NZTA continues digging the underpass tunnel below the future Memorial Park: pictures enclosed.

The route through is now almost complete from end to end, open for the first time ever, direct from Taranaki St right through to the Basin. It is a busy worksite, clogged full of diggers, excavators, soil-nailers, trucks, and still: an awful lot of rich brown clay. The area was formerly a brickworks, with the Old Mt Cook Police Station and it’s brick walls remaining on show, but it does seem a shame that this perfect brick-making raw material is being spirited away to a landfill, never to be seen again. Mind you, bricks are hardly good material in this earthquake prone region we live in. What is apparent, is how small the actual Memorial Park is going to be when it is finished.

There is another point that is apparent as well, right now, and that is : how easy it would be to implement Option X right now. While the current excavations are aimed at linking up a level patch at Taranaki St with a level patch on Sussex St for the 300m long concrete flyover to land on in a year or two’s time, there is no doubt that it would be a perfect time to switch to Option X and continue digging the trench right down to ground level at the Basin. The infrastructure is all set, the temporary steel piling system is already in place, the trucks and diggers are on a roll, and it would be such a simple matter for NZTA to issue a large variation to the plan, and continue the dig. Just saying!

If that was to happen, there would be the deletion of any need to build a 300m long concrete bridge, and a consequent saving of the bulk of the $100million cost for the project…. and you could get a larger Memorial Park as well.