To the NZ Transport Agency

Why the Wellington Civic Trust is making a submission

1. The Wellington Civic Trust has as its first object “to promote a civic environment whereby the City of Wellington, its surroundings, and its adjacent countryside and coastline become a resource for the use, benefit and enjoyment of all Wellington citizens.” (Constitution and rules, Objects, Clause 4 (a)) The NZTA proposals are billed as “improvements for a successful capital city.”  We have therefore approached this project in that light.  Would it promote that object set out in our constitution and in so doing would it make this capital city more successful?

 Public engagement

2. The Trust understands from NZTA workshops that this is not “consultation” on the Cobham Drive – Buckle St. SH 1 proposals in the statutory RMA sense, but “engagement” with the community on decisions already made.  SH 1 sections of the agreed 2008 Ngauranga-to-Airport Corridor Strategy (N2A) have been lifted out and given Roads of National Significance (RoNS) status because of their place in “a transport system that supports the growth of our country’s economy to deliver greater prosperity, security and opportunities for all New Zealanders”, and funded as a priority ahead of that agreed in N2A.
3. A basic tenet of the Trust’s work is that decisions affecting our city and our citizens must involve those affected. There have to be ways whereby they not only have their say, but have a real chance to affect outcomes.  These SH1 plans are presented as an “all or nothing, take it or leave it, no cost to the city” package.  If this is not the best solution then there is a cost to the city and in the absence of honest consultation it is very unlikely that the best solution will emerge.
4. The Trust convened a seminar on engineering projects in the Basin Reserve area (Round about the Basin, August 2009).  It brought together a wide range of experts, including those who had expert experience of living in the communities likely to be affected.  The major outcome was a request to the authorities “…to establish a joint working group, which would include community representatives , which would have access to all relevant information concerning options for the development of the transport spine.” (Round About the Basin, proceedings of the Wellington Civic Trust seminar, 8/8/09)
5. NZTA was asked following the seminar to establish structures and procedures to enable community representatives to have full access to options for the project.  On 22 September 2009 the Trust was advised by NZTA that they intended to establish a Community Connect Group and that engagement would begin in early October that year.  The group was not established. What has now emerged is not the result of such engagement. Faith in the process and support for the outcome has suffered and a weary cynicism is growing.

Assessment of need

6. We acknowledge that it is government’s responsibility to provide the highway infrastructure required to meet future needs. But what is that assessment and on what criteria and assumptions are they based?
7. The RoNS strategy has a clear economic objective.  It is one of the chosen tools to lever up economic productivity.  The published benefit cost numbers would suggest that it is an ill-chosen instrument and that it will result in a misallocation of scarce capital.
8. The Trust accepts that the city’s population will expand, and that Kilbirnie and Newtown may (through intensification) increase at an above average rate.  There are other factors working in the opposite direction. Recent figures show that vehicle use has plateaued, presumably as a response to higher vehicle running costs.  All the signs are that such costs will escalate at a rate well above normal price rises as the impact of peak oil and carbon reduction policies take effect.
9. Moreover, as long as sufficient funds are put into public transport development private vehicle commuter travel will become increasingly less attractive. The N2A-agreed high quality public transport spine study has now begun, for completion next year. This will provide a much better basis for evaluating public transport’s ability to take a load off SH1s capacity to serve the eastern suburbs and how best to meet the conflicts between north-south and east-west traffic flows, while still safeguarding the integrity and values of the Basin Reserve.
10. There is no indication that NZTA has taken the above factors into consideration in its assessment of need for large increases in road capacity, yet they are very relevant.

 The NZTA overbridge proposal

11. Having expressed our misgivings on the accuracy of its assessments of those needs, we seek to limit the harmful impact of the intended work on our city.
12. The Trust has no view on whether overbridge option A or B is better. As presented, both structures violate the urban design qualities of the area.  The workshops made it clear that an “iconic” design was explicitly rejected.  That does not dismay us because we cannot conceive that an obtrusive overbridge cutting through the structured sightlines of the two terraces (identified for enhancement under Smart Green Wellington) could ever improve the presentation of this part of the cityscape.

Second Mt Victoria tunnel

13. Whatever solution is decided for Basin Reserve traffic, no commitment need be made to the second Mt Victoria Tunnel or to the major upgrading of Ruahine St. and Wellington Rd until the effects of improved traffic flows at the Basin Reserve are evaluated. To that end an undertaking should be given that resource consent applications for those works would not be sought unless and until that evaluation proved the need – the point agreed by all N2A participants. N2A agreed that there would be 4 lanes: that has grown in the current plans to up to 8 lanes, with large earthworks to lower and ease the corner where Ruahine St and Wellington Rd. meet, so that traffic can flow though at 60kph. The real transport benefit of this is questionable (unless it is to accommodate even longer and heavier trucks than at present) and hardly desirable in a suburban residential area. There is a risk of “interim improvements” from 2014 morphing to a scale which presupposes the up-to-8-lanes solution on which work is not (according to the “public engagement” material) scheduled to begin until 2023, or thereabouts, after Transmission Gully has been completed.  By then a totally different trend in road use may be apparent. These eastern works may not be necessary on the scale presented in 2011 and public money can be used on more productive national projects.

Other options

14. An earlier Option F, with northbound SH1 in a tunnel from Dufferin St to achieve grade separation under Kent and Cambridge Terraces, was ruled out by NZTA before the “public engagement” because of cost, despite its urban design (i.e. its impact on the surrounding city, as distinct from its vehicle movement function) being clearly superior. NZTA’s December 2010 War Memorial Tunnel Scoping Report notes (p.5) that “if it was decided that the preferred option for the Basin Reserve was to provide a tunnel around the Basin to avoid the visual impacts of elevated structures, then it would be necessary to construct the war memorial tunnel”.
15. The “Option X” produced by the Architectural Centre at the time of the July workshops has attracted a lot of public attention and support, and deservedly so. In terms of producing a quality urban environment it is far superior to the NZTA model. We do not have the expertise to assess its traffic engineering merits and we are concerned that the inevitable extra costs involved would amount to a further diversion of funding from public transport.  Nevertheless, such an innovative and environmentally attractive proposal demands attention not only from the general public, but also from the governing authorities, national, regional and city.

War Memorial Park

16. The Architectural Centre’s option also has the great merit of providing a War Memorial Park worthy of the name.  The NZTA’s project is essentially a roading project which makes a gesture to meeting another public policy objective, the memorial park. But that gesture is a futile one.  Instead of providing a memorial worthy of the deep values such a park has to express, we get a park divided by a multi-laned highway.  It is an appalling example of a facility which should express national values being distorted and degraded by “silo policy-making.”
17. The NZTA cannot fund a required War Memorial Park because such a park would have no transport benefits.  But it can, it seems from unrefuted media reports, fund a quite superfluous grandstand which would do nothing to ease the flow of traffic, but which might do something to stem potential criticism from a certain quarter.
18. Both SH 1 and the War Memorial are Crown assets; it is a reasonable citizen expectation that decisions about a matter affecting both would be made in a “joined-up” way, and not as implied here by expecting some transport benefit, whatever benefit cost numbers are used. The War Memorial Park is a policy decision in its own right and one which we believe has wide support.  It would also seem to have transport benefits if it were achieved by a tunnel for SH 1. The Civic Trust believes that the decision to transfer responsibility for creating the National War Memorial Park to the state’s roading agency is both insulting to the war dead and unrealistic for NZTA to achieve.

Conclusion

19. The move from private transport to public transport is likely to be a key agent for change for the city over the next thirty years.  A major shift from providing for the needs of private vehicular traffic to one of investment in public transport, taken gradually over many years and working in sympathy with national pricing signals would produce levels of economic and social benefit not achievable by NZTA’s SH1 project.  That would be an investment strategy for the coming decades when the nation will be forced to face the consequences of climate change and the demands of a low carbon economy. The Cobham Drive to Buckle Street project as presented is an anachronistic imposition on the city and irrelevant to our present and future needs.  NZTA needs to go back to the N2A drawing board and it needs to take the public with them.

Alan Smith
Chairmam

2 Responses to “Submission on Cobham Drive to Buckle Street Transport Improvements”

1. Patrick Geddes says:

   August 24, 2011 at 3:23 pm

   I think this is an excellent summary of the issues associated with this project. Well done to all those who contributed to this submission. Let’s hope they take notice.

   Reply
   • Bruce says:

     September 23, 2011 at 8:41 am

     Thank you Patrick

     Reply