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# Auckland City Is Caste City
- URL: https://goodoil.news/auckland-city-is-caste-city/
- Published: 2020-11-04T20:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2020-11-03T23:28:38.000Z
- Author: Guest Post
- Tags: NZ, NZ Politics, Politics, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 02:38

Recently there have been articles pushed by **Phil Goff** at Auckland Council defending the “impressive” record of work since Auckland City became the Super City 10 years ago. He mentions Hobsonville and Wynyard Quarter amongst a number of star projects that have been implemented under the Super City but both were conceived well prior to 2010.

However, as much boasting Phil Goff does about a few projects, mostly sustained by private developers, it is important to note what is **not** being done around the city. The general state of affairs is significantly worse than 10 years ago and the recent Watercare debacle is the conclusion of 10 years of neglect. If the City can’t keep the water flowing and the lights on with debt mountains to the ceiling, then where will we be in another 10 years? If you drive around parts of Los Angeles, you can see this future with parts of the city with no money and it looks scary.

Considering the basic functions of the city such as water, rubbish collection and roading, Auckland City is not working at even a simple level and there seems to be a Caste system across the City for different areas.

Let’s take Roading.

It was a throwaway comment from a friend mentioning that they are so sick of roadworks in their street that got me thinking. They told me that their suburban street had been resealed around 3 times in the last 4 or 5 years. But hang on I thought, our suburban street has not seen a skerrick of tar for the last few years and most of it has never been touched since it was sealed originally 40 or more plus years ago. Not far away from our street is a rough section with danger signs around a deep pothole that has been there for what seems like over a year and the pothole is a giant crevasse but **the signs stay and the deep pothole never gets fixed.**

So *is* life better for the higher castes in the Eastern suburbs where roads are potentially more elevated in the system and given more ~~love~~ money?

I decided to look into these two very similar streets in Auckland, one in the Eastern suburbs and one in the Western suburbs. Both are similar width streets with plenty of traffic. Both are exactly the same length of 2.4km and both are mostly well footpathed.

Both areas were developed around the same time with houses of all genres but mostly 1960’s dwellings.

I obtained an LGOIMA from Auckland Transport outlining the road works done on each street in the last 5 years.

**Work completed in last 5 years in each street**

*Eastern Suburbs Street 2.4km long*

- Oct 15 – Total Reconstruction $851,767
- July 17 – Retaining wall $536.663
- April 19 – Bluestone kerbing $419,009
- June 19 – Resealing $257,082
- Sep 18 – Bus stop signage $1,000
- Sep 18 – Signage/Footpaths $45,000
- March 19 – Ext Bus stop $2,000
- July 18 – Pedestrian crossing $96,000
- June 18 – Bus stop work $23,000
- Jan 19 – Signs/Islands/medians $80,000
- May 18 – Signs/Bus stop $28,200
- Aug 19 – Zebra Crossing impr. $113,751

**Total $2,453,472**

*Western Suburbs Street 2.4km long*

- Nothing $0.00

So you can see it did not take long to calculate the amount of money spent in the Western Suburbs street compared to the Eastern Suburbs street.

People of Rodney who also complain, and quite rightly too, that they are not getting any sealing done or even the gravel roads maintained can now see where the money is going and it isn’t to West Auckland and it isn’t to Rodney.

The Bluestone kerbing that cost over $400,000 was the extravagance that sent me over the edge to despair. The Council would no doubt say that the street already had some Bluestone but to be honest, we can’t afford Bluestone anymore Mr Goff.

So perhaps in the next 10 years, Auckland Council’s philosophy could simply be to see the ‘little’ picture and maintain and **beautify the whole City** instead of some of us ending up like Beverly Hills and rest of us looking like Skid Row.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/image0.jpg)

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