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Home / New Zealand

Wellington Airport puts billion dollar transport plan on notice over pedestrian crossing

Georgina Campbell
By Georgina Campbell
Senior Multimedia Journalist·NZ Herald·
3 Mar, 2022 10:00 PM3 mins to read

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An artist's impression of the crossing. Image / Supplied

An artist's impression of the crossing. Image / Supplied

Wellington's multibillion-dollar transport plan is going ahead with an at-grade pedestrian crossing on State Highway 1 near the airport.

A group of businesses and the airport have slammed the decision, saying it will make congestion worse for 35,000 daily road users and that the views of the community have been ignored.

Wellington Airport will be considering legal options and its chief executive said Let's Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) should be considered "on notice".

LGWM finally announced the confirmed design of the crossing yesterday afternoon, after construction on the project was meant to start by the end of last year.

The crossing is much the same as the original proposal, which is to build a pedestrian crossing controlled by traffic lights on Cobham Drive.

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However, there are some design tweaks, including the removal of a raised platform for the crossing to minimise the impact on vehicles when it's not being used.

The crossing will also be monitored to see how many people are actually using it and what impact it has on traffic flows and average speeds through the area.

The door has also been left open for further investigations into alternative long-term options, like a bridge or underpass, which will be considered within wider plans for mass rapid transit in the eastern suburbs.

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LGWM representative Emma Speight said people have been making unsafe crossings because there is no convenient alternative for almost two kilometres along Cobham Drive.

"These changes will make it safer and easier for people to move around the area, including the increasing number of people walking, running, riding bikes and using wheelchairs on the new shared pathway along Evans Bay."

There have been 528 crashes over the past 10 years along the stretch of state highway between Mt Victoria and Wellington Airport, which left two people dead and 16 people seriously injured, LGWM has reported.

More than 250 people a day are forecast to use the crossing and the average delay experienced by people driving on Cobham Drive is expected to be about 15 seconds.

But independent polling commissioned by Wellington Airport showed 83 per cent of Eastern Suburbs residents agreed a crossing would make traffic congestion worse and 65 per cent preferred an overpass to a pedestrian crossing.

Airport chief executive Steve Sanderson told Newstalk ZB's Nick Mills if it really was a matter of safety, then an overbridge should be built.

"You're still putting people at risk with an at-grade crossing across four lanes. It's bewildering.

"It would be the equivalent of trying to build a cross walk across Transmission Gully if it ever opens. There's just no logic to it."

Sanderson said the airport would be considering its options.

"Certainly we will consider legal options once we've seen all the decision papers and how we take this forward, but they [LGWM] should be on notice."

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National's transport spokesman Simeon Brown said ironically, one of the first things LGWM has approved will slow Wellingtonians down.

"Instead of focussing on the big issues that Wellingtonians want fixing, LGWM is trying to slow people down and put crossings in places where very few people will use them.

"This crossing project should be scrapped with LGWM focussing on getting a second Mt Victoria Tunnel built so that Wellington can actually get moving again."

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