Editorial: Wellington mega tunnel a pipe dream

Traffic congestion outside Wellington's Mt Victoria tunnel. Photo / Mark Mitchell

EDITORIAL

Picture the scene: a capital city with pedestrianised streets, bustling shops, affordable housing sprinkled through inner laneways while a mega underground tunnel diverts noisy traffic away.

It’s hard to deny the appeal of such a major infrastructure project for grid-locked, leaking Wellington, not only making the trip to and from the airport 15 minutes faster, but also making city streets safer and more accessible.

And that’s exactly the vision Transport Minister Simeon Brown is selling to explain why he’s re-exploring a failed tunnel from three years ago, canned because of the cost.

First floated as part of the now-scrapped Let’s Get Wellington Moving project, the long tunnel would bypass the inner city and stretch about 4km from The Terrace to Kilbirnie, making it longer than Auckland’s Waterview Tunnel at 2.4km.

It was rejected in 2021, ultimately because of its “eyewatering” cost. No figure has ever been officially provided, but Greater Wellington Regional Council councillor Thomas Nash understood initial estimates could be as much as $10 billion.

The investigation into the long tunnel is happening in parallel with a second Mt Victoria tunnel and upgrades around the Basin Reserve estimated to cost $2.2b.

Brown has asked NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi officials to revisit the idea, seeking advice on a long tunnel’s technical feasibility, cost, and funding and financing options.

But if such a tunnel was deemed unaffordable in 2021 - when the Government of the day was actively looking for projects to invest in and cash was flowing freely - there’s no way we can afford it now in the midst of a recession and cost-of-living crisis.

The current coalition Government has made no secret of the financial situation this country finds itself it, proudly governing with a frugal mindset.

Jobs are being cut from the public sector to fund tax cuts in the upcoming Budget; major infrastructure projects like KiwiRail’s plan to transform Cook Strait ferry operations - at a cost of nearly $3b - have been axed.

So when it was revealed by the Herald this week that the Transport Minister was reinvestigating a super tunnel from three years ago, canned because of the expected cost, it’s no wonder there was disbelief.

Mike Hosking asked Finance Minister Nicola Willis on Tuesday whether it would even be possible to build a tunnel of that magnitude in a way that comes in on time and on budget. Her unconvincing answer was “maybe”.

“We’re taking advice on that. We committed prior to the election to building a duplicate tunnel under Mt Vic, it’s been talked about for decades and something needs to be done,” Willis said.

“What we’ve been advised is look, if you’re going to go to the disruption of building a second tunnel, consider making this a project that would also have pretty transformative impacts in terms of providing more land for housing in the inner city and ensuring active modes of travel are more enabled.”

Willis ended by making it clear that as Finance Minister, she was not interested in projects unless they stacked up.

For Wellingtonians, it’s probably hard to see how it can. The city is surrounded by unfinished infrastructure projects with major budget blowouts.

Taxpayers still don’t know what the final cost for Transmission Gully will be after it already skyrocketed from $850 million to $1.25b, because the road still isn’t finished, despite opening to traffic two years ago.

The Wellington Town Hall remains under construction after being declared earthquake-prone in 2013. The cost to fix it was originally supposed to be $43m but could now be as high as $329m.

It’s one thing to be ambitious and visionary, but time will tell if a long tunnel is truly possible or whether the Government is simply chasing an old pipe dream.