Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, November 28th, 2008 - 42 comments
Categories: activism, transport -
Tags: basin reserve, save the basin
Over the last few weeks I’ve heard the odd grumble in Wellington leftie circles about the proposed Basin Reserve flyover but until now haven’t really paid much attention. Nor, does it seem, have many others. The 3D artists’ projection above shows why we probably should.
According to the Save the Basin Reserve campaign, the NZ Transport Agency and the Greater Wellington Regional Council are planning:
“to build an enormous concrete flyover across the northern face of the Basin Reserve linking the entrance to the Mt Victoria tunnel on the eastern side with Buckle Street on the western side – along with a series of onramps and offramps to enable traffic to flow around the Basin. This huge concrete construction will be around 10 metres tall, will cost (we estimate) more than $50 million, and will completely ruin the Basin Reserve as a sporting and cultural venue.
Following the fiasco that was the Inner-City Bypass, this is yet another kick in the face to Wellington’s urban environment. But it’s not just about the Basin – in an age of peak oil and climate change we should be investing in public transport, not in more roads to fill with cars.
If you want to find out more or get involved in the campaign there’s more info here, And there are a couple more 3D models up on Scoop.
UPDATE: A good piece at NewsWire.co.nz
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Scoopit!
“Manners Mall could quite easily be turned into a restaurant precint”
I’m sure we can think of something better than that. Why do people think that jamming a bunch of cheesy restaurants and bars together is a good thing?
Mello C,
That is awseome.
Possible evidence in a submission against this big bridge?
Why do I get the feeling that if we were talking about Vaunted Rugby the cries of “Come <i>on</i>, it’s just a SPORT!” would be fewer?The Basin Reserve is a better location for cricket. It was good enough to be a site in EA Cricket 2005. It’s a heritage site, and dear God do I detest the notion that “we can just shunt around the heritage-y bits, it’s not like their context or continuing use is an important <i>part</i> of that heritage, right?”Tell you what, as a Wellingtonian who doesn’t own a car and hasn’t needed one in the four years I have … Come <i>on</i>, it’s just TRAFFIC!
XHTML appears to be borked, btw.
Greetings – a few comments from a staffer at the City Council:
The people opposing the proposed flyover are employing the classic old ruse of working up drawing to make the proposal look as terrifying and gigantic as possible. The artist who knocked out the image you’re running has clearly decided the flyover is going to be designed by Mattel – ie that it’ll be a giant Hot Wheels track that’ll cross over the fence into the Basin Reserve itself.
This, of course, is all rubbish designed specifically to mislead the public and scare the horses.
The City Council, the Regional Council and NZTA are all quite fond of the Basin Reserve – so the suggestions that we will collectively do anything to ruin the Basin are also rubbish.
Our aim is to do something useful about the growing traffic problems and public-transport bottleneck adjacent to the Basin Reserve. Doing nothing is not an option.
In terms of the collective early approach to the proposals for traffic and public transport improvements around the ground, one of the bottom-line agreements is that the ambience and relative tranquility of the Basin Reserve will not be compromised.
In conjunction with the Basin Reserve Trust, the City Council is a guardian of the ground and, as such, there is no logic in the claims that we would be party to any work around the Basin that would ruin its status as one of the world’s oldest and best cricket venues.
The problem with the Basin is its location at the centre of a very large and busy traffic roundabout. Apart from the meeting of State Highways 1 and 2 at the foot of the Ngauranga Gorge, it is the region’s busiest traffic junction. Unlike the Ngauranga Gorge, however, the Basin roundabout is on the main bus route serving the city’s southern and eastern suburbs, and it has to also accommodate cyclists, pedestrians, cricket fans and the Basin’s neighbours including three schools and Government House.
Despite the installation of traffic lights around the Basin, traffic congestion is steadily worsening, especially during rush-hours midweek and during the day at weekends. The conflict between State Highway 1 traffic heading to and from the Mt Victoria Tunnel, and traffic heading to and from the southern suburbs, means rush-hour travel is a misery for most – including bus passengers who are caught up in the snarl-ups.
Doing nothing about the worsening congestion is not an option because we cannot realistically shift our principal east-west/north-south junction anywhere else.
Anyone who has read Joseph Romanos’ and Don Neely’s great history of the Basin Reserve will know that it has been causing headaches for transport planners for decades.
In the 1960s it was proposed that a tunnel be dug under the cricket ground to link Adelaide Road directly with Kent and Cambridge Terrace.
The idea of a flyover beside the Basin, to carry east-west traffic over the north-south traffic, has been around since the 1970s at least. It was initially sunk as a concept in the early 1990s as the prospect of a full-fledged motorway linking the Terrace and Mt Victoria tunnels dwindled mainly due to a lack of funding, but also due to genuine outrage from supporters of the Basin.
The flyover idea re-emerged as part of the Ngauranga-Airport Transport Study commissioned by Transit NZ (now the NZ Transport Agency) and the City and regional councils. The study is the most comprehensive review of the transport needs of the city and region to date. It has taken two years and involved three stages of public consultation. This included a public survey that found that 67% of people supported a flyover adjacent to the Basin.
It was discussed at a three-day design workshop held earlier this month by all three authorities. The workshop involved urban design and traffic experts and other stakeholders including a number of consultancy firms and the Basin Reserve Trust.
This workshop produced a number of very preliminary designs that aim to separate east-west and north-south traffic and at the same time preserve the character and functionality of the Basin.
A couple of the preliminary designs involve two-lane flyovers that would carry east-west traffic from the tunnel to Buckle Street and on to Karo Drive (the bypass).
Other possible designs don’t involve grade separation – ie a flyover lifting traffic over the north-south route. However the fact that both sets of traffic would still meet at ground-level then means the challenge of improving flows is far more complicated.
Without having any completed detailed plans to help explain the situation, a much larger intersection would have to be built just to the north of the Basin. Our urban designers and engineers believe it would be difficult for such an intersection to efficiently deal with traffic without seriously blighting the immediate area especially for pedestrians and cyclists.
One of the other main advantages of a flyover would be its ability to simplify traffic flows, reduce the number of crossings for pedestrians and cyclists. It would also more effectively leave open the possibility that, in the future, light-rail tracks could be installed on the north-south route without the problem of trains/trams having to cross State Highway 1 – our principal east-west route.
The Basin Reserve Trust has indicated that it supports improvements to traffic flow around the ground – including a possible flyover – provided there are adequate design features to mitigate its effects on the ground.
Urban-design and traffic engineering experts from the City Council, NZTA and the Regional Council are currently working up the rough designs from the workshop into more detailed drawings that can be readily digested and understood by the general public.
Suffice to say they’ll provide a more accurate and honest impression of what a possible flyover might look like than the image you’re currently using.
Thanks, richard – I wasn’t aware that everyone who’s opposed to the flyover is a credulous child swayed by nothing more than a single artist’s interpretation. It’s not like, oh, it’s a ridiculously overblown solution to a problem better addressed by increasing public transport, or reducing the number of cars on the roads.
I mean, after the fantastic success of the bypass, who could POSSIBLY question the Council’s wisdom in constructing big, shiny things for insane amounts of money?
I’d say that the biggest point made by the group is that 79% of submissions mentioning the flyover(roughly 4000) were in opposition to its construction.
The regional council is effectively ignoring these submissions.