KEVIN STENT/Stuff
The High Court has granted an interim injunction to pause construction of the Newtown-to-city cycleway until a full hearing of the judicial review in September.
The High Court has granted an interim injunction to pause construction of the Newtown-to-city cycleway until a full hearing of the judicial review in September.
The application for an interim injunction, from six local businesses, was heard by Justice Simon France in the Wellington High Court on Thursday.
Myles Gazley, owner of one of the applicant businesses Gazley Motors, said he wanted to be clear that the businesses were “not anti-cycleways”. He said the case was about the lack of consultation and a bad process, not the cycleway itself.
“We are deeply concerned about the lack of consultation on such a significant project. This is an attempt at change by stealth – pure and simple,” he said in a statement.
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“The council is intending to remove car parks and busy turning lanes and replace them with under-utilised bus lanes and badly designed cycleways. And they’re trying to do all this without properly consulting with those affected, or with Wellingtonians more widely,” Gazley said in a statement.
John Nicholson/Stuff
Myles Gazley, owner of one of the applicant businesses Gazley Motors, said he wanted to be clear that the businesses were “not anti-cycleways”. (File photo)
Barrister Gareth Richards, representing the businesses, told the court the removal of car parks for the cycleway was a permanent change which would “fundamentally reshape” two kilometres of central Wellington roads.
“There was a jarring failure to consult applicants on the design works before they were set in stone,” he said. He argued that removing the car parks would cause financial harm to the businesses.
Nick Whittington, representing the council, said the transitional cycleway was temporary and legally implemented under the Local Government Act. The plastic barriers and paint on the road would be easy to remove if consultation showed that the trial had been a debacle, he said. The council would consult businesses further as it moved along the road.
Whittington told the court that even a delay until September would have “downstream consequences” for the roll-out of the council’s huge Paneke Pōneke bike network plan which is scheduled to be complete by 2031.
The Wellington City Council, constructing the cycleway as one of the first parts of its planned 166km bike network, had no immediate comment to make on the decision.
More to come.
