It’s always busy at this time of year but there’s an extra lot happening right now! Talk Wellington tries to keep up with this roundup, and please add things we’ve missed…

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• Congestion charging may finally get on the local agenda:  Wellington mayor asks councillors to vote to lobby Government for it (amongst many other cost-cutting, money-finding ideas)
• Metlink launches a projects map, punnily called In Time, with information about capital projects for public transport improvement / maintenance around the region. Includes some (limited) info on completed ones.  
• Meanwhile, bus-replacements for Wellington suburban trains on weekends and public holidays are expected for the next decade and a half, dealing with the maintenance backlog 
• Te Awakairangi/Hutt City gets small but cheerful emissions-reduction fund from Council 
• The ball starts rolling again (resource consent applied for) on a new greenfield “mixed use town centre” development in Kāpiti, “medium and high density” (meaning… Paraparaumu density or real medium-density/missing middle?)   
• Double the drinking-water storage within Wellington city (while the vast majority still comes from further north), and a stormwater-leak-related sinkhole opens in Tawa
• Noise and vibration problems for travellers on the Wairarapa train line highlight the importance of precision in laying (and maintaining) track 
• By-election in Wellington central goes down to the wire with a showing for Geordie Rogers that was much stronger than stats predicted, finally resulting in a narrow win over the famous “icecream man” and suggesting the existence of an “old city / new city” dichotomy 
• In the runup to Wellington City Council’s vote on the District Plan on March 14th, the Independent Hearings Panel not covering itself in glory – first denying fundamentals of urban economics, then engaging in some downright mystifying reasoning that surprise establishment bodies such as the Infrastructure Commission, and topping it off by failing on some elementary procedural propriety – all helping fuel Aucklanders’ new city smugness

Happenings from elsewhere whose ripples Wellington feels

• The Auckland Regional Fuel Tax cancellation means some projects close to Minister Brown’s heart are stopped, and he threatens to legislate
• Minister Bishop (as RMA Reform Minister), announces he will be the final arbiter over District Plan changes, making some choice comments about the application of basic urban economics to cities (even Wellington) – full speech
• Examination of this government’s version of “infrastructure fast tracking” shows worryingly extraordinary powers to a Minister (podcast)
• Finance and Infrastructure ministers pull NZ out of mega-ferries-and-mega-port-change deal, leaving a big gap and some badly aging ferries (article incl great podcast!)
• The questions at the heart of Mike Smith’s climate harm case deserve a full court hearing, rules the Supreme Court (see LCANZ for more)
• 3 Waters legislation repealed within first 100 days of new administration, replaced by Local Water Done Well (free-access explainer, and op-ed explainer from the head of the government’s new Working Group/Technical Advisory Group).  So far… leaving some mayors unimpressed, with the jury out on the key issue: whether it’ll bring in enough money from [a variety of sources but ultimately us the public] to actually do the expensive work required, and Standard & Poors downgraded three councils’ credit ratings accordingly; ex-financier’s rundown here) 

Tags: happenings, roundup