Let's Get Wellington Moving has created fly-through visualisers of a plan to remove private vehicles from Courtenay Place and Lambton Quay. Video / Go Wellington
The next stage of Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) has got the green light despite fierce opposition from some businesses and a bid by seven councillors to withdraw from the transport plan.
A convincing majority of Wellington City Councillors voted against withdrawing the council’s funding agreement for the $7.4 billion plan. They refused to declare no confidence in LGWM in a fiery meeting this afternoon.
Nine councillors were against and seven were for.
Instead, councillors approved changes to the Golden Mile, including removing private vehicles from Lambton Quay to Courtenay Place.
They also approved the council’s share of $67.53 million towards the Golden Mile project and $45.2m towards improvements on Thorndon Quay and Hutt Rd.
Mayor Tory Whanau said the project to revitalise the Golden Mile is what transformational change looked like.
“It will create a beautiful and pedestrian-friendly CBD that will attract people, workers and shoppers. It will make our buses more reliable. It is estimated to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit our city.”
Whanau acknowledged opposition to the plan from some businesses and councillors.
“But I do believe that ultimately this project will be good for our city and good for businesses. I do believe it is supported by a majority of Wellingtonians.”
She said communication with businesses could have been better and she wanted to address that with a new business advisory group for future LGWM projects.
Councillors stay the course
A faction of seven councillors was behind a notice of motion for the council to declare no confidence in LGWM. They are Tim Brown, Diane Calvert, Ray Chung, Sarah Free, Tony Randle, Nicola Young and John Apanowicz.
Their concerns included the scope and scale of the work, LGWM’s governance and accountability structure, the ability to deliver on budget, the sequencing of work and its affordability.
But they did not have the numbers for their cause around the council table of 16 people.
Calvert said if nothing else, the notice of motion has sparked far more engagement in the past three weeks than what she has seen in the past three years.
“Let’s Get Wellington Moving’s structure is not working. It’s cumbersome, it creates extra overheads, it lacks transparency, and it has weak accountability to the partner councils. Its continuing poor engagement practices are legendary.”
Young said millions have been spent but very little has been delivered.
“As consultants say, even in Auckland, Let’s Get Wellington [Moving] is the gift that keeps on giving to consultants.”
Diane Calvert says Let’s Get Wellington Moving’s structure is not working. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Herald revealed this year that as of March 31, LGWM had spent $105.3m since the programme started in 2015.
Of that, $61.6m had been spent on consultants and just $4.5m on construction.
Cr Tamatha Paul said no one was being well served by the transport system but the notice of motion did nothing to change the status quo.
“If you’re proposing to show no confidence and essentially can the largest transport investment that we’ve had in our city for a very long time and you don’t have an alternative to that, then I’m sorry but you’re wasting everyone’s time,” she told the faction of councillors.
“This really is ridiculous that a city with this many skilled and intelligent people cannot make any progress on transport.”
Council officials did not support the notice of motion, warning it would expose the council to significant legal risk given there has been no consultation with the community about withdrawing from the plan.
Businesses pen letter to Mayor
A group of businesses this week wrote an open letter to Whanau calling on the council to vote against the plan.
“This initiative will do nothing to enliven the city centre. After the shocks of recent years we’ve gone quiet,” they wrote.
“Turning our main artery into little more than a bus lane will not bring in people and help us recover. It will do the opposite.”
Ahead of voting today, Cranfield’s owner Nicola Cranfield claimed the net benefits of $313m for the Golden Mile changes were overstated.
She brought a copy of an economic assessment of LGWM by an independent Wellington economist.
“This looks too good to be true and it is,” Cranfield said quoting from the report.
“When the string of emissions errors and optimistic assumptions were recalculated, a very different picture of the benefits emerges. The costs well exceed the benefits and the economic loss is $121m.”
Cycle Wellington spokesman Patrick Morgan said LGWM will make Wellington fairer and safer, and wouldn’t lock people into driving.
“We could talk about this for another decade but sooner or later your job as leaders is to press the go button.”
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
