Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand novel

An early work in progress dedicated to democratic Climate Polycrisis-megamobilisation and the Mahurangi

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Appendix 3

Coastal-path commissioner summary

Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20240724

Coastal Path and the Greater Mahurangi Regional Park, surely, was the most comprehensive submission Auckland Council could have hoped to receive in response to its draft management plan. It details how the regional parks can perform their primary, coastal-parkland-for-the-people purpose, and demonstrate practicable climate action. The submission has, nonetheless, so far signally failed to result in anything approaching the council-community exploration it so richly deserved to stimulate.

The following post-submission-deadline commissioner summary was provided to attendees of the hearing. The summary and submission contents table are appended for the possible keen interest, and ease of access, of Light the Fuse readers:

Commissioner summary

This commissioner, or hearing, summary is not part of the submission lodged, but was added to address its inadequately brief executive summary. The executive summary, which fell well short of its putative purpose, is probably better described as an elevator pitch.

Beginning with the bullets Sensibly, a Mahurangi Magazine reader exercised about the need for a considerably less sparse executive summary, suggested beginning by bullet-pointing the submission’s main contentions. The following was an earnest attempt at distilling the ~15 000-word joint submissionMahurangi Action Incorporated, the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust, and the Mahurangi Magazine:

Map of the Mahurangi Coastal Path and the greater Mahurangi regional park

Coastal Path and the greater Mahurangi Regional Park: Nothing another 12-weeks wouldn’t have fixed, this map—focussing more closely on the coastal trail and the Mahurangi regional parkland that it will connect—if it had been included in the lodged, might have provided additional utility, and a little light relief for those willing, or obliged, to wade through its 15 000-odd words. image Mahurangi Magazine

1	Equity of access equals public transport Unarguably, the principal means of delivering equity of access is public transport—joined-up public transport. To date, proximate third-tier transit services, by themselves, have not proved to be sufficiently convenient to lessen regional parks private-light-vehicle dependency. This submission urges that the Mahurangi Coastal Path, and the magnetism of Te Muri provide a fertile opportunity to demonstrate how equity of access can be delivered to, through, and to link, regional parkland.
2	Equity of access and honest climate-emergency action complementary Honesty concerning the climate emergency demands other-than virtue signalling, such as with ev-charging in regional park car parks. Rather than further contribute to the now deeply problematic private-light-vehicle-centric regional parks model, Te Muri and the Mahurangi Peninsula, which don’t have currently have road access, are perfect candidates as low-carbon, equity-of-access exemplars.
3	Great regional park potential inestimable While urban-scale parks and even pocket-parks provide critical respite in urban areas, great parks—national parks, regional parks—define the character of a place and its populace. The people of Tāmaki Makaurau, particularly the young people of the metropolis, deserve to know they are visiting, or contemplating visiting, a 900-hectare greater Mahurangi regional park. Failing to consider the greater Mahurangi regional parkland one, during the 1967–1970 Mahurangi West acquisitions, was perhaps understandable. With the 2010 and 2019 acquisitions, however, came the duty to remedy the perverse and arbitrary diminishment of the mana of a great regional park. This review, at the very least, should signal the beginning of an exploration of the near-inestimable, greater Mahurangi regional park potential.
4	Connecting the regional to the national, walkway Connecting the regional parks network’s most desirable beach to Pūhoi—facilitated by the Mahurangi Coastal Path—addresses the current deeply problematic Te Araroa by-pass, which forces walkers to struggle along inhospitable highway shoulders, when they should be enjoying the last substantive, sublime stretch of unbuilt coastlime before entering the metropolis. Conversely, the citizens of Tāmaki Makaurau are connected to that coast, and to Te Araroa.
5	Community-actioned trial of the coastal trail With the pending purchase of the surplus-to-regional-park-operations landing barge by community completed, trialing of the Mahurangi Coastal Path will be able to begin, early next summer. At virtually no cost to Auckland Council, and permission gained for the installation of one stile, members of a 48-year-old community organisation will trial climate-emergency-appropriate, equity-of-access access to Te Muri, via Waiwera. Based on the anecdotal feedback received, proponents of the trial have reason to believe the coastal trail – Te Muri – greater Mahurangi regional park – Te Araroa combination will prove irrisistable.
6	Save a walkable Hungry Creek Road Singularly the most inconsistent and unsound policy proposal contained in the Draft Regional Parks Management Plan, concerning the greater Mahurangi regional park, is that whereby Hungry Creek Road would provide private-light-vehicle access to a “main arrival area” near the western boundary of Te Muri Regional Park. Inconsistent, because Auckland Council would be making a mockery of its proposed climate action targeted rate, by the access-inequity-exacerbating commitment to spend tens of millions of dollars to rebuild Hungry Creek Road for two-way vehicular traffic. Unsound, because it would squander the potential of Te Muri and its scenic ridge farm road to replace the current hazardous and inhospitable Te Araroa by-pass grudgingly provided by the shoulders of State Highway 1 and the Hibiscus Coast Highway.

24.7-metre bi-articulated Trollino 24 double-source trolleybus

Connected Council Climate Action: A sprinkling of ev-charging points and battery-powered buses, and drop-in-the-bucket tree planting, is virtue signalling unbecoming of Tāmaki Makaurau. Electrifying the Northern Busway, on the other hand, would significantly slash fossil fuel use, both for commuters and for regional-park users—provided that the first transit tier connected to the fourth. Suboptimally, for Aotearoa and other hold-out left-hand-traffic countries, the choice of trolleybuses is not as great as in Europe, where transit rationality and trolleybus use is more likely to reign. The image here is laterally reversed, to put the five sets of double-opening doors—which, in concert with the vehicle being single-decked, are key to minimising bus-stop dwell time—on the left, platform-side of this 24.7-metre bi-articulated Trollino 24 trolleybus. image Sustainable Bus | recolour Mahurangi Magazine

Judge Arnold Turner Footbridge and the J Barry Ferguson Six or seven years before naming a ferry the J Barry Ferguson was considered, the intention was to name the proposed Pūhoi Estuary crossing, the Judge Arnold Turner Footbridge. When the 2016 footbridge proposal failed to attract the universal support of those holding mana whenua, it was shelved, with Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust pursuing the Auckland Council officer-recommendation to explore a cable-ferry alternative. The subsequent availability, however, of a 4.9-metre surplus-to-regional-parks-operations aluminium landing barge led to Mahurangi Action Incorporated undertaking to purchase the vessel and to trial the service with its members. With good grace, a local benefactor of the planned Mahurangi Coastal Path has agreed that his name be used to replace that which was no longer appropriate—Park Ranger. The trial will help determine whether a ferry service, longer-term, is sustainable or whether an elegant Judge Arnold Turner footbridge, well upstream, might need to be rigorously reconsidered.

Commissioner-summary conclusion Its writers would have greatly preferred to conclude this Draft Regional Parks Management Plan commissioner summary on an entirely laudatory note. However, without imparting the importance of Hungry Creek Road to regional-park equity of access, and to robust climate-emergency action, the production and presentation of the joint, ~15 000-word Coastal Path and the Greater Mahurangi Regional Park joint submissionMahurangi Action Incorporated, the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust, and the Mahurangi Magazine will have largely been in vain.

Draft-planAuckland Council’s draft Regional Parks Management Plan, issued for public consultation 10 December 2021 submission contents

	Introduction
1	Executive summary
1a	Commissioner summary
2	Mahurangi Coastal Path – Background
3	Mahurangi Coastal Path – Connecting 900 hectares of regional parkland
4	Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust – Undertaking to build and gift to Tāmaki Makaurau
5	Mahurangi Coastal Path – The route planned
6	Regional-park gateway to Te Araroa – The national walkway
7	Seventeen-kilometre Wenderholm–Te Muri–Pūhoi loop trail
8	Wenderholm Regional Park
9	Te Muri Regional Park
10	Mahurangi Regional Park – West
11	Mahurangi Regional Park – Mahurangi Peninsula
12	Mahurangi Regional Park – Scotts Landing
13	Mahurangi Regatta measure of regional-park equity of access
14	Four’s three too many – One great Mahurangi regional park
15	Responding to climate change – the “beyond-urgent” imperative
16	Sea-level rise and farewell to regional-park spit beaches
17	Equity of zero-carbon regional-park access – The Gluckman gauntlet
18	Regional-park response to population growth
19	Mahurangi and the Hauraki Gulf
20	Summary of draft-planAuckland Council’s draft Regional Parks Management Plan, issued for public consultation 10 December 2021 submission specifics
21	Mahurangi Coastal Path milestones
22	Conclusion – Nice quiet place long way from town

‹ Appendix 2 |

Return to top of page | Contents | End notes

Disclosure The author of this novel modello is the secretary of both Mahurangi Action Incorporated and the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. The content published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine.