McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. Anyone who travels to Wellington by road knows that Transmission Gully delivers a safer and more reliable journey time than the old State highway did. Not only was the old highway heavily congested at the best of times it was often closed by waves breaking across the road and by unfortunately head-on collisions resulting in severe injuries and fatalities. The 15000 trucks and cars that used to crawl along the vulnerable two-lane coastal road now travel on a four- and six-lane highway separated by concrete barriers. With that traffic redirected to a new safe road—much nicer road—the lovely coastal towns on the Kāpiti Coast can become destinations rather than just another set in a series of traffic lights on a State highway. This shows how good infrastructure can deliver social economic and environmental benefits. So then why have the sponsors of Let's Get Wellington Moving a behemoth $7.4 billion road-to-nowhere project failed to look up the road and learn some lessons from Transmission Gully?For Let's Get Wellington Moving's total $100 million spend all they have managed to tangibly produce is a $2.4 million pedestrian crossing near Wellington Airport. A slightly old joke about how to make a small fortune: in this case take a large fortune and give it to Let's Get Wellington Moving. I go to Wellington Airport quite a bit and I haven't seen a single person using that pedestrian crossing which is probably a good thing because it's in the middle of a busy thoroughfare which is congested enough. It is the most shameful waste of public money on a transport project since the now-cancelled Auckland bike bridge. As my colleague Simon Court ACT's transport spokesperson said recently If spending money was a medal-winning achievement then Waka Kotahi the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Wellington City Council would share the podium."ACT would cancel this project and go back to basics. The Basin Reserve flyover project—declined by a planning committee or tribunal—was meant to unlock traffic congestion and enable efficient public transport between the city and the eastern suburbs which includes the airport. Instead Let's Get Wellington Moving pretends that a light rail to the south coast and sterilising the "golden mile" with a parade of buses is somehow going to help the long-suffering citizens of Wellington get to where they need to be. The "golden mile" aspect of this project will result in more than a decade of construction work and disruption for local businesses especially retail and they will become less accessible as a result—just like the retail businesses affected in Auckland by the City Rail Link. Wellingtonians should be asking what they're getting for the "golden mile" project. They can already walk these routes. They can bike. They can take buses if they choose to do so. All this project will do is take away the most flexible point-to-point option that is using a private vehicle.Then there's the safety element: people leaving bars on Courtenay Place late at night for instance all of a sudden can't get a taxi or an Uber just outside the entrance and presuming the bus isn't going anywhere where they need it to go the only option is to walk down a potentially dodgy dimly lit side street to try and find a more useful transport option. This project is based on ideology that would be embraced by the likes of the Restore Passenger Rail protestors who glue themselves to roads and motorways in Wellington causing chaos and frustration for motorists and bus users alike. The priorities are all wrong. They should be getting Wellingtonians to and from places that they need to work and to take their families with them but instead they've focused on delivering the Government's carbon reduction agenda. That is the same Government that can't even electrify its own fleet.ACT agrees with the seven councillors now who have no confidence in this multibillion-dollar transport plan. It's an outrageous waste of public money. The wheels have fallen off and it needs to go. Sadly what we have is a green activist dream. It's got nothing to do with getting Wellington moving; in fact it is completely the opposite. Thank you Madam Speaker."