On Friday the 15th of May a dozen Mt.Albert/Roskill/Waterview community members and a dozen local anarchists crashed the official opening of the SH20 motorway extension through Roskill that will meet up with a new motorway through Mt. Albert and Waterview to form the proposed Western Ring Route.
Four of us anarchists arrived at the motorway overbridge at around 1pm after biking down Dominion Road. When we got to the Dominion Rd/SH20 overbridge some community members were holding signs and chanting “Shame on Joyce”. The opening party was being held in a marquee directly below the overbridge. We joined in the chanting, were given signs but 10 minutes into it one anarchists suggested a break away march down the motorway onramp and then back down the motorway towards the party. Another anarchist quickly piped up sure, but lets ask the locals first. They were only too keen and led by a Mt. Albert resident and her young daughter and Paul Davie, from the local community board we trotted off down the onramp chanting. “Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho. The Motorway has gotta go!”. A cop car with two cops raced in front of us and tried and failed to stop us marching down the onramp. Straight onto the motorway proper and into a more determined line of police the march went; backed up by another posse of anarchists who had just arrived.
At that point a paddywagon appeared and assumed a position directly behind the line of protestors, making this author scramble up the bank to the overbridge, (a bit worried at imminent arrest). However although I heard that a Crown car drove into the protestors down below, they stood and chanted for about half-an hour even while rain drove the crowd of journalists under cover.
After that protestors marched back up to the over bridge and continued to yell and chant, disrupting the ceremony going on below. Banksie’s apperance promoted chants of “shame” and “scum”.
After that we left and headed home, content in the knowledge that this motorway will be stopped by determined community resistance that all aucklanders should be part of.
Resistance Photography: SH20 Protest
Some facts:
$2.8 billion cost of building a tunnel and a $2.3 billion cost of building a motorway.
400-500 homes will be destroyed in the building of the motorway.
[ Costing the Waterview Option ]
In the year to June 2008 the Auckland Regional Transport Authority reported that farebox revenue on rail services was just $17 million and on the Northern Busway $3.42 million. So the cost of free public transport on the trains and the Northern Busway is around $20 million. 1/100 of the cost of the Waterview motorway. [ ARTA Annual Report ]
The right-wing dominated Auckland City Council last year cut more than $800 million from the city council’s budget. This is a third of the cost of the motorway and shows how upside down local and central government spending is. It included:
The Tamaki ward, the city’s poorest ward took $450 million of cuts to upgrades on essential community services like pools, libraries and arts centres made by a bunch of councillors who live in Remuera and Parnell. Meanwhile $60 million that would have been spent on upgrading Mt. Roskill and Otahuhu libraries, buying new library books and building new swimming pools in Avondale and Otahuhu was also cut.
[ Manukau Courier: “We can walk on broken footpaths but can’t swim in no pool.” ]
A $86 million cut in stormwater repairs means that Auckland beaches will continue to be washed in human waste during overflows.
The council also cut footpath,cycleway and walkway spending by $66 million, public transport spending by $20.8 million and new park-and-ride facilities by $5 million.