Te Ara Tupua - a critical lifeline route made more resilient, or just a very expensive bike path?

Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Reid Basher is a retired senior adviser in the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

OPINION: Saturday saw the opening of Te Ara Tupua, a prize-winning infrastructure project alongside Wellington Harbour that ticks a zillion boxes: transport resilience, ecological sustainability, climate change adaptation, public access and cultural alignment.

For the first time in their lives, people are now able to safely walk or cycle the 12 kilometres between Wellington City and Petone/Hutt City, courtesy of a brand-new, shared walking and cycling path alongside the western edge of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington’s harbour. It’s called Te Ara Tupua, or Path of the Ancients.

Before, it was a very different situation: cycling between the two cities involved a scary ride along the shoulder of the 100kph State Highway 2, while walking required the use of a cross-harbour ferry and a long trek along the Petone foreshore, according to Google Maps.

The basic problem is that the region’s geography is faulty!

That’s clearly seen in the aerial photo below. The shadowed line running diagonally through Wellington City, alongside the harbour and on up the Hutt Valley, is our very own Wellington Fault, one of several in this part of New Zealand.

The range of rugged hills west of the fault, raised by tectonic forces, is tough terrain for road building, while land subsidence east of the fault has allowed the harbour waters to extend almost to the hillsides.

That leaves a thin ribbon of land between the hills and sea to provide access between the region’s population centres, Wellington City, its northern suburbs and Petone/Hutt City across the other side of the harbour.

Barely 50 metres wide in parts, this strip forms a veritable jugular of the region: it’s the only feasible direct route for rail and road traffic as well as for Wellington’s major water main and some wastewater drainage. About 80,000 people commute into the city each workday along here.

However, the route is highly exposed to multiple natural hazards, including earthquakes, landslides, coastal erosion from strong southerly storms; and earthquake-driven tsunamis and harbour seiches (the slow oscillation of sea level, like water slopping back and forth in a bathtub).

In 2013, the railway was washed out in a severe southerly storm, and further similar events can be expected in future as weather extremes increase and sea levels rise with climate change.

So here’s a big irony: the natural hazards that threaten the route are the same forces that created the harbourside shelf in the first place, as a geological feature formed eons ago by movements on the Wellington Fault and erosion of the hillside.

On top of that, a large earthquake in 1855, originating from the distant Wairarapa Fault, raised the shoreline here by 1-2m, helpfully providing an ex-marine platform that could be readily reclaimed for transport purposes.

The key objectives of the Te Ara Tupua project were to strengthen the resilience of the multi-use corridor and to improve the transport options by building a two-way biking/walking path.

The $348.7m project was driven by, and 98% funded by, Waka Kotahi, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). It was organised as an alliance among private-sector design and construction contractors, local authorities, and local iwi Taranaki Whānui and Ngāti Toa.

According to Waka Kotahi, the cost of the coastal protection work was only $77.4 million. In other words, it was the shared biking and walking path that incurred the bulk of the project cost, something that led critics to call it the most expensive bike path in the world, if not the whole universe.

Waka Kotahi justified the path on the grounds of public demand, safety of cyclists and pedestrians, health outcomes of active commuting, better linking of the cycling networks of Wellington and the Hutt Valley, reduction of vehicle traffic, support of tourism-related activities and recreation, and the creation of a community asset incorporating history, environment benefits, and future-focused design, that could be enjoyed by all.

An additional benefit is that emergency vehicles, including ambulances and fire engines, will be able to travel along the path if the adjacent highway is blocked, say by landslides caused by heavy rain or earthquakes.

How well the shared path delivers its intended benefits will be revealed in due course. But my bet is that once people gain experience of using Te Ara Tupua, they will quickly decide that the project was essential for the region’s infrastructure and was money well spent.

What I can say is that the $77m spent on the protection works is surely a good-value investment. Take the 2013 railway washout for example: it was a short section but nevertheless cost about $3m to repair and probably caused losses of more than $20m in transport disruptions (at today’s prices). Climate change and sea level rise can only make the equation even more compelling in future.

At the big-picture scale, we should also remember the monumental national cost of disasters over recent decades, averaging at least $4 billion per year. That certainly suggests a lot of scope for many other risk-reducing projects around the country.

So now let’s celebrate a great new public treasure. Today, the weather in Wellington is fine and sunny, with no stressful hazards in sight, and I’m already getting my bike ready for the big ride, zooming, and idling, along the path of the ancients.

This article was also published at https://reidbasher.substack.com/.