They got across!

On Sunday morning I denied myself my usual sleep-in to join the multitudes at the Curran St carpark, in the shadow of that famous piece of infrastructure: the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The crowd of thousands included families, young activist types, lycra-clad middle-aged men and just about every other kind of person you can think of. And there were road bikes, mountain bikes, choppers, unicycles, skateboards, scooters and wheelchairs. They were all there with one purpose in mind: to get across. getacross is an organisation of individuals who think it's stupid that cyclists and pedestrians are unable to cross the iconic Harbour Bridge. These sustainable forms of transport are currently unavailable to many thousands of people who make the daily commute to the city from the North Shore. Apparently 78% of Aucklanders are in favour of being able to walk or cycle across the Bridge. But the NZ Transport Agency doesn't want a bar of it. So, the people at getacross thought, 'why not show the Transport Agency just how many people's preferences they're denying?'

Although the getacross people had been organising the demonstration for ages, even that morning they still weren't sure if the Transport Agency would let the people cross. The Harbour Bridge is part of the motorway, so it's actually illegal for pedestrians and cyclists to go on it. But getacross had requested special permission to access the Bridge to mark the 50th anniversary of its construction. After hyping up the crowd with speeches from councillors, politicians and activists, they herded us all over to the on-ramp to ask the head of the Transport Agency, Wayne McDonald, to let us onto the Bridge. Apparently he said no, but that was lost in the excited crowd's enthusiastic chanting. Then all of a sudden the police barrier parted and people streamed onto the Bridge. It wasn't until I saw the TV coverage last night that I realised that permission had never been given, and some poor motorists were held up at the bottom of the Bridge for over an hour. 

The media coverage was surprising. There was talk of "an unruly crowd storming the Bridge". From my position amongst the throng, a more accurate description would be "a cross-section of New Zealand society trying to get in touch with their environment, and, more importantly, trying to get the people with the power to change things to listen to their point of view". Apparently the action hasn't changed the Transport Agency's position on pedestrian and cycle access to the Bridge one bit. Whether that holds true long term remains to be seen. But, what the gathering achieved straight away was to make a huge proportion of New Zealanders aware of what getacross and other organisations are trying to achieve. That in itself seems like a success to me.