Dom Post on Basin flyover

The Dom Post editorial:

The New Zealand Transport Agency has wisely set two non-negotiable criteria for any project to ease congestion around the Basin Reserve. It must separate north and southbound traffic from that heading west out of the Mt Victoria Tunnel and it must be affordable.

If the eight Wellington city councillors who last month voted to spend $50,000 investigating alternatives to NZTA’s planned flyover have a better option that meets those criteria, now is the time to share it with ratepayers. It would be astounding if they find one.

The councillors who voted to renege on previous support for the flyover apparently know better than the roading experts who spent several years examining the best solution to unclog the Basin bottleneck. They carried the day by eight votes to seven at an extraordinary meeting called in December to decide whether the council should explore further options, despite it backing the flyover in 2011.

The proposal the Council are looking at doesn’t separate North-South traffic from that heading from the Eastern suburbs. So the likely congestion improvement is minimal.

Thank goodness we have local body elections this year.