Wellington needs to get digging and build its own version of the Waterview Tunnel
Thursday, 16 November 2017
OPINION: Wellingtonians have always been a bit culturally unique. They like obscurely exotic coffee beans, they listen to non-mainstream music, and they expect their artists to push beyond the confines of a picture frame.
If something is considered 'underground', then Wellington will embrace it.
That theory now needs to apply to its traffic.
The time has come for the capital to write a $2.3 billion cheque and bring back Alice the tunnel boring machine to carve a big hole for State Highway 1 to disappear into.
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If Wellington doesn't act now, the already frustrating commuter crawl every morning is expected to be 25 per cent longer along some key roads within a decade.
The Let's Get Wellington Moving project - a joint initiative involving the Wellington city and regional councils, and the New Zealand Transport Agency - has released four 'scenarios' of how best to tackle this problem.
Two involve building a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, and turning what is now known as the Inner-City Bypass - a four-lane highway through the suburb of Te Aro - into a tunnel for SH1 traffic as well.
If Wellington truly wants to get moving again, then these are the only scenarios worth considering.
Auckland's new Waterview tunnel has been a revelation, slicing 20 minutes off some journeys between the CBD and the airport. Sending SH1 underground through central Wellington is expected to remove up to 1000 cars from the CBD during the morning rush and knock between 12 and 16 minutes off journeys in from the southern and eastern suburbs.
That might not look like much on paper, but in the world of transport engineering that is a massive achievement.
But the major beneficiaries of this tunnelling project won't be motorists. Replacing the area currently occupied by SH1 with parks and other public spaces would truly unlock Te Aro's potential and make it a place worth flocking to on those rare treats the capital sometimes enjoys called sunny days.
Tunnelling underneath central Wellington won't be without its challenges. The challenging ground and seismic conditions in that part of town will require complex engineering and added cost. But if it can be done, it should be done.
Tunnels alone won't get Wellington moving. The project team has been worryingly non-committal when it comes to mass transit options, such as light rail, saying the demand for it might be there in a decade or so.
Rail takes a long time to build, and converting from a rapid bus network to light rail isn't easy given the cost and disruption. If Wellington wants it, then the time to talk about it is now. Its people need to speak up and demand better.
The eye-rolling part of all this is that Wellington has been here before - 25 years ago.
Back in 1992, the government and city council approved the idea of digging a trench for SH1 through Te Aro so the likes of Taranaki and Cuba streets would be undisturbed by highway traffic.
But when cost projections for that $102 million project blew out to more than $140m, it was watered down to the existing ground-level highway that didn't take long to buckle under the weight of increasing traffic.
Second chances like this don't often come along when you're talking major city infrastructure, hence why Wellington needs to act now.
* Michael Forbes is a Wellington journalist who has covered transport and city council issues.
* Comments on this article have been closed.