LOCAL residents are concerned that decisions being made for the Basin Reserve ignore national design protocol, and the result will be a $97 million flyover.
The New Zealand Transport Agency, which signed up to the 2005 Urban Design Protocol, is discussing preliminary options to ease traffic congestion around the Basin.
Five options – three variations of a flyover, and two ground level plans – have been leaked to the media.
Community groups including the Mount Victoria Residents Association, the Architectural Centre and Save the Basin, don’t think the options adhere to the Urban Design Protocol.
“It’s clear they’ve forgotten about them for this project,” says Mount Victoria Residents Association president Jessica Closson. “I’d like to hear their urban design champion explain in detail how the options are following the Urban Design Protocol they’ve agreed to.”
The protocol was to encourage central and local government, as well as private organisations to make towns and cities incorporate quality design.
It’s core values – known as the “seven C’s” are: context (development is part of the whole city), character (development reflects surrounding environment), choice (ensuring diversity and choice for people), connections (utilising different connections), creativity (encouraging innovative solutions), custodianship (ensuring design is sustainable and safe) and collaboration (information sharing across networks and with the community).
Deborah Hume, NZTA’s regional director, says the agency has incorporated the design values into the flyover options.
Residents remain unconvinced. “If they build a concrete flyover next to the historic Basin Reserve it will forever change that character,” says Closson.
Guy Marriage, president of the Architectural Centre, who put forward an alternate option to a flyover (Capital Times, February 3), says it’s taken too long for the options to come out.
“NZTA promised discussion in December 2008, and we haven’t seen a single thing, it’s incredibly poor consultation,” he says.
NZTA was quick to dismiss the Architectural Centre’s “patch and cover” Basin Reserve design, which saw cars travelling under the basin and pedestrian space on top of it, as “too expensive”.
The most expensive flyover option has been quoted to cost $97 million.
Kent Duston of Save the Basin group says the closed-door meetings NZTA had with Wellington City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council are unacceptable.
“This is a public agency paid for out of the public purse and they have an obligation to be open and honest with Wellingtonians,” he says.
Both Marriage and Duston say they have yet to see a detailed design of the options, but what they have seen shows “a fatal lack of imagination”.
“The NZTA designs look great for cars, but not for pedestrians. If you want a great urban design, you don’t give it to a traffic engineer,” says Duston.
Councillor Iona Pannett is concerned that a flyover has already been decided, but the NZTA have stayed stoically silent on options.
The flyover option has not received public support (Capital Times Readers’ Poll, February 3, showed 69% against it), community groups say they’re not sure if that will change anything. Hume disagrees.
“Public input is an important contributor to the NZTA Board’s decision-making process on transport improvements around the Basin Reserve,” she says.
Another difficulty is in seeing how a flyover is the best option economically.
The cost benefit analysis of the five options, Duston understands, shows the three flyover designs fare badly, while the two ground-level options, that include traffic lights and bus and cycle lanes “are the only ones that show economic return”.
The $400 million Transmission Gully, another NZTA project, reportedly has a 0.6 benefit-cost ratio (1 is regarded as breaking even).
However, “all of the options that the NZTA Board will be considering for consultations must be economically viable in terms of the cost benefit analysis,” says Hume.
Many questions remain and won’t be answered until March when Hume says NZTA will “make final decisions on the options for public consultation”.
Sophie Schröder.