I was looking at the NZTA reports for their plans around the Basin and through to Kilbernie, and the associate costs, and it blew my mind how expensive and distruptive it's all become. So maybe I'm being crazy, but I think maybe we need a completely different strategy and I'm wondering what people think about the following.

The reason I'm proposing these is with regard to the Basin Reserve flyover and the dead-end strategy we currently have for SH1 through Te Aro. After the flyover and duplicated Mt Vic tunnel we'll have spent over $500 million. Or if we do the basin right and go for the best result we'll have a westbound tunnel through to Taranaki/Cuba St, raising that total cost to over $700 million. The problem I have with this is there's no way to extend any tunnel westwards to the terrace, and there's no way to improve the eastbound route on Vivian Street. It's a dead end strategy. And it's an expensive dead end at that.

OTOH I'm wondering if it wouldn't make better sense to hold off, be patient, continue with at-grade improvements at the Basin Reserve, and in a decade or two when we come to duplicating the Terrace tunnel look to also bore a tunnel through to Kilbernie that will carry all two-way SH1 through traffic. Around 60% of traffic on the ICB/Vivian couplet is actually through traffic, so this would clearly remove a lot of traffic from the streets and solve any congestion problems.

By my quick and unqualified calculations such a tunnel would cost maybe between $700 million for Option 1 up to maybe $950 million for Option 2. Anyone else able to comment? Option 1 is about 2.5 km, option 2 is about 3.25 km.

It's clearly more beneficial, can be built with far less disruption, and unless I'm terribly mistaken, the overall costs seems disturbingly close. Close enough that the difference can easily be made up by charging a nominal toll -- which will be justifiable given the improvement offer, and easy to gather since it's an express route with limited entry/exit.

Thoughts?

Anyone who can help put an better estimate on this?

http://www.punk.co.nz/files/images/deep-bore-options.jpg

Great Idea! Unfortunately Wellington doesn’t have the population to support a project of this scale.

Wellington is a small city – There is certainly a traffic problem which needs to be addressed and the WCC are doing this by drawing a future plan which the Mt Vic tunnel is a part of.

If they invest over $500m into such a project (money that they don’t have) they (in my opinion) should look at investing the $60m required to extend Wellington’s runway by 200m to the North which would accommodate long haul flights and increase visitor numbers to the city. The population growth in Wellington by world standards is actually pretty poor, and the airport is linked to the reason for this.

I also don’t understand why they don’t resurrect the second Mt Vic tunnel by East Girls college which is currently bordered up and open it to pedestrians. If they opened that tunnel, they could remove the existing pedestrian walkway in the current tunnel, boar slightly into the wall at a fraction of the cost and add a 3rd lane. Once the lane was added you would have two lanes going towards the city in the morning, and two lanes going out the city in the evening.

If the council are still concerned about costs, charge a low toll

At the end of the day, 60m to extend the runway (which would have approx. 40% input from Infratil) & spend $150m to open the boarded tunnel, remove the existing walkway and add a third lane = no more than $200m