Cutting down Motueka trees deemed ‘not unreasonable’ by Ombudsman

A Tasman urban designer is disappointed with the Ombudsman’s decision that Waka Kotahi’s felling of 13 trees on Motueka’s High Street in 2021 was not “unreasonable”.

Timo Neubauer, who spent two years pursuing the case, said he believed the decision showed that laws were “so loosely worded, that Waka Kotahi simply can’t be held to account for whatever they do”.

He said the transport agency did have “really good projects” such as Streets for People, and others that prioritised pedestrians and cyclists.

But at the same time, project managers were “chopping down trees that had been planted” to put in turning lanes and widen roads. The 13 trees were cut down in Motueka’s High St as part of a “safety improvement” project.

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“It cannot be any more obvious that the left hand is not talking to the right hand, because these are entirely different approaches,” Neubauer said.

“But the thing that really drives me up the wall is that you cannot challenge it.”

Neubauer said he had attempted to “spell it out” to the chief executive of Waka Kotahi, and to the Ombudsman about where the issues lay.

A letter from the Ombudsman’s investigation and resolution manager Rich Woodward stated that the removal of the trees “seemed necessary to improve visibility and to ensure safety which seemed to align with the design report and one of the GPS’s [Government Policy Statement on Land Transport 2021- 2031] strategic priorities on road safety”.

While urban designers were not involved in the business case for the project in 2018/19, their involvement later in 2020 suggested that Waka Kotahi complied with the requirements of the UDP [Urban Design Protocols 2005], Woodward wrote.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier wrote in his final opinion that he was “not persuaded that the actions taken by Waka Kotahi in this case was unreasonable, for the reasons that were set out in Mr Woodward’s letter to [Neubauer]”.

“The urban design guidelines, the community’s feedback and expert advice were considered during the process, and the decision Waka Kotahi reached to remove all but five of the High Street trees was one that was reasonably open for it to make”.

Neubauer said he was hugely frustrated with the response, and many others were as well.

He said the trees in Motueka’s main street “intuitively made you slow down” through obscured sightlines and the perceived narrow width of the carriageway.

Now, he said, there was “colour coding everywhere” and lines on the streets.

“You’ve got new street signs saying that you have to go 30kph, even though you could actually now go a lot faster easily. So it’s counterintuitive what they’ve done.”

In addition, Neubauer said Waka Kotahi “harped on” that it was safer to have a signalled pedestrian crossing, yet that prioritised cars.

“As a pedestrian you have to apply to get over the road, whereas, if you have a zebra crossing, that actually gives a pedestrian priority,” he said.

“So what needed to be managed was the speed of cars, not people crossing the road.”

Neubauer’s complaint to the Ombudsman said that Waka Kotahi did not integrate urban design into all processes, nor give greater recognition that streets were a key component of the public space, or contribute positively to the local character of Motueka.

His deep dive into Waka Kotahi’s legislative framework, systems, and processes required patience – it was only after the Ombudsman started his investigation that the project’s Urban Design Report was released, a year and a half after he submitted an Official Information Act request.