From the Architectural Centre in Wellington:
The NZTA flyover and recent appeal
The NZTA have proposed building a flyover adjacent to New Zealand’s historic Basin Reserve. There are several complex aspects to the issue, but the basic chronology is:
- The Minister for the Environment established a Board of Inquiry in mid-2013 to decide if a flyover should be built by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) adjacent to the Basin Reserve cricket ground. The flyover is part of the government’s planned country-wide Roads of National Significance.
- The Board decided that the flyover should not be built. This was the result of a 72 day long hearing. The Final Decision is at: http://www.epa.govt.nz/Resource-management/Basin_Bridge/Final_Report_and_Decision/Pages/default.aspx(and there is a brief summary of issues attached). There were a number of non-profit community groups who opposed the flyover, and we worked together collaboratively to ensure alternative views were presented at the hearing.
- NZTA have appealed to the High Court asking for the decision to be overturned. The agency has also questioned a number of matters of law including issues to do with the evalution of urban design, heritage, and alternative options to the flyover.
Wellington is not a city of flyovers, and this proposal would place a flyover within a sensitive heritage site in our city, which includes an area of small nineteenth and early twentieth-century houses which would be dwarfed by the size of the 320m long concrete flyover, and become the dominant view for people living in Ellice St. The flyover would also block the view down the Kent/Cambridge Terrace boulevard, as well as obscuring views of the historic Basin Reserve cricket ground. We believe that a concrete structure of this large size, in this position, is not appropriate for this part of the city, which includes Government House, and the National War Memorial Park.
In addition to opposing the flyover, we believe that it is important that the alternative view to that of the NZTA is properly represented at the appeal hearing.
This means that we are off to the High Court.
It is no secret that the parties opposing the flyover have limited financial resources, and that the lack of an opposing voice in these proceedings will mean that not all of the relevant arguments will be put before the High Court. We consider it to be important for this to be a properly democratic process, which means that views from both sides of the argument need to be heard. It is for all of these reasons that the Architectural Centre will be a party to the appeal, and for these reasons we are asking for your support.
If you are supportive and would like to help there are a number of things that you can do.
- Spread the word. Circulate this email to anyone who you think would be keen to help.
- We’re holding a charity auction at 5.30-7.30pm Wed 3 December at Regional Wines and Spirits (15 Ellice St, by the Basin Reserve, Wellington)and are asking architects/artists/authors/designers/film-makers/poets etc. to donate drawings/paintings/designs/sculpture/poems/manuscripts/autographed books/film/anything – so if you can donate something that would be fabulous, and if you can encourage others to donate something that would be grand too. An auction poster is attached.
If you can donate something to be auctioned, please email us at arch@architecture.org and/or post it to the Architectural Centre, P.O. Box 24-178, Manners St, Wellington, or deliver it to Cranko Architects, 81 Harbour View Rd (M-F 8am-6pm), and include your name, email etc. Additional information is at: http://architecture.org.nz/2014/11/01/architects-draw-charity-auction/
- Join the Architectural Centre. Information is at: http://architecture.org.nz/memberships/. More information about us is at: http://architecture.org.nz/
- Donate any amount you can. Our bank account details for internet banking are included on the membership form at: http://architecture.org.nz/memberships/
- Come to the charity auction… it would be lovely to see you there.
We really appreciate that there are many, many worthy causes that are likely to be taking up your time, energy and money, so we completely understand if you are too stretched to support this one with your time and/or money too. But if this is the case, your moral support and circulating this email to others, will be hugely appreciated by us.
nga mihi nui
Christine McCarthy, Victoria Willocks and Duncan Harding
on behalf of the Architectural Centre
The Architectural Centre is the most venerable advocacy group for better urban form in New Zealand. Formed in Wellington in 1946 by idealistic young architects and planners [including my parents] with aims of improving our built environment. The Manifesto includes clauses such as “Architecture must facilitate better living” and “Good architecture is elegant environmentalism.” A very good history of the Centre, Vertical Living, has just been published by AUP. Here is the full manifesto:
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So sad Puford is lost; we’ll be lucky to save the pohutukawa at Western Springs.
This is a project that is needed .Wellington in rush hour is a mess to say the least .I am a jaffa and we know about traffic .this flyover would be a assett in Wellington
Mike you know that ‘i’m a jaffa’ isn’t a compelling argument for anything really, especially out of auckland. Please do explain why this is a good idea?
“This is a project that is needed”. No, this is a project that is wanted, not needed, by certain politicians who have a severely blinkered viewpoint regarding solutions to traffic congestion.
Here are two alternative solutions that flyover supporters wouldn’t dream of implementing:
1. Stagger working hours to reduce the effect of a rush hour
2. Invest heavily in public transport
The other sol;ution is to do nothing, that would still be miles better than the flyover.
As a Wellingtonian to an Aucklander: please, you can keep your flyovers.
Seriously, though, this is problem that isn’t that bad in the first place and could be fixed with better public transport. As the NZTA and MoT agree, it’s unreasonable to design for low traffic congestion in a city at peak times.
It seems strange to me that NZTA has a second terrace tunnel and mt victoria tunnel on their radar. Wellington is geographically a dead end with an economy and population growing at an extremely modest pace – how much worse will traffic really get? If they want to spend all that money digging holes, wouldn’t it be so much better to spend it on quality public transport! I bet they could have a dedicated light rail corridor past the hospital and through the hill to Kilbirnie for the same price – perhaps even out to the airport. Then who’d care about the traffic!?
“Wellington in rush hour is a mess” ?? And this from a self confessed jafa? Actually, yes, there is some congestion at rush hour, but nothing as bad as Auckland – then again, we don’t have as many roads down here – and no flyovers. We’d like to keep it that way.
The interesting thing is that the congestion at the Basin largely goes away when the local schools are on holiday – there are three large local schools whose only entry/exit is onto the Basin, and so therefore the buses stopping at the school entrances, and the parents picking children up from school, are one of the major causes of congestion. Solve the schools problem, no need for expensive and reasonably pointless roading decisions. NZTA propose that a 300m long concrete bridge over the entire area is the way to solve the problem.
Think different !
Yes Mike Wellington is such a mess we should destroy it so the traffic can move through it unimpeded. It worked in Auckland.
Sure is Mike, I was down in Wellington last week and had to stop at two sets of lights during my peak time travel back to the airport. It was hell.
Mike, are you aware that the travel time saving attributable to the flyover is just 90 seconds at best? The BOI established that NZTA’s claimed travel time savings were in fact attributable to other projects, not the flyover.
I love the Architectural Centre but their manifesto is a bit embarrassing :/
You think so? Have to admit I quite like it.
The content is not so bad but,
0.9 architecture needs good typography!
Yes black background and dizzying use of parenthesis, very shouty, but I guess that’s what a Manifesto is….
Imagine looking south along Cambridge Terrace from the Embassy and seeing a flyover. I’m a Jaffa too (ex anyway) but that doesn’t make me warm to the NZTA and the proposed flyover.
personally i dont want the flyover. duplicate the tunnels and the supposed congestion will be pretty well sorted without this ugly monstrosity.
Not to mention that such projects invariably reduce land values. Though that could be an argument for it – more affordable housing. Ha!
NZTA can’t help themselves. Road-building (and little else) is in their blood. With the government’s connivance they have just spent $124million on the 300 metre Arras tunnel, which in traffic terms achieves absolutely nothing. One minor set of traffic lights eliminated on a street which could have been closed anyway (currently is closed, and I’m not sure if it is even in the plan to reopen). All of this to achieve a garden in front of the war memorial, the objective being for the R.H.John Key to make a speech there on ANZAC day 2015. A $124 million garden for a $124 million prime-ministerial photo-op. A $124 million white elephant.
When you think of what this money could have achieved for public transport or a myriad of other worthwhile projects it makes you mildly annoyed.
It has been interesting to see how the traffic in Wellington has changed since the Arras Tunnel opened a month or so ago. Effectively, it removes just one intersection from the Basin Reserve area, and traffic seems to be flowing a tiny bit smoother because of it, but as predicted, it just moves the traffic elsewhere. In this case: now flowing down Haining St, as it can’t get out of Tory St any more. People will hopefully learn one day – but for now, everyday at 5pm its a giant non-moving mess.
That’s the thing with Wellington – there are very few alternative routes through the city, and tweaking one little bit only makes other parts worse. Luke’s suggestion above to duplicate the tunnels is, sadly, probably likely to make the problem a lot worse, rather than “pretty well sorted”.
well id rather see the money spent on a light rail line and lots of cycleways but given the current idealogy in powers determination to build only roads id rather see the money wasted on tunnels than a stupid flyover.
Central Wellington architecture suffers from a few things: On one had, these three factors combine to generate a significant percentage of buildings in Wellington that represent the worst excesses of various mismatched architectural fashions: (1) only a few sizable projects each decade so architects know it’ll be their only chance to “make a statement”, (2) many of those projects have been for government or corporate HQs with the money make a statement, (3) a compact city centre. On the other hand, outside those projects, there doesn’t tend to be much money for interesting work or renewal. So, oddly, Wellington is stuck with a bunch of plain, run down little buildings combined with a bunch of flagship buildings of all sorts of different over-the-top styles. Such a pretty setting, such a load of ugly stuff sitting in it.
Ridsel, your provocative statement deserves a suitably ribald reply… But that would be as off-topic as your comment is of bad taste. Look: let’s be honest – of all the cities in New Zealand, only Oamaru and Napier have any claim for architectural city style and taste. Auckland’s crap architecture is just as bad as Wellington’s crap architecture. But actually, in terms of large buildings downtown in each city, Wellington employs about the same number of people in the CBD as Auckland does in it’s CBD (according to numbers published here at Transportblog a while back), and so therefore Wellington probably has about as many large buildings as Auckland – we just pack them in more efficiently. We just don’t have the endless giant warehouses that you guys have in south auckland, none of which ever really win any awards for prettiness either… …mmmm, and we don’t have that motorway carnage either.
You’re employment figures are wrong, there are 90,000 jobs inside the motorway in Auckland, that would be 1/4 of all employment in the Wellington region.
Welling City council has as much employment as the Auckland city centre.
What’s the Architecture Centre’s opinion of the Basin Reserve itself. Was knocking it down ever [seriously] considered?
No. You might like to refer to this website: http://architecture.org.nz/basin/