News this month stage one of the arterial project has already blown its original budget by more than 100% suggests now’s a good time for our councillors to look at why they’d spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to reach Whakatipu’s only no- or low-growth areas, needlessly knocking down four major community facilities en route.
Stage one, diverting Gorge Road-bound traffic around Henry Street, made some sense when Covid-era cash was on hand to effectively halve the currently-forecast ratepayer spend.
But stages two and three — also known as the Man St bypass, creating a rat run around town for traffic heading to Fernhill, Sunshine Bay and Glenorchy — do not.
Council staff confirmed there’s no government funding for these even more expensive stages, and with Cyclone Gabrielle and vital resilience project costs already straining the budget of Waka Kotahi for decades to come, it’s unlikely to be forthcoming.
We don’t have the money for it, the government won’t give us the money, and there’s no need for it.
So please, Queenstown Lakes District councillors, put the Man St bypass back on the shelf where it appropriately sat for decades.
Or, better yet, in the bin.
We’ve never been given adequate rationale for the enormous cost of the bypass — the cash, the debt and the collateral damage of knocking over Queenstown Memorial Centre (QMC), the rugby club and squash club and fantastic viewing platform of the memorial sports grounds.
To what purpose?
To take traffic up past Lakeview and down to the One Mile roundabout.
Sure, it would get some traffic out of town — but how much, and at what cost?
Traffic demand’s not out west.
Routes to the south and east (Frankton, Jack’s Point, Hanley’s Farm, Lake Hayes Estate, Shotover Country, Arrowtown) are where transport funding (for both vehicular and active networks) should be spent.
That’s where the biggest wins in reducing both congestion and carbon, and improving public transport options, would be made.
Nixing the rest of the arterial project would also ensure we don’t lose our only downtown community centre, the sports clubs and viewing stand.
QMC has the advantages of already existing, being affordable, and meeting most of our community needs.
The MOU between council and the RSA doesn’t, despite claims to the contrary made at the time, guarantee the RSA a replacement venue.
With alarmingly-high and growing QLDC debt levels, bowling an existing community performance centre when we don’t need to would be tragic.
Our community won’t be able to fund a replacement for decades, if at all.
Any replacement would need to be a joint venture, built for conferences by commercial or iwi interests, with community use for high-end performances allowed when they could be accommodated.
Compromising community use in this way would be acceptable if it were an additional venue.
But this wouldn’t be the case if QMC were bulldozed and council’s mooted Project Manawa replacement became the only other sizeable downtown community event option.
Building and celebrating community is one of the primary long-term goals in QLDC’s ‘Vision Beyond 2050’ document.
That’s something all four community facilities (that the proposed arterial would demolish) provide in spades.
If the bypass went ahead, two viable alternative routes exist.
The most obvious is over the space that will become vacant when earthquake-prone QLDC offices are demolished.
When asked why this hadn’t been proposed, the council engineer said he didn’t want to buy another fight with the community by proposing to chop down the protected tree in the council carpark.
Even if the arterial project was justifiable, this is not an adequate reason to instead demolish such valuable community assets.
Cath Gilmour’s a long-time Queenstown resident and was the chairwoman of the former Queenstown Memorial Hall working party
