Wellington Transportation

The Wellington International Airport was opened in 1959 and is located only five kilometers southeast of the city center on the Miramar Peninsula. It replaced the airfield at Paraparaumu, which is today usually used only for private flights and nearby domestic connections. In the east and west, it is surrounded by residential and commercial areas in the south which joins directly to the Pacific Ocean, while the airport in the north is only separated by a highway and a natural harbor.

Despite this limited situation it is – as measured by passenger traffic – after Auckland Airport and Christchurch International Airport, the third largest in the country and transports over 4.5 million people per year.

Most movements are domestic flights, which are primarily operated by Air New Zealand and smaller companies. Jetconnect is a subsidiary of Qantas and operated by Freedom Air, a subsidiary of Air New Zealand which has flights to nearby cities and Australia to Fiji.

An important argument in favor of the airport being near the city center, is that the runway is less than 2 kilometers long. In 2007, the international terminal was expanded so that the Boeing 787 can be used.

Trains and train

The long-distance passenger transportation by trains in New Zealand has a long tradition – on the North Iceland Main Trunk between Wellington and Auckland they have been driving regular passenger trains since 1908 – but has a much lower priority than road transport.

According to the “indirect partial privatization” the tracks are owned by the state, but the operation is subject to private companies including the transport company Toll NZ. Understandably, always mindful of economic efficiency, the company decided on 25th July 2006, to make a traditional connection, which is called the Overlander.

After violent protests and a movement of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, the company decided to continue the compounds in a reduced way. Another company, Manning’s group might be interested in a future connection.

Ship traffic

An important part of long-distance travel is the ferry service between the North and South Island of New Zealand. Several companies offer ferry services from Wellington to Picton on the South Island and the bridge of Cook Strait. The largest is Interislander who transports about 1,000,000 people per year and 230,000 vehicles over approximately 5,700 journeys.

Roads

Even the road network in the Wellington urban area had to be adapted to the difficult geographical conditions. The access roads to the city center’s located suburbs in the increasingly hilly areas, adapt themselves automatically to the mound lines.

For the connection to the center of Wellington to Porirua and the Hutt Valley, responsible is a single highway: the mostly six-lane motorway in Wellington, who at the geological fault between Wellington Harbor, runs along the hills until it divides at the Porirua Motorway and the Western Hutt Road.

The former belongs – as well as the Wellington Motorway – to the State Highway network SH1, the main road connecting the country, which crosses the Pacific Ocean country from north to south. Since the 1960s, there have been plans to link the neighborhoods located south of the center more to the national road network.

This project ran over several decades but the project to build a motorway was rejected. The construction in 2005 of the Inner City Bypass a four-lane alternative sometimes triggered violent protests.