About 15 years back I gave a speech to a Wellington business associate urging the pedestrianisation of the golden mile and as optional features, the introduction of free tram and cycle services.

I painted a picture of lower Willis street with spaced fountains down the centre, of street cafes spilling down the middle of Lambton Quay, of a Saturday market with ultimately hundreds of stalls selling produce, bric-a-brac, books and what have you, of a year round ice-skating rink in the middle of Courtenay Place, of a small soundshell for open-air lunch-time and evening concerts as in Brisbane’s Queen Street mall or Kazakhstan’s new capital, Astana, and much, much more. All in all, an exciting, quirky, buzzy, central city, exactly as is now common throughout Europe.

The Evening Post, much missed but a victim of newspaper decline, gave my proposal considerable coverage and editorialised with a why not theme. Some correspondents wrote letters to the newspaper endorsing the idea and then the matter faded. But it did not fade in my mind as over subsequent years I did a great deal of travel and saw what I had envisaged being enacted everywhere. Cities throughout Britain were all pedestrianising their “golden miles” with visible success as the public flocked to them to avoid the horrors of motorised traf- fic. And in their wake came all of the major retailers which of course, says it all.

Such was the malled streets’ popularity that in some cities such as Perth in Scotland or Stockholm in Sweden, they left the surrounding streets a semi-ghost town, although for good reasons, that is not a threat to Wellington.

What was particularly annoying however, was the observe that even the old communist nations of Eastern Europe were all up with the play and doing the same and I don’t just mean the glamour cities of the Prague and Budapest ilk but also the more remote such a Chisinau, the capital of Molodova, or Romania’s Black Sea port city of Constanta with its main pedestrianised shopping street a good mile long, or indeed elsewhere on the Black Sea, the Ukraine’s Odessa and Russia’s delightful city of Sochi, the venue for the next Winter Olympics. But still Wellington dragged the chain.

But it didn’t stop there. Whether Budapest, Brussels, Boston, Brisbane or Buenos Aires, just to name some “Bs”, it seemed the whole world was embracing the concept, always with highly conspicuous success. So, last year, when invited to address the Property Council I repeated the message. This time the Dominion Post gave it front page coverage, another editorial and ran a poll on their website – déjà vu.

Co-incidentally however, a few days later the Dominion Post  reported that Manhattan had just announced a similar program.

Predictably they began with Broadway and a few weeks later the Dominion Post published a photo of Broadway, now packed with people enjoying the traffic-free city ambience. Following the successful example of Amsterdam, New York intends to keep expanding it to adjacent streets, ad finitum.

This time speech-wise however, was different. My telephone rang repeatedly with our more prominent building owners, plus a number of other public figures.

Let’s stop talking and do it, they said.

A series of meetings took place and it was at one, when we were addressed by a senior Transport Department official, that we learnt that the Wellington City Council, on two separate occasions, had commissioned future town planning reports from world renowned experts, one a Scandinavian and another an American. Both, it transpired, had recommended exactly what I was advocating.

Aside from that revelation, that meeting was significant for another reason. When we asked, why on earth had the council not acted on these reports, the official looked at us wryly. “Have you ever analysed city councils?” he asked, adding, “We have.”

His point was that councils throughout the land are 90 per cent composed of nonentities, of unaccomplished and unemployed people, motivated by the not insignificant councillor stipends. They are people whose backgrounds are such, they are never going to change their stripes and behave boldly. “Don’t rock the boat” is their main strategy and of course, being re-elected. That is not meant as a criticism but simply a statement of fact. And of course if they didn’t put their hand up then our democratic system would end.

Note for example that the two most significant additions to the city in recent decades, namely the Town Hall and the stadium, were under the mayoral watch of people, respectively Sir Michael Fowler, formerly an architect and Fran Wilde, formerly a cabinet minister, or in other words, rarities in the local government scene as they actually had form as doers.

It was at that point we realised we would have to contest the election if it was ever going to happen and so the Vibrant City group was born with the slogan “Don’t vote for us, vote for this”.

THE TALK ABOUT THE WALK

WILL IT WORK?

It has everywhere else. With the exception of Manhattan and to a lesser degree, Frankfurt, Wellington has a huge advantage over the European cities that have pedestrianised. Unlike them our golden mile is lined with people-filled, high-rise buildings. There is no danger of empty streets, indeed the golden mile is in need of relief, such is the pavement crowding.

WHAT WILL IT COST?

The cost of the paving, if put to open tender, will be well off-set by the capital value established from the creation of new high value, central street retail sites, notably at the northern end of Lambton Quay and in Courtenay Place with high-rise apartment sites down the middle and with retail plazas at their base. Values will rise and so too will rating revenue.

WHERE WILL THE CARS GO?

Where they do now. There are only 28 parks in Lambton Quay and Willis Street and Manners Street encompassing 450 retail premises. It is simply not an issue. Frankly, it has staggered me that some critics have opposed the concept solely on this ground.

WHERE WILL THE BUSES GO?

Where they go now, namely to the suburbs,only they will no longer pointlessly drive through the golden mile but instead depart from various depots, easily reached on foot. Currently the golden mile is wall-to-wall buses throughout the day. They’re mostly empty and paid for by the regional council. That must stop. Buses and people don’t mix, aside from the disgraceful misuse of public funds to keep bus-drivers employed to no purpose.

WILL IT CAUSE TRAFFIC CONGESTION?

Not especially. The council’s excellent policy of deterring cars travelling through the golden mile has been successful. Traffic through the golden mile is light, other than buses.

BICYCLES

As in the several hundred other cities that have introduced bikes, a two-metre-wide cycle lane will be built. Unlike buses, bikes equipped with bells mix successfully with pedestrians.

But they will not be introduced until we have succeeded in obtaining a helmet exemption, otherwise there’s no purpose. In that respect, it should be noted that New Zealand is one of a tiny handful of countries with this requirement, which incidentally, is strongly opposed by many members of the medical profession.

If we can obtain an exemption which I’m confident we will, then we can emulate Paris and other cities which charge through a meter system for their use. Personally, I would rather they were free. I envisage a bulk purchase from China of brightly coloured, no cross-bar bikes with a bell and a front basket for purses, brief-cases or whatever.

Every 100 metres would be a bike rack. It would be a fineable offence to leave the bike anywhere but in a rack or to take it off the golden mile. The bikes will be so distinctive and basic they will be unstealable and we won’t face the problem Vienna encountered when they introduced a free bike scheme and they were all stolen by Slovaks who took them across the Danube in row-boats.

A council worker with a golf-cart towing a light-weight wheeled bike rack would drive up and down the golden mile re-distributing bikes. At night they would be chained up.

IS THERE A CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

While nearly all of the golden mile building owners are enthusiastically involved, the organising team is not confined to them. The object is to make Wellington’s CBD a vibrant exciting centre. That will attract brain activity companies to the city with an obvious economic benefit for all Wellingtonians.

Wellington’s biggest economic threat lies with its lack of a summer. We all know numerous people who have pulled stumps and shifted to Auckland or Australia solely because of this and frankly, who can blame them? Only by making the capital incredibly vibrant can we reverse this flow.

The climate of most European cities is arduous; incredibly hot in summer and freezing in winter yet people remain and indeed love their cities, solely because of their ambience.

No other New Zealand city can do this as Auckland excepted, they don’t have the necessary CBD population. Auckland could do it in Queen Street from Vic-toria Street down to the sea and indeed, extend eastwards to include the already high ambience High Street precinct but they won’t because of Council ineptitude.

FREE TRAMS

These are not essential, indeed I see their function as more an ambience-adding novelty and don’t envisage more than four, running two each way from Bowen Street to Courtenay Place. But we have not investigated the cost and they can be considered as a possibility after the pedestrianisation has settled down.

I have some reservations having experienced them running through Amsterdam’s milling pedestrian throngs so at this stage, they’re simply an idea to consider down the line.

WHAT ARE THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS?

Aside from killing the costly racket of paying a bus company to drive wall-to-wall empty or near empty buses blighting the city during the day, the benefits are enormous.

Tourism will boom as it has elsewhere when pedestrianisation has been introduced. Retailers will do tremendously well as the CBD will become a shopper’s mecca and with a Saturday street market, Saturday will be an enjoyable day out.

The building industry will flourish as the demand for city apartments will be unquenchable, the more built and occupied, the greater the ambience and demand. So too fringe of city parking buildings. Retirees will flock to live here as they have in Auckland with the pedestrianised Viaduct precinct.

The CBD is the economic life-blood of the city. If it flourishes then so too will Wellington. Otherwise we will have to pray that the global warming alarmists are right and we begin to have summers.

VIBRANT WELLINGTON PARTY

People have asked why I don’t stand? The principal answer is that as one of the largest Wellington ratepayers (my company owns ten CBD buildings) too many conflict of interest issues will arise. Aside from that, there’s no need. We’ve been approached by many competent people who love the idea and are keen to put their hand up.

WHERE ELSE HAS IT WORKED?

Everywhere. Nearly all European cities have pedestrianised their central city. The public flock to it and success is also evidenced by major retailers rushing to locate there. Some have emulated Amsterdam and pedestrianised virtually the entire CBD, notably York in England. Having seen the crowds in Budapest, Stockholm, Frankfurt and many other single pedestrianised main streets, I suspect they will go further and widen the no traffic zone to adjacent streets.

Closer to home one can look at the enormous success of Brisbane’s Queen Street which has, as a result, extended pedestrianisation by nearly its full length. Or consider Sydney’s Pitt Street mall which has been a phenomenal success, or Martin Place, pedestrianised, from memory, about 25 years ago.

But consider this. Wellington has actually already done this with obvious success, namely Cuba Street and Woodward Street. Cuba Street would be a wasteland if it were to revert to a traffic street and the hue and cry would be enormous. I’m old enough to remember driving down both Vulcan Lane and Woodward Street. Today they are jammed with people.