The Save the Basin Campaign has put out the following press release in response to yesterday’s Wellington City Council vote to reject the proposed Basin Reserve flyover and explore other options:
Save the Basin Campaign Applauds Wellington City Council Vote
The vote by Mayor Celia Wade-Brown and Wellington City Council has demonstrated again that the city won’t be pushed into accepting a terrible plan by NZTA to destroy the historic Basin Reserve environment.
Traffic and transportation design can be better managed than falling back on last century’s plans for a flyover that has no relation to the surrounding neighbourhoods and fails to integrate into the new War Memorial Park green span.
This vote will help to ensure that the Basin won’t sit beside an ugly, noisy concrete structure that intrudes onto the atmosphere of one of the world’s oldest and grandest cricket grounds.
Greater Wellington Regional Council has already withdrawn its previous backing for a Basin Reserve flyover and instead voted to take another look at transport options around the Basin. We call on Wellington City Council and the Regional Council to work together on the alternatives, to go to NZTA with the same message and to oppose NZTA’s flyover proposal if it progresses to a Board of Inquiry.
It’s time to listen to the thousands of Wellington residents and visitors who oppose the flyover, and for the government to instruct NZTA to scrap this outdated plan and look at better, more practical solutions to traffic at the Basin Reserve.
This vote follows other cities throughout the world which have rejected flyovers – Boston, New York, Melbourne, Toronto, Seoul, Boston, Milwaukee, Vancouver, Trenton, Portland, Chattanooga. And Auckland City Council is planning to tear down the Hobson street flyover.
The Save the Basin Campaign is a group of people working to stop the building of a traffic flyover which is planned by NZTA to curve around one of the most historic cricket grounds in the world, the Basin Reserve in Wellington New Zealand.
We advocate a better planned alternative which include a region-wide solution to transportation problems and would include light rail, strategic bus lines, and consideration of walking, biking, and the configuration of Wellington.
– Alana Bowman and Joanna Newman, Save the Basin Campaign Spokespeople