Shelly Bay. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Just as the dispute over a housing development at Wellington's Shelly Bay was starting to ease, a spanner has been thrown in the works with the proposal for a new bus depot down the road.
NZ Bus has applied for resource consent from Wellington City Council to build and operate a depot near Burnham Wharf.
It would have space for about 120 buses and include an administration building and other facilities.
The company has been on the hunt for a new home for part of its fleet after Infratil sold the Kilbirnie depot for $35 million.
Infratil used to own NZ Bus but sold it to Next Capital in 2019. The land in Kilbirnie was not part of the deal, leaving the operator caught short.
Further up Shelly Bay Rd from where the proposed new depot, a $500 million development featuring 350 new homes is finally getting under way, after being bogged down in legal challenges and disputes since its conception.
One of the most contentious issues has been how the coastal road will stand up to climate change and handle the extra traffic from the housing development, let alone 120 buses.
Wellington City councillors have recently attended public meetings about the possible future design of the road, with no mention of plans for a bus depot.
Deputy mayor and eastern ward councillor Sarah Free said elected members have been "blindsided" by the depot proposal.
"This has thrown another spanner into the works that we didn't even know about."
Normally councillors wouldn't get involved with resource consents, but this particular situation was complicated by the recent consultation efforts with the community to get a good design, Free said.
She has asked council officials, who are still working through final design options for the road, for a briefing on the situation.
The Green Party's eastern ward candidate Luana Scowcroft said Wellingtonians' trust in the council was at an all-time low.
"When I see first-hand how the residents of the east are treated, I'm not surprised."
Scowcroft said the depot would add to the transport woes of moving people from the eastern suburbs to the city, rather than ease them.
"If the depot were to go ahead, the proposal to make the Shelly Bay Rd a key recreational space would be dead in the water. The minimum viable width for a safe cycleway would be toast to allow buses through."
She described the Shelly Bay Rd upgrade as fraught, and said work should not progress while there was a challenge to the housing development with the Māori Land Court.
There are 25 car parks proposed within the depot development, and 55 new on-street parking spaces.
These street parks are suggested as being unrestricted so that bus drivers could use the spaces in peak periods, while being available to the public at other times.
The design of the bus depot would leave 4m of space between the fence line and proposed on-street parking.
The amount of space would be sufficient to provide a shared path but not a separate cycling facility, a transportation assessment attached to the consent application said.
"Should council require a wider facility then this could impact on the ability to provide on street parking spaces."
The overall assessment of transport effects was found to be minor if the Shelly Bay Rd intersection was controlled by traffic signals.
Currently that is not the case, but is expected that would be necessary with the increase in traffic from the Shelly Bay development anyway.
The report proposed this work should be brought forward and NZ Bus indicated it would be prepared to contribute to the cost.