On Wednesday afternoon I was phoned by a couple of media outlets who were seeking comment about the alternative schemes for the Basin Reserve the NZ Transport Agency has been briefing to the various "stakeholders" - such as the Wellington City Council.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to provide much insight - as I explained to both reporters, I wasn't privy to the confidential briefings so had no knowledge about the detail of the designs. As had been widely reported earlier in the week, there were rumoured to be five designs including three flyovers, but that was as much as I knew.

One of the reporters (who will remain nameless for obvious reasons) helpfully gave me a rundown of what the three different designs for the flyovers will look like. I have no idea where the reporter got the information or how accurate it is, but for what it's worth I'll repeat it here. Given the detail the reporter provided, I'm assuming their source is fairly good (i.e. it's probably the NZTA), but this is pure conjecture on my part.

Updated: Based on what I was told, I've created a quick (and ugly) rendition of what the different alternatives might look like. These are over the fold, along with the details:

Option 1: A flyover running directly in front of the Basin Reserve northern entrance, about 10 metres from the front gate and about 7-8 metres up in the air. I'm assuming this is the option referred to by Cr John Morrison in the Radio NZ item. This flyover was described as running from Buckle Street to the Mt Victoria tunnel, passing south of Commerce House (the apartment building on the Kent Terrace/Ellice Street corner). Incidentally, this mimics the design we've been showing to the world for the last year.

Option 2: A flyover running from Buckle Street to the Mt Victoria tunnel, but much further away from the Basin Reserve. This was described as running north of Commerce House, where the Repco building is, and looping over the top of Hania Street.

Option 3: A north-south flyover running from the Ellice Street intersection (where Regional Wines is located) along the eastern side of the Basin, with an offramp connecting to Adelaide Road. The assumption is that the onramp is located north of Commerce House, resulting in the demolition of the Repco building, and the offramp results in the demolition of the old pub on the Adelaide Road corner.

This is all a bit vague, and we'll probably have to wait until consultation begins in ten days time to see the details of the options. While the (fairly solid) rumour is that the costs range up to $98 million, it's not clear how much money is attached to each design.

A note about confidentiality
The reporter who provided the information was obviously not under any confidentiality agreement with the NZ Transport Agency, so was prepared to tell me what they knew in order to get an informed comment from the Save The Basin Reserve campaign. But let's be entirely clear about "confidentiality" in this context; the NZ Transport Agency is a public agency paid for by taxpayer funds, and its "confidential" briefings were to other public agencies. All these entities are responsible - via the appropriate elected officials - to the public of New Zealand for their actions.

In the circumstances there seems to be no special reason why these agencies should not be making the information public, and to pretend otherwise is to try and preserve the anti-democratic culture of secrecy that pervades the NZ Transport Agency. In my view, the taxpayers and ratepayers who fund the activities of these agencies should be first on the list to know what's happening in their own city, not the last to know, and the effectiveness of our democracy depends on the open flow of information so that politicians and officials can be held to account.