A mammoth cycling and walking path in the capital has officially opened after more than a decade in the making.<\/p>\n
The 4.5km Te Ara Tupua path between Ng\u0101uranga and Petone was opened today by Transport Minister Chris Bishop. Planning for the pathway began in 2013.<\/p>\n
The New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi project cost $348.7 million, after blowing out its original 2022 estimate of between $170 and $190 million.<\/p>\n
At its peak, around 130 workers were involved in the construction, battling the windy conditions of the Wellington Harbour.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m not happy about the cost, to be honest,” Bishop told 1News, adding, “$350 million is a lot of money”.<\/p>\n
“I would have liked to have seen it done cheaper. At the end of the day, the project started in 2022; here we are in 2026. I happen to be the Minister of Transport who\u2019s got the honour to open it.”<\/p>\n
His son Jeremy, on a scooter, was the first to officially use the pathway, which opens to the public on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The path also acts as a seawall alongside State Highway 2 and the railway line, protecting transport links from future coastal erosion. More than 6000 interlocking concrete blocks in six sections of seawall were also added to strengthen the shoreline.<\/p>\n
Bishop said first and foremost, the pathway was a resilience project for the coastline.<\/p>\n
In June 2013, a large storm swept through the capital, cutting power to homes and damaging the rail line between Ng\u0101uranga and Petone.<\/p>\n
The minister said the weather event was a “visible demonstration of what happens when the railway line goes down”.<\/p>\n
“The reality is if that line goes down and the trains can’t run for an extended period of time, it’s economically chaotic for the region.”<\/p>\n
The project also came with environmental concerns.<\/p>\n
Five little blue penguins \/ koror\u0101 were killed over the three-year construction period, leading to preventative measures like trained dogs and workers conducting ecology sweeps of the site.<\/p>\n
‘Great time to invest in an e-bike’<\/p>\n
Bishop said the path would be well used by commuters.<\/p>\n
The Greens’ transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter said projects such as Te Ara Tupua would give people more options for commuting and transport resilience.<\/p>\n
“[It’s a] great time to invest in an e-bike or an e-scooter because it\u2019s not just an inexpensive but a really enjoyable way to get around,” she said.<\/p>\n
NZTA estimated there would be more than 2100 trips by bike and 360 pedestrian trips on the path each weekday by 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mammoth cycling and walking path in the capital has officially opened after more than a decade in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,84,85,16861,25904],"class_list":["post-674103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-politics","tag-sports","tag-transport","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}