Good transport choices for Wellington

Transport is always a defining issue in Wellington. We all want to get places without more traffic jams, stress and pollution.

Isn’t there a better solution than demolishing local homes to build more tunnels funnelling more one person per car commuters into Wellington, circling around looking for a car park?

I think there are better ideas for the coming decades, where fuel prices will be higher and carbon restrictions tighter.

Good transport choices mean that your son or daughter, your grandchildren can choose to walk safely to primary school.Good transport choices mean being able to cycle from Petone to Wellington City along the Great Harbour Way without juggernaut trucks and punctures. There need to be practical and safe routes for people to cycle along. Sometimes they weill be off-road through reserves, sometimes they will be cycle lanes, sometimes shared paths and sometimes wide bus lanes with educated drivers.

As mayor I will be a strong advocate for both these active ways of getting to school and work and the shops.

Balanced, sensible development

Good transport choices are also about how Wellington grows in the future. It’s about ensuring that homes aren’t built sprawling on the edges of the city with no access to schools, shops and jobs, where you use a litre of petrol when you want to buy a litre of milk. I will be a strong advocate for balanced, sensible development options that give new home buyers and downsizing retirees and immigrant families and student flatters real choices about where they live.

Make no mistake, we’ve already made positive progress on some of these issues during my time on Council. We’re already described as the world’s fifth-ranked eco-city. But there’s ample room for improvement.

Walking and buses

Wellington’s walkability is trumpeted but when the busiest intersections at traffic lights have a pedestrian wait of more than two minutes at peak time, there’s obviously more we can do. 

33% of Wellingtonians already commute by bus, according to our residents survey and that’s a great statistic. Improving and extending our bus network is obviously key to meeting our future transport needs. We’ve already started on some of the work to streamline the bus corridor.

But I’m not convinced that any of these slow, tentative improvements will bring us the step-change we need in transport, or help supercharge our economic prospects.

Light rail

Wellington’s transport future is on the tracks.

We know from overseas case studies that light rail not only improves the transport infrastructure, it also drives good environmental stewardship and economic transformation. In the US and Europe many cities have discovered that light rail improves property values, draws in new businesses, and improves the quality of life for commuters and residents alike.

So this is my vision for transport in Wellington – a transformative, strategic investment in our future, not simply incremental upgrades to our existing infrastructure.

If I'm elected mayor, I intend to construct a world-class light rail system for Wellington. The new light rail line will run from the railway station to Courtenay Place via the Golden Mile, onwards to the hospital and Newtown, through Kilbirnie to the airport. I intend to complete the planning in my first term as mayor, to begin laying rails in my second term, and to see the system complete by 2020.

I’m excited about how Wellington can look with a world-class light rail system. Lambton Quay and Courtenay Place and Adelaide Road will be more vibrant and more pleasant places to live, shop and work, while carrying nearly double the passengers of the existing congested bus network. Businesses and apartments will be drawn to the new light rail corridor. And tourists and business people arriving at the airport will have a fast, convenient and cost-effective way to get into town, bypassing some of our worst traffic congestion.

Of course, a mayor can’t build a light rail system on her own! So I’ll be working hard with the regional council and central government to design, fund and implement this strategic project.

Most importantly, I’m interested to hear what Wellingtonians think about this idea. So far, many people have told me how enthusiastic they are about light rail – but let’s hear from all of Wellington. So within three months of taking office, I’ll be running an open, transparent discussion about the light rail corridor so the wisdom of our entire community can produce the best possible plan.

So to get the discussion started, here's a plan of how our new light rail network could look. We'll need to integrate the new stations with the rest of our transport systems, so there's lots of thought that needs to go into how we connect to existing bus routes, the requirements for park-and-ride, and how we accommodate bikes in stations and trains. Integration with feeder suburban lines (Johnsonville, Tawa and the Hutt Valley) would be ideal but covered transfer is acceptable at least to start with.

Wellington Railway Station - Lambton Quay - Willis Street - Courtenay Place - Basin Reserve (without a fly-over, just priority at lights) - Newtown Hospital and then Kilbirnie (via Constable St or near the zoo) along Coutts St (not far from the Indoor Stadium) to the Airport. Not sure about heading further east but it should be examined - could do Strathmore and up Miramar Avenue..

There are different possibilities between the hospital and the airport that need discussion and debate.

Transport issues have been successfully addressed in many cities around the world and I've heard some great ideas about how to implement them in Wellington, so I'm really looking forward to beginning the discussion and bringing our famed Kiwi ingenuity to bear on creating a great light rail system for the capital.