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Wellington Underground

Today I realised that you can actually travel a fair distance through Wellington completely indoors. It is possible to start from Hunter Street, enter a doorway, and to re-emerge in any of the following places without passing through an outside area:

  • Victoria St
  • Willis St
  • Boulcott St
  • Extra for experts: The opposite side of Lambton Quay

It’s probably not news to many Wellingtonians (“Congratulations, Matt, you’ve discovered a mall.”) but it was news to me, and kiwis are so starved of subways and underpasses that this sort of thing is a novelty.

This got me wondering: how far could you get from the corner of Hunter & Lambton Quay without crossing a road?  The answer, I think, is quite far. You can get from that point to Clifton Terrace, the corner of Lambton and Bowen Street, or to the corner of Boulcott and Willis.  What do you think, reader? Would it be possible to get any farther?  And what’s the optimum route, from say, the corner of Lambton and Bowen all the way to Boulcott and the Terrace, where the following conditions are favoured in descending order:

  1. Route does not cross a road 
  2. Route or partial route avoids driveway entrances and carparks
  3. Route or partial route is indoors
  4. Route or partial route is under an awning

This map illustrates what I think are the extremes of where you can get to without crossing a road. (This is of course trumped by the waterfront: you can travel kilometres, though most of it is in the open air.)  Is the map correct?  Are there any underpasses that I’ve missed which open up a new block?

Useless information, I know, but maybe it’ll be handy in the next zombie apocalypse.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Wellington. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Wellington Underground”

  1. Robyn Says:
    December 15th, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    It's not open to the public, but I believe there's an underpass between Bowen House and the Beehive, which would add in another big chunk of land.

    I was really surprised at the magical world of retail that opened up with finding the Old Bank to Boulcott Route. The most interesting thing was discovering most of the shops were sort of second-tier retail – no chain stores, mainly independent shops with more niche goods and (particularly) services.

    In a city with limited downtown space, I'm surprised that there aren't more underpasses. But perhaps the existing ones are all we need.

    I suppose it's good in a way that Wellington doesn't have too many underpasses. You wouldn't want to end up like those cities in the south of the USA or north of Canada that are all indoors to protect from the extremes of weather.

    I really like that there are various buildings along Lambton Quay that will help get you to The Terrace without breaking a sweat. In Auckland it's possible to get from Queen Street up the hill to Sky City by using various escalators (but crossing the road is still needed).

    This is delightfully geeky fun.

  2. matt Says:
    December 16th, 2009 at 7:33 am

    Thanks for the tip, Robyn. You're right about the underpass between Bowen and the Beehive. I've heard that you may just have to register your details to pass through/have a good excuse? (Or fight your way past the armed zombie guards, in an alternate universe.)

    I've added the Beehive block to the map. Now if there were some way to pass under Molesworth St, you could potentially get access to the the underpass that leads you to the train station …

  3. Robyn Says:
    December 19th, 2009 at 7:15 pm

    I was just reminded of a discussion over on Eye of the Fish earlier this year on the subject of underground spaces.

    http://eyeofthefish.org/underground-wellington/

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