So I’ve been think­ing about Bond Street for a while. I’ll cred­it Coun­cil­lor Ian McK­in­non for show­ing me what’s wrong with it. I hap­pened to be speak­ing to him at a morn­ing tea break after giv­ing an oral pre­sen­ta­tion to a coun­cil sub-com­mit­tee. He showed me a series of pho­tos that had been giv­en to him: of Man­ners Street to the south and Mer­cer Street to the north, both look­ing groomed and civilised, and of Bond Street, lined with taxis and lack­ing any sort of urban ameni­ty. I believe we can do bet­ter than this.

Coun­cil is cur­rent­ly plan­ning changes to the area. Sub­mis­sions are open on Traf­fic Res­o­lu­tion TR70-12 (PDF). The ratio­nale for the change is rea­son­ably strong — 7 report­ed crash­es at the inter­sec­tion of Bond and Willis Streets since 2010. The basic pro­pos­al is also rea­son­able — clos­ing the inter­sec­tion and mak­ing the west sec­tion of Bond Street into a cul-de-sac.

Current and proposed layouts for Bond Street

The pro­pos­al is fair­ly straight-for­ward. It moves the taxi rank from Bond Street to Mer­cer Street to han­dle the clo­sure of the inter­sec­tion and jug­gles around the remain­ing park­ing allo­ca­tions between the two streets. There is a net increase of 3 load­ing zone parks, so the project is rev­enue-neu­tral for park­ing. Noth­ing sur­pris­ing. There isn’t much extra space avail­able to add fur­ther park­ing spaces. A few near­by build­ings have under­ground park­ing that requires clear access. Rub­bish and ser­vice vehi­cles need ade­quate space to maneu­ver as well. It looks very much like a traf­fic engi­neer’s pro­pos­al. What’s miss­ing is any sort of urban ameni­ty or con­text.

Instead of max­imis­ing park­ing, we should be max­imis­ing ameni­ty. Here’s why:

That’s a list of just the food and drink estab­lish­ments on this sec­tion of Bond Street. Vic­to­ria St cafe and Mojo both have out­door tables on the foot­path dur­ing the day. Fork & Brew­er and Love­locks have bal­conies. Bond Street can be a vibrant area of the city, both dur­ing the day and into the evening. The busi­ness­es have pro­vid­ed des­ti­na­tions, but the street is set up in a way that forces peo­ple inside. I spent a few days after work watch­ing the pedes­tri­an activ­i­ty. Num­bers were quite low and very few peo­ple stopped on the street. Look­ing down the line of cars, it’s easy to see why. There’s no rea­son to stop unless one of the busi­ness­es is already your des­ti­na­tion.

I think we should make Bond Street a shared space. Not like low­er Cuba Street — which is real­ly just a nar­row park­ing lot — but like Wood­ward Street. Most peo­ple don’t think of Wood­ward Street as a shared space, which is exact­ly why it’s the mod­el that we need to adhere to. Vehi­cles can move through there when they need to, but pedes­tri­ans rule the space. Wood­ward Street is safe and it works very well.

Why do we actu­al­ly need park­ing spaces on Bond Street? Taxi rank over­flow was block­ing any real use of the pay-and-dis­play park­ing spots and the rank needs to be moved to close the Bond and Willis inter­sec­tion, so I don’t see a plau­si­ble argu­ment for cur­rent park­ing rev­enue. For load­ing zone activ­i­ty, lines don’t need to be drawn in explic­it­ly. We cer­tain­ly don’t have park­ing lines on Wood­ward Street and the ear­ly-hour load­ing zone use of Cuba Mall works with­out lines of any sort. The only argu­ment for drawn park­ing spaces is for diplo­mat­ic park­ing. The coun­cil pro­pos­al moves those parks to the north side of the street, in front of Trade Aid. I think that loca­tion is fine, assum­ing there’s an oblig­a­tion to keep­ing the diplo­mat­ic park­ing. It’s on the shad­ed side of the street and leaves the sun­ny space for peo­ple and activ­i­ties.

This is rough­ly what I’d aim for:

Indication of area used as a shared space

Why ques­tion the motor­cy­cles? Well, I don’t have a strong opin­ion as to where they should go. Don’t get me wrong, I think that motor­cy­cle park­ing is impor­tant, but I think that the loca­tion does­n’t have to be spec­i­fied just yet. The small­er park­ing foot­print makes the allo­ca­tion a bit more flex­i­ble. I’ve drawn in some space, but it’s prob­a­bly not the best space for it.

This idea is not with­out risks. There is a sub­stan­tial amount of cov­ered park­ing hid­den with­in the near­by build­ings. Dri­vers com­ing out onto Bond Street would have to be pedan­ti­cal­ly cau­tious at all hours of the day. This may stress patience at peak demand. Addi­tion­al­ly, I don’t expect that coun­cil­lors would be par­tic­u­lar­ly agree­able to the removal of sev­en paid car parks, rel­a­tive to their pro­pos­al, or four car parks cur­rent­ly on Bond Street, regard­less of rev­enue pro­jec­tions. I would argue that the ben­e­fit to the busi­ness­es should take pri­or­i­ty and also that a project like this is aligned to the Welling­ton 2040 Strat­e­gy.

So how do we fund it? The sim­ple answer is to keep it cheap. I don’t know how coun­cil intends to block vehi­cle access between Bond and Willis Streets. They’ll do what they do. The rest of the pro­posed park­ing changes are just paint and signs. So let’s start there. Obvi­ous­ly, paint isn’t going to stop a car from hit­ting a bank of tables, so the last ele­ment would be some­thing like con­crete park­ing blocks or heavy planters to act as guides. When the econ­o­my is bet­ter, we can wor­ry about mak­ing things pret­ty. For now, call it a bit of tac­ti­cal urban­ism.

Con­sul­ta­tion is open until Octo­ber 26, so there’s not much time. I’m sub­mit­ting basi­cal­ly this post and if there’s a chance to speak direct­ly to coun­cil, I’ll hap­pi­ly take the time. I believe in good spaces. Bond Street has the poten­tial, but needs our help.