by Dave McArthur
Two Fridays ago as I travelled from Upper Hutt to my home in Houghton Bay I noted the Hutt motorway was surprisingly empty and every couple of minutes yet another passenger train flashed past my window going north on one of the new rail tracks now sited on a redundant car lane. Read more »

by Dr Roger Blakeley
We need some bold, workable ideas to tackle the environmental issues in the Wellington region. Read more »

by Helene Ritchie
A year ago I wrote about my concerns that work hadn’t started on strengthening the Wellington Town Hall. Since then the City Council suddenly found $134million (plus) for a convention centre (capacity the same as the Town Hall), and for a significant ratepayer contribution to a private company for a movie museum (all to be finally approved next month.). Yet the Town Hall strengthening has again been delayed for at least another year. Read more »

by Lindsay Shelton
Nicola Young was correct yesterday when she said “it’s a disgrace” that work hasn’t begun on strengthening the Town Hall. It was a reminder that the mayor has stated the work will begin in the current financial year. But the mayoral statement may not be correct. Read more »

by PCGM
Local body elections are a funny old business. Despite the importance of councils in our lives – they manage the local roads, the water supply, whether the rubbish gets picked up on time, making sure the toilets flush, and a whole bunch more – they’ve been increasingly emasculated by central government. So given the tight legislative constraints, council business can be pretty boring, which is probably reflected in the low election turnouts. Yet there’s still a reason to pick up the marker pen and the ballot paper: but to do so, we need to answer the question, what’s in it for me – apart from the provision of basic services. Read more »

by Lindsay Shelton
A second expert last week gave more reasons why the Regional Council is wrong to scrap Wellington’s trolley buses. Adding his 55 page report to research from last December, the case for keeping the trolley buses seems undeniable. However the Regional Council continues to be in denial. Read more »

New sea walls on the Wellington coastline. Breaker Bay. Photo by Mark Coote.

by Sarah Free
A recent Wellington City Council news release highlights that in the last three years around $4 million has been spent on sea walls at Shelly, Princess, Karaka, Island and Breaker Bays, plus there have been numerous smaller sea wall and road repairs around the southern and eastern coasts. Read more »

Stantialls Studio Ltd

by PCGM
A burst of campaign announcements and histrionics this week are begging – just begging – to be analysed and pondered over. Pedestrians! Pests! Kiwis! Electioneering! So read on for the latest dispatch from the rapidly-heating-up Wellington mayoral campaign trail. Read more »

by PCGM
The Dominion Post headlined last Friday’s paper with an admission from Celia Wade-Brown that “her council’s handling of the controversial Island Bay cycleway project was a mistake.” This may not have come as a complete surprise to regular wellington.scoop readers, where debate about the contentious project has raged for more than a year. However, the claim from the mayor that this was a “collective mistake” might be news to our readers – as well as to some of her councillors. Read more »

by PCGM
A regular occurrence in the wellington.scoop comments is the criticism of local politics – “don’t vote, it only encourages them.” Or in a (marginally) less cynical form, why bother voting when the incumbent and the aspirants seem almost identical? So this week we’re grappling with the existential issues about why you should go to the effort of filling in the ballot paper. Read more »

by Patrick McCombs
Waterfront Watch has lodged an objection against the Wellington City Council’s resource consent application to redevelop Frank Kitts Park on the waterfront. Our opposition primarily relates to the removal of the amphitheatre, and the location of the proposed Chinese Garden. Read more »

by Lindsay Shelton
Can 10,000 people really influence the planning of Wellington’s roads and public transport? Let’s hope that they can, as the “letsgetwellymoving” process is certainly a better one than the seven years when the Transport Agency tried unsuccessfully to dictate what it wanted, ignoring the public and threatening the city council. Read more »

News from LetsGetWellyMoving
From the insights we’ve gained so far from all the surveys and feedback, 12 draft guiding principles have been developed. These urban design and transport principles will be used as the basis for planning and assessing potential solutions. We’ll be seeking community feedback on preferred options early next year. Read more »

by PCGM
First a press release arrived. Then the comments started arriving in the wellington.scoop mailbox. But we couldn’t find the source material anywhere – where was the much-anticipated safety review of the contentious Island Bay Cycleway? Read more »

by PCGM
In addition to the finally-public safety audit report on the Island Bay Cycleway, the recent reports to the Transport and Urban Development Committee at the Wellington City Council contained another gem – the council’s response to the NZTA-commissioned (and rather scathing) Morrison Low assessment of the project. It makes interesting reading, and led us on a merry chase through the highways and byways of the council’s own documentation. Read more »

by PCGM
The time has come when we need to talk about STV – despite how it sounds, it’s a voting system, not a disease. How you allocate your votes makes a huge difference in deciding who will be our esteemed leader in the years ahead, so how you use the complexities of STV can make a big difference to the outcome. Read more »

by Jeff Owens
Oh no, I hear you say, not another article about cycleways. Well you may think so but please carry on reading as this article raises something potentially much more serious within the Wellington City Council, albeit against a backdrop of cycleways. Read more »

News from NZIFF
The Wellington programme for this year’s NZ International Film Festival was announced tonight and is now live on the festival website. Read more »