Miramar to City Connection

About the route

Our work covers the area from the Miramar town centre at the Miramar Avenue and Park Road intersection, down Cobham Drive, through Kilbirnie and Hataitai to Elizabeth Street in Mount Victoria, to the intersection with Kent Terrace.  The work we are planning will tie in with changes planned for the Golden Mile, the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Wellington City Council public transport and cycling projects and in the longer term, the introduction of Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) to Wellington. 

This route is a vital connection for the eastern suburbs and Wellington Airport to the city.  The route includes the number 2 bus, which is Wellington’s most patronised and frequent bus service. 

In line with the Wellington City Council Spatial Plan (2021), areas along the route will require redevelopment and intensification to accommodate future growth. Mount Victoria and Hataitai are marked as medium-to-long term growth areas and require infrastructure investment to support this growth and provide choices to residents about how they travel through and to the area. 

The work we are doing

As a key bus route to and from the city, we are looking at ideas to improve the reliability and efficiency of the business service and also how to prepare the route for more or larger buses that might be required in future.  These buses would require more space to get around corners and to access bus stops – and we’d like to ensure it’s safe and easy to do so. 

To improve safety for the growing number of people on bikes, we’re looking at creating cycle lanes that link to the wider Paneke Pōneke Bike Network developed by Wellington City Council. 

We’ve also started thinking about improvements for people who walk, including raised crossings and signals at busy intersections, to make walkers more visible to traffic and slow vehicles down. We also have ideas to make improvements on side streets where the visibility is poor as it joins main streets, making it safer for people to cross. 

Opening streets up to make them safer and more accessible for buses, cars and bikes may mean removing some on-street parking, so we need to understand the implications of that.  We have ideas about how to minimise impacts to businesses and are working with the Wellington City Council on a parking management plan that includes business and operations in the area. 

Our aim is to balance the needs of all those using the space now and into the future, to help keep traffic flowing for buses, deliveries and people who need to drive, as well as those who walk or bike. 

What happens next?

We will gather feedback from your community and other Wellingtonians, document it and share it with you, so you can see what we have heard and how others experience the walking and transport routes in your area. We will make it available here, on our site, or you can receive it by email, if you sign-up for updates. 
 
We will also make the information we have gathered available to the teams working on the designs to improve how people walk, bus, and use their car or bike through the high-traffic route in your area. This will be a key consideration as they develop the design, which we plan to share next year, ahead of construction starting.