Wellington Inner City Bypass project information brochures

A collection of nine brochures published in 1995 which were subsequently bound together into one booklet. This material was produced as part of a public information campaign and consultation process surrounding the proposed Wellington Inner City Bypass. The Inner City Bypass was scaled-back alternative to the original proposal (intended to be built in the 1970s) to extend the Wellington Urban Motorway across Te Aro to the Mt Victoria tunnel. The new bypass option took advantage of an already existing zone in the District Plan which had been designated as 'motorway' since the mid-1960s. These documents outlay three possible stages of the bypass, the first two of which were completed in 2008. The third stage, a proposed cut-and-cover trench to move traffic underground, never emerged beyond the planning stage though subsequently Buckle Street was trenched to create the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park. The bypass proposal led to the creation of an 'action group' which galvanized opposition to the project and subsequently the coining of the slogan "Bypass My Arse" which was a common sight in Wellington for several years. Much of the opposition centred around the expected loss of inner-city community and heritage buildings across a significant strip of Te Aro. Ironically, this community and the survival of so many heritage buildings had only occurred because so many properties had been compulsorily acquired under the Public Works Act in the 1960s for the original motorway proposal. This resulted in lower-priced rents and little development of those properties owned by Transit NZ (later to become the NZTA) along the proposed route.