With its remarkable scenery, snow, extreme sports, and thumping nightlife, Queenstown is the jewel in the New Zealand tourism crown. But the South Island resort town's boom times has resulted in traffic chaos. Gondolas, light rail, trams, water taxis and new airports have all been floated as possible solutions. Herald
Queenstown traffic woes: Gondolas, water taxis, bike trails, all in the mix as proposed solutions
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Queenstown traffic is getting worse and causing some major headaches. Photo / James Allan
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The mayor, Jim Boult, lives just out of town at Lake Hayes. At quiet times of the year, his drive into work flashes by in 15 minutes. But at peak times – Christmas holidays, winter festival, school drop-offs - it can be a good 40 minutes before he's rolling into his office car park.
It's not Auckland traffic chaos, certainly. And as the resident tourism quango notes, the overseas tourists from Melbourne, Hong Kong and Los Angeles et al probably don't even notice it.
But the ever-increasing number of "locals" do. And they want Queenstown - Australasia's own mini-version of Whistler in British Columbia, Aspen in Colorado's Rocky Mountains or Europe's winter jet-set locales of Courchevel, Meribel and Val d'Isère in the French Alps – to be sitting right up there with them. They just want the place to catch up with the number of people who visit, and live there.
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'We need to think outside the square'
Some of the proposed solutions seem fantastical. Gondolas. Why not? Other European ski resorts use them. There are plenty of cities around the world where cable cars are a legitimate commuter option: La Paz in Bolivia, Medellin in Colombia, Singapore, Ngong Ping in Hong Kong, Ankara in Turkey ...
"We really do need to think boldly, and not just within a paradigm of the sort of solutions other destinations look at – we need to think outside the square," Destination Queenstown chief executive Graham Budd says.
"They are used elsewhere in mountainous terrain areas but they are also used in cities as literally transport options for residents commuting. It's not a unique idea, it's just that in New Zealand we haven't thought that way before."
Queenstown is booming. About 200,000 people fly in and out of the insanely picturesque airport every month on four commercial airlines: Air New Zealand, Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia. And the numbers are steadily rising: 1,779,868 people went through the airport in 2016, two million in 2017 and 2.42 million last year.
The township buzzes. Restaurants, bars, cafes, top-end high street names, luxury boutiques. On-street parking is a monotonous early round of musical chairs.
Boom times
Crafty locals arrange meetings at the flourishing retail parks on the edge of town with easy access and free parking. They know what's up. And they know the visitors are not the problem.
It's them, the permanent population, about 40,000 over the Queenstown-Lakes region, which has been increasing at about 7 per cent per annum over a number of years. It's essentially doubling every decade or so and projected to continue despite Queenstown already being the most expensive place in New Zealand to buy a house.
The median house price is now $1.14m (up from $645,000 in April 2014), and the most expensive rent is an average of $651 a week.
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And it's only going to get worse.
Commercial space at Frankton has trebled in the past five years and Queenstown Lakes District Council projects more than 9000 new homes will be needed by 2028 to keep up with population growth.
There's a perception that growth from outside Queenstown – in Cromwell and Wanaka – and its workers being pushed to cheaper housing out of town is snarling up the roads.
But NZTA figures appear to dismiss that as a myth. On the road in from Cromwell, about 5500 vehicles travel through the early part around Kawarau Gorge a day. But where Arrowtown joins SH6, the number jumps to about 9000, and at Lake Hayes 13,000, up to 17,000 at Shotover Country, and by the time you reach the Quail Rise subdivision, it's up to 25,000.
"The majority of people right now are single-vehicle occupants travelling to work at peak times and dropping off children," says Jim Harland, NZTA director regional relationships for the South Island.
"Without a significant step change to some form of high-density public transport and mass transiting – mention of gondolas, ferries and so on – Queenstown will struggle because there's essentially one main access point, and it just won't cope."
Kiwis love their cars. Until recently, the bus network was poor; expensive, infrequent. The cycleways aren't totally linked up. Gondolas? Show me when it's done.
But the gondola plans are not pie in the sky. Its brainchild is multi-millionaire developer Alastair Porter and he's not mucking around.
He wants a $100m gondola that will stretch 10km and link Remarkables Park – a retail park by the airport - to the Remarkables ski area – and then another arm linking the suburbs of Lake Hayes Estate and Shotover Country to Frankton. It would be the longest gondola system in Australasia.
A resource consent application is likely to be filed within a year. All going well, Porter believes it could be operational as early as 2022. "It is hard to envisage a safer, more environmentally friendly or lower-impact public transport option," Porter says.
But it won't solve all the issues. Developers, public body officials and locals all agree that gondolas will help – and be another cool, quirky tourist attraction – but will be just one of many solutions required.
Water taxis are already becoming a good way to get around. And the existing walking trails and cycleways are slowly being joined up, which pleases local councillor Alexa Forbes, who takes her chances on her bike (she refuses to be called a "cyclist") every day.
"Gondolas work really well in mountain towns - they take little space, they can run on electricity, they are efficient at moving people very quickly. And it's really cool in a place like this," Forbes says.
"When you have a systemic problem, you have a mesh of solutions. The first part of the solution is to accept that we don't use the private car for most trips. Once you accept that, all sorts of solutions will come out of the woodwork, and a gondola may be a part of that mix."
The $2 bus
The town's old bus service, dubbed by Boult as "the dumbest public transport system" in the country, charged punters $16 to travel from Lake Hayes Estate to the "CBD".
Just 30,000 people used the relatively infrequent and expensive service. It's since been scrapped and replaced with a cheaper and more frequent service the locals call "The $2 bus" – and now attracts 120,000 users a month. It's also coincided with a spike in car-parking fees.
"We can't continue to squeeze a never-ending increasing number of private motorcars into the central part of town," Boult says.
Rich-lister and philanthropist Sir Eion Edgar has been visiting Queenstown for 60-odd years and living there fulltime for the past 15 years. He thinks of it as "paradise", and the traffic isn't that bad when compared to the main cities.
"People complain they have to wait for a few minutes, and I'm probably one of the worst," smiles Sir Eion, who is also patron and trustee of the Queenstown Trails Trust.
"There's no simple solution. We've made good progress ... the increasing use of the buses has been amazing, the improvement on the trails is helping, along with the water taxis. And now they are looking ahead, and putting the alternatives into the mix, and will now look at what is sensible over a 15 to 20-year view."
He praised the current council and Boult for working with the regional council and NZTA to fix the buses and actively look at ways to solve the problem of the Frankton to Queenstown Rd.
A new $6.4m slip road on to State Highway 6 to Frankton, which was opened last month, is already helping.
But more needs to be done and a partnership of Queenstown Lakes District Council, Otago Regional Council, NZTA and Queenstown Airport, are working on it under name Wakatipu Way2GO.
They're investigating whether there's room to get two lanes open going into Queenstown every morning, and two lanes going out at evening peak times.
But with house building booming, and the town continuing to sprawl, the roads simply won't be fit for purpose.
Can the airport cope?
The numbers are all putting increasing pressure on the airport. That's also a contentious issue, with some people arguing for Queenstown Airport to be overhauled, or a new international Central Otago airport to be built out of town, while others are calling for more traffic to go through Wanaka Airport over the Crown Range and Tim Shadbolt's Invercargill International Airport two hours south.
But for Boult, a former chief executive of Christchurch International Airport, any talk of abandoning the existing airport is just "silly".
"We have a perfectly good airport that's been there since 1936 and the locals like the fact it's close to town. You can fly in and be home within 15 minutes. It's very convenient and fit for purpose," he says.
"To establish a new airport would cost you somewhere in the region of $1.5 billion and where's that money going to come from and how would the airlines ever pay the landing charges that would be required by that sort of investment?"
And how can the region pay for any of this stuff? One way might be the introduction of a visitor levy for the Queenstown Lakes District. A non-binding referendum on a proposed visitor levy of short-term visitor accommodation this month found 81.17 per cent of residents backed the unique revenue stream.
"Our people have given this council a clear mandate to engage with central government on the next steps. The support shown for the proposed visitor levy says this is something that locals recognise is desperately needed," Boult says.
Good problems to have
Queenstown's growth is really unprecedented in New Zealand. And while it's bringing with it some difficulties, they are issues that other swathes of the country would love to have.
It's an extraordinary place to live, and to spend a few days or weeks holidaying in: the scenery is nothing short of spectacular; truly world-class.
It's New Zealand's adventure capital, with bridges, mountains and lakes to fling yourself off and along, all in a healthy, fresh, clean climate, where you can build up a good appetite for the region's top-drawer eateries, wineries and bars.
The goal now, Destination Queenstown believes, is to not rest on their laurels, but to keep pushing the boundaries and making it a global tourist attraction.
"We need to make sure that when we're looking back in 20 years' time, and we've got another 20,000 people living here and more visitors, that the experience is an even better one than it is today. And that requires investment and vision, and all of this is part of it."
The options
Gondola: Developer Alastair Porter wants a $100m gondola that will stretch over 10km. Resource consent application to be filed within a year with a goal of opening by 2022. There's lots of community support but some scepticism it can be pulled off.
Move the airport: With huge spikes in visitor numbers, can Queenstown Airport cope? Some suggest building a new one out of town, while others say Wanaka and Invercargill can handle more flights. Former Christchurch International Airport boss and current Queenstown mayor Jim Boult says a new airport would cost too much and the airlines wouldn't cough up.
Buses: Big improvements have already been made with cheaper and more frequent services now attracting 120,000 users a month. It's making a difference as locals are urged to ditch their personal cars.
Roads: A new slip road is helping but can they squeeze an extra lane into the one road in and out of Queenstown? They're looking at it, along with joining up the cycle and walkways.
