No room in CBD

Alan Smith’s Gully won’t fix roading headache (March 30) is accurately titled.

The combination of Kapiti Expressway, Otaki Expressway and Transmission Gully Motorway, will bring to the capital gridlock of terminal severity.

Transport planners have failed to realise that State Highway 1 and SH2 lead into a capital-sized cul-desac, our CBD and the roads to the airport.

The planners have steadfastly ignored Helen Hughes, former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who in her 1990 Audit of the future SH1 route – Environment Impact Report, stated that ‘‘the Inland Route (Transmission Gully) has been planned to accommodate an increase in commuter road traffic that cannot actually be accommodated in the Wellington CBD.’’

An inconvenient truth ignored by transport planners who love building roads. CHRIS HORNE Northland