Lightpath and the Lost Decade: Super-city or Slumber-city?

This guest post is by Tim Adriaansen, an advocate for accessibility and sustainable transport.

Te Ara I Whiti, or Lightpath, turned 10 years old last week.

This stunning photo has popped up all over the internet since it was first uploaded for royalty-free use by Dan Freeman in 2017. I’ve seen it on the home page of corporate conferences and consultancies, sitting in the background of influencer videos, and posted to travel forums as a drawcard – not just to Auckland, but a New Zealand top ten sight-to-see, rivalling Milford Sound, the Cook Straight ferry crossing, or a visit to Hobbiton.

When Te Ara I Whiti opened, back in December 2015, Auckland felt exciting. Lightpath, and the Nelson Street cycleway which was implemented a few years later, were innovative, transformational projects that beckoned a confident, creative direction for a city that otherwise felt like it was still struggling to shrug off an awkward teenage phase. 

In 2019 I had international guests come to stay with me, their first time in Aotearoa, a country they had dreamt of visiting for decades.

“What would you like to do first?” I asked them.

“The pink path!” they replied.

The bright, vivacious pink of Dan’s infamous photograph was 10 years ago. Today, Lightpath feels like a metaphor for a city that somehow lost its sense of direction along the way.

While still doing the rounds imagery-wise – and, performing well as a path for people, serving almost quarter of million trips last year by bike alone – Te Ara I Whiti itself is no longer an illustrious drawcard, a beacon of excitement to a shiny city in the south. 

I’ve been informed that one transport agency is responsible for maintaining the surface, and another for maintaining the walls and panels. Whoever’s job it is, both elements of the pathway are currently in a dubious state of neglect.

Our transport agencies haven’t been helped by those that should be civic leaders. Where once Auckland had vision, it seems there’s a now crushing chorus of “don’t waste our money” coming from people who couldn’t point a stick at where transport budgets are spent (they’d likely shake it in the general direction of anything that resembled a bike path). That includes a number of elected representatives who should be able to accurately point sticks at many things.

Here’s a question. What Auckland Mayoral slogans are you able to recite? What ambitions did the aspiring en-visioners of our great city tout, over and over, when they held office?

I’m willing to wager there are only two which most long-time Aucklanders can recall: “The world’s most liveable city”, from Mayor Brown; followed by “Fix Auckland”, from the other Mayor Brown. We went from “let’s be the best in the world” to “well, I guess we could make this a bit less bad”. What a leadership trajectory.

Auckland has lost its map and compass. What was once the city of sails finds itself in the doldrums. Far from a super city, Auckland can seem like a slumber city: sleeping on opportunity after opportunity to achieve greatness. Somewhere along the way we hit the snooze button on our sense of self.

“But Tim!” I hear the relentless optimists scream at their devices (some of the screaming happening internally), “Auckland has done loads of great stuff over the last decade. Maybe you could try being a bit less negative for once?”

To which I say “Yes, and–”

Of course, some successes stand out. The inner-Auckland cycle network is achieving critical mass, linking up different parts of the central city and out through some of the suburbs, notably the inner west, Grey Lynn to Pt Chev. Quay Street looks gorgeous, and Queen Street is much, much better than it was 10 years ago, even if the new look was done on a budget (achieving great value for money, I’d say). 

Ngā Hau Māngere and the freshly opened Māngere cycle connections are a fantastic community asset linking through to the south. Heck, there are even some paths along the North Shore’s motorways, albeit most awaiting their necessary local connections. 

Meanwhile, the bus network has significantly improved and massively electrified across the region — along with the entire passenger rail network. Public transport patronage and user satisfaction has grown alongside these investments and improvements in service.

The CRL is starting to smell like fresh paint (or fresh pie on a windowsill) as the final touches are added, testing is completed, and we’re at least hearing about an “opening window” ahead of a formal opening date (likely September 2026). There’s much more that’s happened across Auckland, too, and I don’t want to downplay the progress.

And: I want to point out something very important. All of these recent accomplishments, every single visible win, took a long time from planning to polishing. While hard-working people of all types have been slogging in the trenches, fighting for every street improvement, every public transport dollar and every linear metre of bike path, the same forces that failed to keep a coat of fresh paint on Lightpath have dropped the ball on freshening up our city-shaping plans. 

When it comes to “what’s next?”, there’s nothing in the war chest.

Largely unknown to many Aucklanders, there’s been an enormous amount of work going on behind the scenes to plan the region’s transport future. Some big acronymic schemes like ALR and SGA and ATAP and AWHC have all spent tens of millions of dollars on what in the industry is known as “crayoning” (the act of drawing colourful lines on maps ).

But all of these house-of-cards schemes eventually collapse for the same reason: They’re crafted within a system of conservatism, and as a result, they don’t actually deliver a better version of Auckland.

• Auckland Light Rail (ALR) planned to tunnel underground to avoid interfering with car parking on Dominion Road. 
• Supporting Growth Alliance (SGA) was all about building roads to service sprawling suburbs. 
• The Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) was supposed to align Auckland’s regional ambition with central government direction, but Auckland Council couldn’t ever get their own “Council Controlled Organisation” under control. 
• To this day, the project to develop the next Auckland Waitematā Harbour Crossing (AWHC) doesn’t even involve Auckland Council as an equal planning partner, and it’s looking like what might be New Zealand’s biggest ever transport project will be determined by a mash-up of “what will make lots of money for the people who build it” meets “what will be popular for the government to announce ahead of next year’s election” (the same transport planning recipe used to design those tunnels down in Wellington).

These work programmes have something in common: they perpetuate a vision of Auckland as a city built primarily for and around private motor vehicles. That is, they continue to enable the very problems they are supposed to fix, inevitably meaning they’ll be expensive, ineffective and met with, at best, modest popularity. 

They’re also lacking a compelling story. There is no clear messaging for how these very expensive schemes will change the direction Auckland is travelling in, let alone get us collectively out of the doldrums and put some wind in our sails once again.

This is the singular, common reason that they all fail — and why Auckland has few coherent projects in the pipeline. And it happens for the same reason Lightpath looks like a shabby, forgotten back-alley: In the absence of competent and visionary leadership, the collective weight of institutional path dependency is the only thing carrying transport in Auckland. It’s a gentle tide slowly dragging us towards the reef. If we want to change course, we’re going to need to hoist some sails and actually do something.

This is where the idea of Lightpath can help us out. Because Te Ara I Whiti wasn’t a project that came out of a 10-year pipeline, it was creativity that occurred in response to opportunity. It was advocate-initiated, community-powered and institutionally enabled. And if there’s something which never changes about Auckland, it’s that this is a city of opportunity.

If Lightpath were to get a good powerwash and a fresh lick of paint, it would quickly become iconic once again. It could shine as a beacon of Auckland’s vibrancy for a decade to come.

In the same way, Auckland needs to freshen up the city’s vision for the future. Do Aucklanders want freedom, a sense of community, and easy access to healthy outdoor fun built into our day-to-day lives? 

Or do we want to be stuck in both debt and traffic (and increasingly stressful and unpredictable weather) for another 30 years? 

With a recently elected Council and a shake-up of transport planning powers, now is the time to ask of ourselves and our elected representatives: What is the vision? What are we prepared to do to make it a reality? And importantly, how will we ensure we don’t get another decade of slowly fading away?

(Do you want to help make Auckland awesome but you’re not sure how? I don’t get paid by Greater Auckland, but I love what they do. You could consider giving the team a little Christmas gift by supporting them here).

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