26 June 2019.Fellow sufferers, as much as I would like to say the car park will be reopened tomorrow sadly I can’t. I just want to let you know the latest developments
As we now know, the car park as an asset, is being transferred to Panuku which is the asset arm of Auckland Council, this should take around three to four weeks.
I think Panuku have more integrity and transparency than those bunch of sissies at AT and I am very glad to see the back of AT.
I pretty much found out what AT were using as an excuse to keep the car park closed and this was that the ramp was unsafe which is based purely on assumptions.
Thinking about it, this may have been their trump card by deliberately not testing the ramp back in December 2018. It was always a fall back action for them when the pressure came on for closing it, citing a weight issue. (There was never a weight issue, but when pressure started to appear in their reasoning they used the ramp as a reason to close it on health and safety grounds).
Of course, if we had known that they were using the untested ramp as an excuse, the RBA would, via the Mayor’s office, Orakei Local Board etc, have forced them to conduct a strength test.
So where do we stand today?
Yesterday I had a talk with some senior Panuku people. They assured me that they will look at the engineers reports rationally and if the ramp is the excuse for the health and safety concerns they will test the ramp and if it is weak (hopefully it isn’t but it could be), ways would be found to generate funds to repair it and then reopen the car park and if it passes the test, they see no reason why it can’t be reopened immediately.
There may be other reports they want in which case they will get their engineers (hopefully not GHD who were involved with the first test), to carry out the required tests. What they will not do is rely on assumptions, something that AT are world champions at.
Regarding the future development – who knows ….we now have a whole new bunch of people with a lot of agenda’s making decisions that impact Remuera. My hope is that it will be sold so we can simply get on with our lives as we have more than skin in the game, we have our souls in the game and the people making the decisions have neither.
Let’s hope that common sense prevails but as we know common sense is not that common.
Adrian Barkla
PS:
- AT are looking at getting rid of the taxi stand opposite the Post Office and replacing with 15 min car parks;
- Seeing if they can put a 15 min park in front of Jems of Remuera – 346 Remuera Road;
- Reducing the bus time or getting rid of completely the bus stop down Clonbern Road and making it all 15 min parking.