Our aim is to move more people with fewer vehicles. To get there, we will deliver a series of projects in three phases.
Let’s Get Wellington Moving is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It will provide more attractive travel choices and reshape how we live and get around. It will help reduce carbon emissions, make our city and region more compact and sustainable, and make Wellington a better place to be.
There will be better walking facilities, connected cycleways, and high-quality mass rapid transit, along with more reliable buses, improvements at the Basin Reserve and an extra Mt Victoria Tunnel.
These improvements will go hand-in-hand with planning and urban development changes to ensure we make the most of the $6.4 billion Let's Get Wellington Moving investment.
Our plan is large, complex, and ambitious. With projects as big as these, we need to take the time to investigate and plan carefully from the start. We’ll be working closely with our partners, our stakeholders, and the community as we design each project.
Our plan has three broad phases:
- Three-year programme
- City Streets
- Longer-term programme
Projects in each phase are interlinked with the others. The earlier work in the Three-year programme and City Streets, is critical to support the longer-term projects. The phases get larger as we go.
What happens in each phase?
Three-year programme
While we investigate and plan for the larger projects in the wider programme, we are making a start on moving more people with fewer vehicles. Projects in the Three-year programme will begin construction within the next three years.
The Three-year programme will help change how people move into and around the city. The projects will help reduce carbon emissions and make our streets better places to be. They will make travelling by bus to the central city a faster and more reliable choice, and create a better environment for people walking and on bikes. They will improve transport options ahead of the major construction work to come.
City Streets
The City Streets package will support the wider programme by improving ways for people to bus, bike or walk on 19 key routes between the central city and suburban centres. The package incorporates earlier work from the 2019 Bus Priority Action Plan and will help complete the city’s cycleway network.
City Streets will prepare Wellington for future growth, make our city a better place to be, and provide options for people to get around without using their car. It will also help us reduce carbon emissions as we work towards becoming a net-zero carbon capital by 2050.
Investigation and planning work on City Streets is well underway. Individual projects within the package will be developed with community input in 2022. This $350 million package will be constructed over 10-12 years. As they are developed, early projects will be brought into in the 3-year programme.
Longer-term programme
The major projects in our longer-term programme will substantially change how we get around, help shape future growth, and transform our city over coming decades.
Projects include:
- New Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) through the central city will connect communities from the railway station to the southern and eastern suburbs. MRT will provide higher-quality public transport and more reliable travel choices, and encourage more housing near transport hubs.
- Basin Reserve improvements will support MRT, improve walking and cycling connections, enhance the use of the Basin Reserve and improve amenity around the reserve.
- An extra Mt Victoria Tunnel will improve public transport, and walking and cycling connections between the central city and eastern suburbs.
- A Smarter Transport Network will encourage people to make better use of our transport system and use their car less.
Investigation and planning work is underway on these projects. Once consultation, detailed design, and consenting is complete, construction is expected to begin towards the end of this decade.