At the Basin Reserve flyover Board of Inquiry, NZTA’s Wayne Stewart has been forced to admit that planning has been done for a second Basin Reserve flyover. The currently proposed flyover would be a one-way road going from east to west – that is, from the Mt Victoria tunnel towards War Memorial Park. Under questioning from the Board of Inquiry, NZTA have confirmed that they have done planning for a second flyover going from west to east.
Richard Reid, appearing for the Mt Victoria Residents’ Association, has previously raised the concern that one flyover would soon lead to another. Despite NZTA’s attempts to minimise the issue, it has been placed firmly on the table at the Board of Inquiry hearing, which has been told by NZTA’s Wayne Stewart that in 2010 the agency looked at duplicating the War Memorial Park tunnel and building a second flyover at the Basin going from west to east.
“Lines were drawn on a map,” he is reported as saying, though he claimed planning had not gone any further.
As Richard Reid has noted, if NZTA gets approval for its present one-way flyover proposal, it will be much harder to fight a proposal for a second flyover. So one flyover could well bring a second in its wake.
I think we know what tends to happen once NZTA starts drawing lines on maos – unless they are stopped now, before any further damage is done.