A third way

File under: transport, sustainability, Wellington

At midday today, a group "made up of tradespeople and an environmental scientist" will launch "Option Three", an alternative to the current debate between proponents of Transmission Gully and the Coastal Highway. I've written plenty before about Transmission Gully and other proposed solutions to Wellington's "northern corridor" transport issues, and while Option Three is being described as a "late entry" into the debate, from the sounds of things it will follow the same principles that are behind the solutions that the Greens and Brent Efford have been promoting for a long time.

In other words, it's likely to suggest minor safety improvements to the existing route while improving public transport and discouraging urban sprawl. In a sense, it should be called "Option Two", since the discussion has otherwise been limited to one basic "solution": fighting congestion by increasing capacity (which, as has been said many times before, is like fighting obesity by buying bigger trousers). The bitter debate between Transmission Gully and Coastal Highway supporters has just been about which bit of the land we should fuck up and how much it will cost.

Expect derision from the usual quarters, decrying Option Three as "unrealistic". That's because it's not a silver bullet that will allow people to keep on sprawling forever across the Kapiti Coast and driving their SUVs into town on a shiny new motorway. It might actually force us to question how we live and make decisions based upon a longer timeframe than the duration of the evening commute.