Wellington's City to Sea bridge, designed by Rewi Thompson and John Gray with sculptor Para Matchitt. Photo: Paul McCredie
Lawyers for a group challenging the Wellington City Council's plan to demolish the City to Sea Bridge say it is not too late to consider other options.
Lobby group Save the City to Sea Bridge has instigated a judicial review in the High Court in Wellington into the decision to tear down the bridge - which connects the city's waterfront to Civic Square - saying it was based on poor advice.
Earlier, a seismic assessment found the bridge was an earthquake risk - although some experts disagreed with that - and council staff deemed the $85m price tag for strengthening it too high.
It was recommended the bridge be demolished and replaced by a large pedestrian crossing, with the option of building a new bridge in a future long term plan.
Counsel for the group Tim Smith said the council's decision-making process had failed to identify and assess all reasonable options to retain the structure.
He said systematic problems had put too much weight on the views of council officers and pointed to a "completely different mindset" between engineers advising council and officers filtering proposals ahead of the decision making process.
Smith said options limiting the use of the Capital E building beneath the bridge - in order to reduce the cost of earthquake strengthening the building - were passed over due to time constraints and never put to the council.
He said engineers only got together to brainstorm alternative options to reduce the costs of keeping the bridge less than a month out from the decision to demolish being made.
Smith said - less a week out from the council's vote on the fate of the bridge - council officers were still trying to set up a hui to clarify disagreements over engineer's proposed solutions to address the bridge's earthquake vulnerability.
He said while it was officer's role to filter unrealistic proposal, emails between an advising architecture firm and Te Ngākau Civic Square programme manager Dr Farzad Zamani showed a fixed mindset against strengthening the existing structure.
Smith cited a response he claimed came from Zamani in an email stating that he would not be putting options to the council that he deemed unlikely to have less than 75 percent support as "deeply problematic".
Smith said councillors' emails - obtained under the Official Information Act - showed disquiet over rushing the decision making process without adequate discussion of practical alternatives to demolishing the bridge.
He said in "funnelling towards demolition" the council was in breach of its obligations under the Local Government Act.
He claimed council officers had "dismissed out of hand" proposals to differently categorise or manage the risks posed by the failure of the bridge in an earthquake.
"What's happened is there's a recognition amongst the engineers that different interpretative approaches could be taken and that concept was effectively dismissed out of hand by council officers when actually what needed to occur was a considered advice to the councillors," Smith said.
He said more flexibility was needed in the approach to how any risks associated with the bridge could be managed.
"You're micro focusing of what's might happen on this bridge if you get an earthquake a certain level but there's no point super gold plating the bridge if the road's going to be shot, the seawall's going to be gone and a number of other buildings are going to be fallen on Jervois Quay as well.
"There's a disconnect between the way in which the council is thinking about these matters and the way the engineers are thinking.
"We've got a huge number of buildings across the city. We can't just go 'we either strengthen them to 100 percent at the highest importance level or we knock them over'. That's not a sensible approach to considering how we use the limited pot of money," Smith said.
Smith said engineering reports on the bridge queried the Importance Level 3 classification of the bridge which necessitated strengthening the structure to withstand a once in every thousand years quake when a lower IL2 rating would have allowed other more affordable options.
"It's not the usual function of the bridge to have more than 300 people congregating in the area - less than a handful of occasions per annum - and so this would be a very conservative, misleading approach as to what the real IL would be when you consider the principles underlying it," Smith said.
He said If the bridge was considered at the lower IL 2 rating then it would already be at 50 percent strength and the bridge's use as an open topped structure was more likely to be classed as IL2 were it not spanning an arterial route and incorporating the disused former Capital E building.
Smith said the amplitude of quake that would lead to liquefaction enough to threaten the bridge would also be likely to significantly damage the seawall and surrounding area and that would be just as likely to impede the Jervois Quay thoroughfare as the bridge collapsing.
Lawyers for the council will outline their arguments on Tuesday.
The hearing is set down for two days.
The decision to demolish the bridge was controversial, with those in favour - including Mayor Tory Whanau - saying it was necessary to keep people safe.
During the meeting, Whanau said she loved the bridge, but believed in the officers' advice, and the council could not afford the remediation.
But some councillors, and other experts, said there was no need to demolish the bridge, and there were other ways to fix it for less money.
The council was criticised for not including an option to strengthen it in public consultation documents.
But council staff said the documents explained why remediation was not considered a "reasonably practicable option", due to budget constraints.
*Correction - an earlier version incorrectly stated work to prepare the bridge and walkways had begun.
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