Tunnels not helping

I must confess that yesterday I laughed considerably and quite loudly, at the report that Simpleton Brown received, informing him that spending a billion or two drilling two new tunnels under / through Wellington was actually going to make the traffic slower, not faster. Well, duh! I’ve been saying for quite some time that putting in a new Terrace Tunnel in, to speed up the amount of traffic getting into Wellington, instead of our present “one lane in, two lanes out” system, would be a disastrously stupid thing to do.

Right at the time of the very first Terrace Tunnel the designers noted that the inwards traffic needed to be drip-fed into the city, in order to stop the traffic choking up the streets. Yes, every morning there are queues on the Foothills Motorway as the entire Porirua / Hutt tries to funnel their way into Te Aro, and that is a deliberate thing. There is simply not enough room on the streets or in the car-parking buildings for the tens of thousands of vehicles to all arrive at the same time – and making the funnel bigger pouring vehicles in will only make the problem worse, not better. Got that now, Simeon? No Terrace Tunnel needed, Ever.

Option two, a Simeon brain-fart if ever I saw one, was that a new long tunnel should traverse right across the entire Te Aro basin, presumably from before the Terrace Tunnel and right under the Basin and popping out somewhere in Haitaitai or Kilbirnie. Costing more money than NZ will ever have, and lacking any semblance of credibility, such as How? Why? and What the Fuck For? The only answer was for When? (Easy answer – Never). This was apparently given short shrift and put in the ludicrously silly basket, along with Simeon’s other toys, like a teddy-bear driving a corvette, so simple Simeon can make vroom vroom noises in his playpen. Thank goodness he has been ousted and left in charge of Health now, to ruin that portfolio by means of “ruthless execution” of sick people. I’m sure that was an actual quote from Mein Kampf.

The second Mt Vic tunnel proposal is more interesting and possibly less clear-cut. I have not read the report – afaik it has not been released to the public yet – but apparently the proposal was for a second tunnel slicing beneath Mt Victoria, although I’m not sure if we know exactly where from, or where to. Presumably starting from near the existing tunnel portal (above? below? side by side?) but finishing where? Options could be near the existing, a longer diagonal pipe exiting somewhere down near the Badminton courts, or possibly even right down near St Pats almost a sea level? Who knows? Tell us if you do know! But anyway – new tunnel for cars is no help. Obviously, a new tunnel for Mass Rapid Transit would be the best thing to really speed up the flow of people, but tunnels for more cars is just stupid.

So, new Minister of Transport, and this time it is the other heavyweight contender for the National Party leadership, Mr Bishop. Apparently his friends call him Bish. I won’t. Clearly he needs a title, and Mr Bishop doesn’t seem right. Nor does Bishop Bishop. Maybe Captain Bishop? Or Commander Bishop?

Colonel Bishop may have actually read the Basin Bridge Enquiry report (Simeon Brown clearly had not). I have read it, cover to cover, but it is a few years ago now. Basically, as a recap, there was a 6 and a half minute time saving if the Basin Bridge Flyover was erected, including a 250-300m long concrete bridge sailing over the edge of the Basin Reserve, linking the old Mt Vic tunnel to the Arras Tunnel, without touching the ground. Nonewithstanding the 53 “consultants” sucking on the teat of governmental largesse and all lying in unison saying this was the best thing since sliced bread – although clearly it wasn’t – the Enquiry exhaustively examined the origin of every one of those 390 seconds saved and discovered that almost none of the time saved would actually come from the Flyover. While the Flyover itself would be packed full of cars, noisely vroomming away to themselves, due to the multiple sets of traffic lights at each end, the traffic would not really move any faster. All that has changed in the mean time is that more people now have hybrids or EVs, and so it would be less noisy and emit less fumes, but it would have achieved just one key thing: Grade Separation.

It was established that Grade Separation was an important step to untangle the East-West flow from the North-South flow, that is to say that Airport traffic would flow on a very long ugly bridge over the top of the Kent Terrace to Newtown traffic. The Enquiry also found that the alternative scenario, where Airport traffic stayed at ground level and Kent-to-Newtown traffic passed over on a very short bridge aligned with Sussex Street (ie to the north-west of the Basin), would achieve exactly the same time savings, without the need for the big long aggravating bridge. Lord Commander Bishop – are you listening? (Probably not – I don’t think he is a regular reader of the Fish – but Andy Foster is) – Andy, if you are reading, could you please have a chat to Supreme Overlord Bishop? The NZTA person in the firing line at the time (Selwyn?) said that it would be impossible to do this as it would require a big long tunnel under the proposed War Memorial surface-level Park – and then they built the Arras Tunnel anyway, so that showed that the alternative was not just possible, but indeed, already partly done.

End of the day, the simple answer may be: build the small overbridge needed for the Grade Separation now, at Sussex Street, for three simple reasons. One, it will actually have an effect on reducing the traffic speed from the Airport, by about 90 seconds. Two, it will actually speed up the flow of traffic from Kent Terrace to Newtown also, presumably also about 90 seconds. Those two are real vote winners with fed-up eastern suburbs commuters, and are also pretty non-contentious, as they don’t involve any flack from the Mt Vic Residents Association. And Three? Because it is so easy to do, the land is just sitting there, waiting for some action. Close off the rarely used lane of traffic snaking down to the north of the Museum Stand, build a new North-South bridge almost at ground level, and then dig the East-West tunnel under it afterwards. There’s your 90 seconds saving right there. Then, one day some time in the future, if a second Mt Vic Tunnel ever really becomes possible, and if someone reprogrammes the traffic lights better, you may get the rest of the savings. But right now, the best thing anyone could do, would be to Build the North-South bridge link.