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Speaker 1: The latest plan to fix central Wellington traffic has been

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Speaker 1: released for consultation and it's a big old monster of

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Speaker 1: a thing. There's a couple of tunnels, a new one

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Speaker 1: at the Terrace end of the motorway and another new

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Speaker 1: tunnel through Mount Victoria. Land and houses will be taken

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Speaker 1: out of the town belt at Mount Victoria and parkland

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Speaker 1: will be taken at the Terrace. There will be a

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Speaker 1: major redesign of the Basin Reserve roundabout and a bridge

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Speaker 1: maybe near the airport. And the price tag three billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: Ironically the same sort of cost for two ports and

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Speaker 1: two ferries to cross Cork Strait that was thought to

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Speaker 1: be wildly expensive at the time. So the immediate reaction

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Speaker 1: to this plan is that it's wildly expensive, which it

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Speaker 1: is wildly expensive and totally predictable. The WRONGATAI airport. Wellington's

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Speaker 1: airport was open to nineteen fifty nine and from day

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Speaker 1: one to get to it you were dependent on the

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Speaker 1: Mount Vic Tunnel, which opened in nineteen thirty one. Two

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Speaker 1: lanes and that's it. It should have been expanded when

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Speaker 1: they built the airport. The Mountvic Tunnel is Wellington's Auckland

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Speaker 1: Harbor Bridge moment, a piece of insufficient infrastructure that has

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Speaker 1: only got worse. And you could argue the same thing

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Speaker 1: about the Terrace tunnel that was built ending abruptly in

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Speaker 1: a tiny urban streets designed before the rides of the automobile.

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Speaker 1: And meanwhile, of course some of Mount Vick's funky houses

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Speaker 1: are going to be destroyed and that will get right

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Speaker 1: up the nose of the inner city residents, the ones

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Speaker 1: who don't have to drive far at all. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: Consola Consultation is open now, and what am I expecting.

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Speaker 1: I'm expecting it to be rancorous because it's expensive and

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Speaker 1: houses are being disappeared. But you know it's the bed

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Speaker 1: Wellington chose to lie in when building an inner city

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Speaker 1: airport and not making the hard calls earlier. And that

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Speaker 1: also means strife for the good people of Candada who

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Speaker 1: are complaining about the plane noise over their suburb after

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Speaker 1: the flight paths changed in twenty twenty two. Of course

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Speaker 1: they would prefer the flights when over Newlands where they

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Speaker 1: used to go. Well, the people of Newlands are loving

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Speaker 1: the change flight path. But as soon as you put

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Speaker 1: your airport a wrong atide, this was bound to happen

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Speaker 1: so on all of this, you can't really complain about

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Speaker 1: the bill that you've inherited from your forebears who lacked foresight.

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Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live

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Speaker 1: to News Talk Set B from five am weekdays, or

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