Johnsons Road - Paper Road

[skid]

righto, so I was at work today and buggered if I know how it came up in conversation but we ended up asking ourselves what ever became of this road in the wellington region that went to court and was won by ARAC.

from what I can recall the local clubs and the NZFWDA put in substantial amounts of money towards this court case and now I find myself asking the question ...................

WHY


I have seen pics of some track clearing at the very start of this road but thats it. I have never heard anymore about the road and if we can use it.

I did some googling and found an original piece about it before it went to court ..........
http://www.andic.co.nz/id21.htm

which in turn linked to the actual court transcript of the case ...................... http://www.andic.co.nz/decision.htm


Imagine my suprise when I realised this could be an awesome stretch of road to go 4wding on. I thought it was a dead end road, but it turns out that it goes for some distance over a ridge into another valley and could be a great day trip eventually once the track is sorted.

So whats to stop us from spending our time turning this into a good 4wd track

[Sadam_Husain]

I was never involved in any of it but I was always led to believe it was all more of an acedemic exercise driving through someones cabbage field to prove a point which ended up in pissing off a lot of property owners doing more long term harm than good to the 4WDing image.... but correct me if I'm wrong coz I was never involved in any of it

[skid]

I was never involved in any of it but I was always led to believe it was all more of an acedemic exercise driving through someones cabbage field to prove a point which ended up in pissing off a lot of property owners doing more long term harm than good to the 4WDing image.... but correct me if I'm wrong coz I was never involved in any of it

I too believe that may be the case

So in order to make a stand, the 4wd community pissed off a bunch of locals who used to let them play on their land.

Now nothing much has changed and after all the money sunk in and the effort put in to fight it, we now just sit back and do nothing with the prize

Seems really silly to me

[Cleary]

Ask Terry or Howie from your club. From memory the paper road went through a fence line, across an undriveable bog (in the space of 100m) and then got really boring... I could be wrong, but it was done to prove a point rather than to save a really great track.

[PeterVahry]

It did cost the clubs of the NZFWDA a lot of money but it needs to be realised that since that court case, to my knowledge, no unformed legal road case in the Environment Court has successfully stopped a road. The Johnsons Rd case validated that recreation is a purpose of a road.

There is potential to drive Johnsons Rd but like almost every other unformed road there will be people watching to ensure the 'rules' are followed.

[mudnutz]

Skiddy the track you are talking about does not exist now and never will. To many lifestyle blocks in the way now. Saddam summed it up petty well.

[skid]

I was stirring more than anything, but upon looking on Google Earth Idid see a forestry road that virtually went from near the end of Johnson's Road all the way to Moores Valley Road, which did get me intrigued a wee bit

[UBZ]

Its a legal unformed Road.
Grab a GPS and Go for a walk to check it out.

Anybody who brought lifestyle property adjoining the road after the environment court decision , should be well aware that it is there .

After all the time money and effort that went into defending this road , it is a shame to see it not being used .

[mudnutz]

The route shown on the map may very well be "legal" but simply is not there. It also shows it going through restricted regional council water catchment so no show of getting in there either.

[PeterVahry]

A legal road (formed or unformed) may well pass through a water catchment but it is still a legal road. Exactly as a legal road that passes through DoC managed land, it is on a separate title and not subject to DoC rules. There are of course still rules that regulate legal roads and how they are used, but they are specific rules.

[MQMyles]

Before you grab your GPS and go walk, or drive, ANY legal road in a rural area please be aware that the database used for where the boundaries MAY be up to 200m - 300m out.

Unless there is a recent survey plan that has captured boundaries associated with the road (post 2002) the boundaries of properties in rural areas were captured (by traceing in effect) off hand drawn record maps that had these boundaries drawn on by copying off a survey plan.

If you compare the boundary information with topo information, such as fences, you can often see a fence of similar shape to the boundary some distance away from the boundary. It is most likely in these cases that the fenceline shows more accurately the boundary position.

Just because your GPS says you are on a legal road does NOT mean that you are not trespassing and is not considered a good excuse in court.

Myles

[UBZ]

This statement is incorrect .

Land Information New Zealand graphical information maps are the legally recognized charts pertaining to property boundarys , roads and land usage allocation .

[MQMyles]

I work with the LINZ so called accurate boundary information daily in rural areas (as a surveyor). Believe me when I tell you that these inaccuracies exist. I know of several places in my locale where the boundary information is incorrectly positioned by over 200m. Trying to convince LINZ that their database is wrong is difficult enough - trying to convince the general public that it is wrong is even harder. JUST BECAUSE IT IS IN A COMPUTER FORMAT DOES NOT GUARANTEE ITS ACCURACY.

I frequently need to contact LINZ to alter their database significantly before I can even begin to try to incorporate correct boundary information into it.

The risk is yours - just trying to make people aware of the inaccuracies.

[skid]

so before this degrades into a massive stone throwing match

I merely brought up the topic to stir

I have seen the pics on Andy's website and can see that the road would massively annoy and disrupt the locals.
I was sort of keen to maybe see if the possibilty of resurrecting the road but realise this is probably not the best in this case.

What I will say though, is that if we spent all this money and had lawyers fight for this etc etc, then why the hell are we not fighting other road closures around the country and using this landmark decision court case bla bla bla to gain access in other places.

I'm sure there are plenty of roads around this fine country we can be fighting to open back up

[PeterVahry]

Skid, who are the 'we' you refer to? There are a number of legal road matters being addressed by the group Public Access NZ (PANZ) around NZ, but few currently relate to 4x4 use.
You won't get a road re-opened once it's been stopped formally, but proposals to stop roads can be challenged.... if it's known that there is such a proposal.
It is essential that people watch the public notices in their area for notices about the stopping of roads. A public notice only needs to be advertised locally, so in rural areas with maybe a weekly local newspaper, it can be easy to overlook what might be a proposed stopping of a potential 4x4 opportunity.

[Jerry]

maybe there are some other local paper roads that can be investigated skid?

[mudnutz]

We dont make proper use of the awesom selection of tracks weve got available to us now let alone go chasing more.