Transit Regional Office Auckland

6 August 2004

Auckland Harbour Bridge gets its flags back

The flags are flying above the Auckland Harbour Bridge once more. Some five months after removing the original flagpoles for safety reasons, Transit has installed two new strengthened poles on the arches of the bridge. Transit removed both original flagpoles from the bridge after one of them broke in extraordinarily high winds in February.

Regional Manager, Wayne McDonald, says the new flagpoles are significantly stronger than the original poles as they have been designed with an internal steel spigot to enable them to endure the strongest winds, which regularly reach above 170 kilometres per hour at the top of the Harbour Bridge. “Auckland is in the path of sub tropical cyclones which regularly sweep down and buffet the city with incredibly strong winds,” says Mr McDonald

“To make doubly sure that the flagpoles will do the job, we had their design peer reviewed by the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Auckland,” he says.

“We are delighted to have the flags up and proudly flying over the bridge once again. There’s no doubt that Aucklanders prefer to have their bridge ‘dressed’ up with flags and we are receiving many calls from the public telling us how happy they are to see them again,” he says.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>