The 4.5 kilometre walking and cycling path along Wellington Harbour’s western edge has finally opened to the public, with the first riders rolling out from Ngauranga at the weekend after thirteen years of planning, a doubled budget, and three years of construction in some of the country’s most unforgiving wind.
Te Ara Tupua connects Ngauranga to Petone in a continuous five metre wide shared path, eliminating one of the last gaps in safe pedestrian and cycle access on the western side of the harbour. Until now anyone trying to walk or bike between Wellington and the Hutt Valley had to share a narrow strip of the old Hutt Road with heavy trucks, or stay home.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop opened the path on 15 May, with his son Jeremy claiming the honour of being the first to use it on a scooter. The route opened to the public the following morning.
The headline number for the project is $348.7 million. That is roughly double the $170 to $190 million range that NZTA quoted in 2022 when construction started. The Crown put in $80 million, the National Land Transport Fund $261.7 million, Wellington City Council $5 million, and Greater Wellington Regional Council $2 million.
Bishop did not shy away from the cost in his comments at the opening. “I’m not happy about the cost, to be honest,” he told 1News. “$350 million is a lot of money,” he added. “I would have liked to have seen it done cheaper.”
Cost aside, the path is not just a recreation project. Severe storms have repeatedly closed State Highway 2 and the Hutt Valley rail line where they squeeze along the foreshore, and storm damage in 2013 put a permanent fix on the rebuild list. The Te Ara Tupua corridor doubles as a seawall protecting both. NZTA’s specifications include 0.8 hectares of reclaimed land, 2.7 kilometres of sloping coastal defences, six vertical seawalls, and more than 6,000 interlocking concrete blocks designed to absorb wave energy before it reaches the highway and railway behind.
That is what the budget actually bought. Bike infrastructure and a hard rock seawall, built simultaneously, in a stretch of coast that has been on the rebuild list since 2013.
Construction peaked at around 130 workers on site, who battled the southerlies that rip up Wellington Harbour for much of the year. Five little blue penguins were killed during the three year build despite ecology sweeps and the deployment of trained conservation dogs, an outcome that prompted additional wildlife protections through the latter stages of the work.
Mana Whenua Steering Group chair Kim Skelton said the finished path “exceeded expectations” and described it as “absolutely stunning”, RNZ reported. The project incorporates pou, carvings and interpretive signage telling the history of the harbour that frames the route. Green MP Celia Wade-Brown said the path beautifully told “the MΔori history of this part of the whenua”.
NZTA forecasts the path will carry more than 2,100 bicycle trips, around 360 walking and running trips, and roughly 290 e-scooter trips on a typical weekday by 2032. The previous baseline on the old shared shoulder was about 450 daily trips, so the agency expects roughly a sixfold lift in active transport volume once the route beds in.
Greens transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter, attending the opening, said the new path made the case for a quiet shift toward personal transport. “[It’s a] great time to invest in an e-bike or an e-scooter because it’s not just an inexpensive but a really enjoyable way to get around,” she said.
For Hutt Valley commuters who already cycle in, the most useful change is removing the most dangerous kilometre of their daily route. For everyone else the path adds a recreational option that connects up with existing infrastructure to allow continuous walking or cycling all the way from Wellington Airport in the south to Greytown in the Wairarapa. That has never been possible before.
The opening also closes the file on what was effectively NZTA’s only large-scale active transport build of the current cycle. Bishop indicated at the launch that future projects of this scale will need to come in well under the Te Ara Tupua price tag, and signalled that benchmark costing will be applied more strictly going forward.
Public reaction over the opening weekend ran heavily in favour of the build, according to the government’s release and local advocacy groups. Cycling Wellington and others encouraged riders to try the path, and Sunday morning saw a steady stream of families, runners and commuters trialling the route in both directions despite a brisk southerly.
The path is open at all hours and is free to use. NZTA has asked riders to keep left, give way to pedestrians, and slow for the underpass and bridge connections at each end.
What do you think of the new path, and is the $348 million price tag worth it for what was delivered? Let us know in the comments.
See also NZ Great Walks Explorer β Newswire’s interactive map of every Great Walk in the DOC system.
See also How Tides Actually Work β Newswire’s animated explainer of why New Zealand’s harbours behave the way they do.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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