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.