29 April 2015 – Greater Wellington Regional Council voted strongly against NZTA plans to put a road through Takapu Valley (http://www.gw.govt.nz/committee-meetings-calendar/detail/7239).
28 April 2015 – Regional Transport Committee voted against putting a motorway through Takapu Valley (http://www.gw.govt.nz/committee-meetings-calendar/detail/7237).
14 April 2015 – Wellington City Council voted strongly against a motorway through Takapu Valley (http://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/meetings/committees/council/2015/04/14)
That’s really signficant in our drive to stop this pointless road destroying Takapu Valley forever. Councillors have almost unanimously agreed that the claimed benefits from NZTA are nowhere near the potential social and environmental costs to the city.
However, as Raewyn Bleakley pointed out to councillors at the March 2015 RTC meeting, it doesn’t matter because NZTA will be taking the matter to the NZTA Board to decide this year. This might be so, but we really hope Wellington NZTA will relook at the matter with an open mind and see that they now have a clear mandate to refocus on making a very good east-west link road from Petone to Grenada without the distracting unnecessary matters of options C (SH1 widening) or D (Takapu) add-ons diluting it’s purpose.
We also hope that NZTA are listening to the grave concerns we have regarding joining Petone to Grenada Road to SH1 at a Tawa interchange. We know this is going to induce it’s own traffic congestion and problems. The smart solution we think is to go back and develop the original designs further for a fast merge near Churton Park (original options A & B). There are early promising signs that NZTA are starting to do this (like the 8 NZTA staff seen in a huddle with lots of pointing, near Churton Park interchange today), and we’d like to commend and encourage them to do so.
Getting here has taken considerable work from volunteers so far. Many councillors have invested considerable time investigating the matter properly too. And there has been considerable support from Hon. Peter Dunne and also Wellington Scoop, for which we are grateful for their ongoing support