MOUNT VICTORIA TUNNEL

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 73, 19 December 1929, Page 10

MOUNT VICTORIA TUNNEL

“FIRST PICK” CEREMONY TO-MORROW

The new Mount Victoria tunnel is a work of primary importance to a very substantial section of the people of Wellington. It is going to cut down the journey from the city to Hataitai or Kilbirnie by one half, and will very possibly have the effect of reducing Constable Street to a highway of secondary importance. People with motor-cars—and there is said to be one car to every five persons in Wellington—have to travel to Hataitai to-day by Roseneath or Constable Street, both round-about routes. With a 40ft. road through the eastern hill the journey will be reduced by half the time and distance.

To-morrow afternoon at 3 o’clock the Mayor (Mr. G. A. Troup) will drive the’ first pick* and remove the first shovelful of earth from the site of the western portal at the bead of Patterson Street. It is hoped there will be a large attendance of citizens present. The configuration of the country adjacent to the tunnel portals has undergone a considerable change as the approaches have cut deep into the hillsides. From any eminence in the city can be seen what has been done at Patterson Street (which now has a high and low road), and the manner in which the adjacent college grounds have been altered by the depositing of the spoil in the gully east of Firth House. On the Kilbirnie site the change is no less striking. The gullies between the lower foothills have been largely reclaimed and levelled out, and there' are other gullies which arc to lose their identity through being filled in by the spoil the tunnel itself will yield. Care is being taken to save the soil on these areas for the top-dressing of the new sports grounds that will be an improvement contingent upon tlie piercing of the tunnel, so that on both sides of the hill splendid playground areas are being created as the result of the tunnel the ratepayers of ■Wellington approved as far back as 1920.