’ more for a real doozy bridge, a showstopper.
However No! Nein! Non! Nie!
The spreadsheets sang a different bridge song in a key of “can’t afford” and “can’t be done”.
A brilliant concept was snuffed out.
And we’ve been landed a dog – a jerry-built, dead-set ugly bit of nonsense infrastructure at the start/end of a glorious bike ride.
A mate scoffs
A mate and visitor to Tauranga had been blathering all the way from Ōmokoroa about what a ‘lovely’ ride it was – orchards, rural lifestyles and seascapes.
But when we got to the bridge, he scoffed.
“That bit was obviously designed by committee.”
The Ōmokoroa trail proper is ‘lovely’ – pizza at one end, a cidery at the other and cycling in between. It’s just getting on or off the trail at the city end that’s a mess, a crazy compromise.
“It reminds me of a gripping two-hour movie that fizzles out, has a crap ending,” says the mate.
That kind of sums it.
Still! Approaching from the north you cross the clip-on and continue 100 metres up the highway towards Bethlehem.
Then a hairpin brings you all the way back to the traffic bridge underpass, then up the SH2 carriageway to a traffic light-controlled crossing.
Mischief
That’s where the mischief kicks in. How many cars grinding their way up and down SH2 can you hold up when you whack the button, triggering the ‘cross now’ sign?
I’m told the record is 26 totally pissed city-bound cars and trucks.
They don’t seem to share the joke.
They’ve had enough stop/start by the time they reach the crossing at Bethlehem.
If we couldn’t have an ‘iconic bridge’ then it seemed logical for the cycleway to continue up the harbour side of SH2 despite all the washy explanations about safety, all the concerns about cyclists versus local cars entering or leaving driveways, side roads and footpaths.
Or were there more devious forces at play?
Locals have scratched around but no-one knows. Or no-one’s saying.
New argument
The ‘iconic Wairoa bridge’ saga aside, there’s a new argument over affordability.
And we champions of progress and investment have been warned “a lot” of the Civic Precinct might not happen if “the right people” – or wrong people for that matter – are elected to council on July 20.
“Make no mistake...” we’ve been told. Fighting talk.
Is another life-injecting project in danger of being derailed?
Because, as has rightfully been pointed out, it’s not always about economics.
There’s a greater good.
A wiser head than mine says he’s seen the legacy of our indecision, the legacy of not being prepared to invest, to look at cost before the wider benefits.
So let’s pray for the precinct.
And I will try to forget about my lost bridge.