Andrew Dickens: The new Wellington traffic plan is a monster

So the latest plan to fix central Wellington traffic has been released for consultation, and it’s a monster. 

There’s a couple of tunnels. A new one at the Terrace end of the motorway and another new tunnel through Mount Victoria. Land and houses will be taken out of the town belt at Mount Victoria and parkland at the Terrace 

There will be a major redesign of the Basin Reserve roundabout and a bridge near the airport. 

And the price tag? 

3 billion dollars. Ironically the same sort of cost for two ports and two ferries to cross Cook Strait, that was thought to be wildly expensive at the time. 

So the immediate reaction is that this plan is wildly expensive. Which it is.

Wildly expensive and totally predictable. The Rongotai Airport was opened in 1959 and from day one it was dependent on the Mount Vic tunnel, which opened in 1931. 

It should have been expanded then. It’s Wellington’s Auckland Harbour Bridge moment - a piece of insufficient infrastructure that only got worse.

You could argue the same thing about the Terrace tunnel that was built ending abruptly in tiny urban streets designed before the rise of the automobile. 

Meanwhile some of Mount Vic’s funky houses are going to be destroyed, and that gets right up the inner-city residents noses - the ones who don’t have to drive far at all.

So consultation is open now and I’m expecting it to be rancorous. But it’s the bed Wellington chose to lie in when building an inner city airport and not making the hard calls earlier. 

And that also means strife for the good people of Khandallah who are complaining about the plane noise over their suburb after the flight paths changed in 2022. They’d rather the flights went over Newlands, who love the flight path change. 

As soon as you put your airport at Rongotai this was bound to happen. So you can’t really complain about the bill you’ve inherited from your forebears who lacked foresight. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The latest plan to fix central Wellington traffic has been
released for consultation and it's a big old monster of
a thing. There's a couple of tunnels, a new one
at the Terrace end of the motorway and another new
tunnel through Mount Victoria. Land and houses will be taken
out of the town belt at Mount Victoria and parkland
will be taken at the Terrace. There will be a
major redesign of the Basin Reserve roundabout and a bridge

(00:20):
maybe near the airport. And the price tag three billion dollars.
Ironically the same sort of cost for two ports and
two ferries to cross Cork Strait that was thought to
be wildly expensive at the time. So the immediate reaction
to this plan is that it's wildly expensive, which it
is wildly expensive and totally predictable. The WRONGATAI airport. Wellington's

(00:44):
airport was open to nineteen fifty nine and from day
one to get to it you were dependent on the
Mount Vic Tunnel, which opened in nineteen thirty one. Two
lanes and that's it. It should have been expanded when
they built the airport. The Mountvic Tunnel is Wellington's Auckland
Harbor Bridge moment, a piece of insufficient infrastructure that has

(01:05):
only got worse. And you could argue the same thing
about the Terrace tunnel that was built ending abruptly in
a tiny urban streets designed before the rides of the automobile.
And meanwhile, of course some of Mount Vick's funky houses
are going to be destroyed and that will get right
up the nose of the inner city residents, the ones
who don't have to drive far at all. So anyway,
Consola Consultation is open now, and what am I expecting.

(01:27):
I'm expecting it to be rancorous because it's expensive and
houses are being disappeared. But you know it's the bed
Wellington chose to lie in when building an inner city
airport and not making the hard calls earlier. And that
also means strife for the good people of Candada who
are complaining about the plane noise over their suburb after

(01:47):
the flight paths changed in twenty twenty two. Of course
they would prefer the flights when over Newlands where they
used to go. Well, the people of Newlands are loving
the change flight path. But as soon as you put
your airport a wrong atide, this was bound to happen
so on all of this, you can't really complain about
the bill that you've inherited from your forebears who lacked foresight.

(02:10):
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