Editorial: Wasteful tunnel spend from a Government preaching fiscal restraint

Traffic driving through Wellington's Mt Victoria Tunnel. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In one of the most predictable outcomes of the year, the Government has confirmed Wellington won’t be getting a mega-tunnel under the city.

Nobody will be surprised to hear a tunnel deemed eye-wateringly expensive three years ago has once again been labelled target="_blank">“unaffordable”.

What is surprising is that a Government priding itself on being fiscally responsible was willing to spend $1.6 million on consultants to be told what we already knew.

The 4km long tunnel stretching underground from The Terrace to Kilbirnie was first floated as part of the now-canned Let’s Get Wellington Moving project.

It was rejected in 2021 because of the cost – a figure never publicly released.

That didn’t stop Transport Minister Simeon Brown deciding to take another look at it when he stepped in to the role though, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon even calling it a “really attractive option”.

As it turns out, it’s not an attractive option with an estimated price tag of $8 billion. The ridiculous idea has now been scrapped for a second time.

Instead, the Government will build what it said it would as part of the election campaign – a second Mt Victoria tunnel. It’s also throwing a second Terrace Tunnel in for good measure.

The Herald predicted this exact result as far back as April, calling the long tunnel nothing more than a pipe dream.

It would have been the longest tunnel ever built in New Zealand, dwarfing Auckland’s 2.4km Waterview tunnel and the 3.45km City Rail Link project.

It would have cost more than both the Cook Strait mega ferry project and Dunedin hospital upgrade combined – two projects that have been scrapped and scaled back due to budget blowouts.

It would have been built under one of our most earthquake-prone cities, already struggling to complete major infrastructure projects.

Taxpayers still don’t know what the final cost for Transmission Gully will be after it already skyrocketed from $850m 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.

There’s still no decision about what’s going to happen with our ageing Interislander ferries. One facetious suggestion that gained traction online was for the minister to perhaps combine the two – a mega-tunnel under Cook Strait connecting the North and South islands.

The long tunnel has been consigned back to the history pages as it should be. We simply cannot afford it. We never could.

Re-investigating it was an act of folly for a Government wanting to show it’s making smart spending decisions with taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.

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