A guest post from Alex Braae
The Basin Reserve is for many Wel­ling­to­ni­ans a spe­cial place, and for many dif­fer­ent reas­ons. The Basin is a place where memor­ies are cre­ated, and I know from exper­i­ence what an amaz­ing spot it is for kids to play. It’s part of our her­it­age, and part of the life of the inner city. There is a very real risk that the Basin won’t sur­vive the assault being planned by NZTA. A coali­tion of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans, includ­ing res­id­ents asso­ci­ations, loc­al Greens, and crick­et lov­ers are try­ing to stop this.

The fly­over. An innoc­u­ous sound­ing name for a road that will com­pletely dom­in­ate the sur­round­ings, an ugly mess of con­crete, steel and noise. NZTA wants to build an elev­ated high­way to cre­ate a two-lane road between the inner city bypass and Mt Vic­tor­ia, at hor­rendous cost to the tax­pay­er. While there might be sen­ti­ment­al reas­ons for sav­ing the Basin, there are also sound eco­nom­ic reas­ons why the fly­over is a ter­rible idea. I’m going to look at both.

Firstly, we have to ask the ques­tion, what exactly is the prob­lem that needs solv­ing? Sup­posedly, traffic between town and the MT Vic tun­nel is unbear­able at rush hour, with cars cram­ming the road and being bot­tle­necked into the tun­nel. Con­ges­tion is frus­trat­ing, sure, but it’s also rel­at­ive. Those who think it’s bad here should try Auckland’s roads at rush hour, or Los Angeles.

How­ever, the solu­tion to con­ges­tion is not to build more road capa­city. We should instead try to get cars off the road. A per­fectly ser­vice­able bus tun­nel already exists to get people under Mt Vic. A light rail­way line, like the Greens and May­or Celia Wade Brown are arguing for, would massively ease any trans­port prob­lems, and for much less cost. Even simple meas­ures like encour­aging car­pool­ing would take cars off the road. The cit­ies that struggle the most with con­ges­tion are also those that build only with cars in mind.

But no, that’s not good enough for NZTA. They want a bloody big eye­sore to smash through the area, because eye­sores are what they do best. The obses­sion with build­ing more roads is com­pletely mis­guided, because it assumes in 30 years time we will have more cars on them. With pet­rol prices rising and elec­tric cars still a pipe dream, what evid­ence do they have that car num­bers will increase? Would an increase in car num­bers even be eco­nom­ic­ally pos­sible? I highly doubt it.

I have a per­son­al interest in this too, like many fel­low res­id­ents. Some of my earli­est and hap­pi­est memor­ies come from the Basin, when my Grandpa would take me and my broth­ers to watch the crick­et. On a fine day, the Bain Reserve is a truly glor­i­ous green space with­in the urb­an envir­on­ment. The pro­posed fly­over will dwarf the grassy banks and per­man­ently ruin the atmo­sphere of the Basin.

So what can we do? To register your oppos­i­tion to the fly­over, make sure you go down on the 25th of Septem­ber to hear Green MP Sue Kedgley and oth­ers speak about plans to save the icon­ic Basin Reserve. The plan is to get enough people to join hands around the ground, so that we can lit­er­ally hug the Basin. At 12 o’clock on the 25th, we plan to show NZTA that people and places are more import­ant than roads. I hope to see you there.

Protest Details: Hands Around the Basin

  • Sunday 25th Septem­ber, 12–1 pm.
  • The Basin Reserve, Sus­sex St
  • Speak­ers, music, info and a big hug for the Basin.