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Andrew Dickens: The new Wellington traffic plan is a monster · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The latest plan to fix central Wellington traffic has been
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  Speaker 1: released for consultation and it's a big old monster of
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  Speaker 1: a thing. There's a couple of tunnels, a new one
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  Speaker 1: at the Terrace end of the motorway and another new
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  Speaker 1: tunnel through Mount Victoria. Land and houses will be taken
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  Speaker 1: out of the town belt at Mount Victoria and parkland
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  Speaker 1: will be taken at the Terrace. There will be a
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  Speaker 1: major redesign of the Basin Reserve roundabout and a bridge
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  Speaker 1: maybe near the airport. And the price tag three billion dollars.
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  Speaker 1: Ironically the same sort of cost for two ports and
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  Speaker 1: two ferries to cross Cork Strait that was thought to
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  Speaker 1: be wildly expensive at the time. So the immediate reaction
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  Speaker 1: to this plan is that it's wildly expensive, which it
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  Speaker 1: is wildly expensive and totally predictable. The WRONGATAI airport. Wellington's
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  Speaker 1: airport was open to nineteen fifty nine and from day
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  Speaker 1: one to get to it you were dependent on the
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  Speaker 1: Mount Vic Tunnel, which opened in nineteen thirty one. Two
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  Speaker 1: lanes and that's it. It should have been expanded when
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  Speaker 1: they built the airport. The Mountvic Tunnel is Wellington's Auckland
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  Speaker 1: Harbor Bridge moment, a piece of insufficient infrastructure that has
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  Speaker 1: only got worse. And you could argue the same thing
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  Speaker 1: about the Terrace tunnel that was built ending abruptly in
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  Speaker 1: a tiny urban streets designed before the rides of the automobile.
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  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, of course some of Mount Vick's funky houses
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  Speaker 1: are going to be destroyed and that will get right
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  Speaker 1: up the nose of the inner city residents, the ones
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  Speaker 1: who don't have to drive far at all. So anyway,
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  Speaker 1: Consola Consultation is open now, and what am I expecting.
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  Speaker 1: I'm expecting it to be rancorous because it's expensive and
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  Speaker 1: houses are being disappeared. But you know it's the bed
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  Speaker 1: Wellington chose to lie in when building an inner city
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  Speaker 1: airport and not making the hard calls earlier. And that
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  Speaker 1: also means strife for the good people of Candada who
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: are complaining about the plane noise over their suburb after
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  Speaker 1: the flight paths changed in twenty twenty two. Of course
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  Speaker 1: they would prefer the flights when over Newlands where they
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  Speaker 1: used to go. Well, the people of Newlands are loving
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  Speaker 1: the change flight path. But as soon as you put
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  Speaker 1: your airport a wrong atide, this was bound to happen
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  Speaker 1: so on all of this, you can't really complain about
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  Speaker 1: the bill that you've inherited from your forebears who lacked foresight.
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  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 2:14
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• 2:17
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