No longer is it possible to marvel at the power and the beauty of the raging Pacific Ocean from the sanctuary and comfort of one's motor vehicle in the precinct of the John Wilson Memorial Drive and Lawyer's Head.
This Dunedin coastal tourist attraction has been enjoyed by tens of thousands over the past decades, but, alas, no longer. The elderly and the infirm are particularly disenfranchised but so too are the innumerable citizens of Dunedin who prefer to marvel at the power of nature on a winter's day without risking pneumonia.
But wait, did not the DCC decide at the conclusion of a public consultation process last year to reopen the drive to vehicular traffic, at least some of the time?
The Automobile Association Otago District Council agreed to this compromise even though our preference was that the road should be reopened to unrestricted vehicular access.
Our view was firmly based on the resounding majority opinion of the AA membership in Otago, as voiced in a survey that we commissioned.
Fast forward to 2011, and we now face a scenario where opponents of vehicular access to the bollarded-off length of the Drive effectively hijacked the DCC Annual Plan consultation to relitigate this issue - apparently "legally" according to the DCC - but in a manner that seems to have subverted democratic norms and conventions.
This is not the Dunedin way. By and large, in our little outpost of all that is good and decent in the Western world, where a handshake seals a deal, the rapacious side of politics and commerce so common in other jurisdictions rarely surfaces.
We know our DCC councillors are hard-working citizens, determined to make our city an even better place to live. Why then would they renege on a considered decision?
Reports in the Otago Daily Times of the Annual Plan process suggested that the intensity of the deliberations was such that councillors were becoming jaded and even irritable and this factor could well explain why good people made a bad decision.
Yes, the DCC proposal for an automated electronic barrier to close the contentious area of the drive was expensive.
But surely a city priding itself on its links with the University, and the intellectual wit enshrined within, could have applied itself laterally to find a solution that would honour the original agreement, but at a lower cost?
What about employing a security firm (or even better, directing an existing DCC employee) to remove and replace the existing bollards at predetermined times each day?
Other, equally economical and just solutions may well be offered by ODT readers. At the very least - and my fellow AA councillors will not thank me for suggesting this - but what about shifting the bollards another few hundred metres towards Lawyers Head, as has been mooted by a recent correspondent to this newspaper?
I have no trouble understanding the desires and wishes of walkers, cyclists and pram-pushers to be free of the stresses of sharing space with cars and buses.
I also have no trouble understanding that most such individuals will be absent from John Wilson Memorial Drive on a typical Dunedin sou'west winter's day, exactly the sort of day when the Pacific waves are pumping - nature at its brooding best.
The AA urges the DCC to rethink this decision; members of the Otago District Council would be only too willing to contribute ideas that would enable the agreed compromise of 2010 to come to fruition at economical cost.
Jack Crawford is chairman of the Automobile Association Otago District Council.
