Golden Mile plan dead: ‘Tin mile’ rises from its ashes
Thursday, 18 June 2026
The Wellington City Council’s Golden Mile dream is dead.
A council committee on Thursday voted 14 to 3 to kill the project – a $139 million revamp in the central city from Lambton Quay to Courtenay Place. Three Green councillors opposed the vote.
However, staff will be sent away to come up with a cheaper option to revitalise Courtenay Place.
Mayor Andrew Little said the central city needed to be a place that was attractive, safe and able to be got around, saying the current stretch was “shabby, unappealing and unsafe”.
But the council was also under tight financial constraints meaning not everything had to be done “all at once”.
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Councillor Geordie Rogers, who had advocated for continuing the full Golden Mile plan, urged the council to make sure it got cracking with Courtenay Place rejuvenation.
Even so, the city was at risk of getting “the tin mile when we could have had the Golden Mile”.
Fellow Green councillor Laurie Foon, who voted against the recommendation, said $12m had already been spent on the Golden Mile. She alleged the current council had “no vision or direction”.
Councillor Sam O’Brien said the public was sick of business cases and consultants’ reports so action needed to be fast on an alternative.
“What they see is us failing yet again.”
He held up a tape measure saying he had been to Courtenay Place and measured 6m width of pedestrian space versus 18m of road.
Earlier, Auckland University urban planning senior lecturer Timothy Welch told the council that the benefit--cost ratio it was partly basing its decision on was wrong.
It comes after a council-commissioned review – which blew its budget by $60,000 – put forward five options for the Courtenay Place to Lambton Quay stretch, ranging from doing nothing to going with the gold-plated option.
The Government - via NZTA Waka Kotahi - was down to fund 51% of the $139m plan but the council-commissioned review found the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) for the transport side of the project was worse than thought and that Crown funding was at risk.
But Welch told the council ahead of the vote he had found a flaw in the BCR and, if corrected, put the project back in line for NZTA funding.
In answers to written questions from councillors, council staff said the benefits were included but lumped together under a different heading. It did not change the final BCR.