Wainuiomata Development Proposed Road and Tunnel ca 1930s

 

The original of the image is a blueprint so it’s not very easy to make out the proposed route on the scanned copy. It was to have run under the Wainuiomata Hill Road with an entrance on Gracefield Road. How it joined up to the road pattern on the Wainuiomata side isn’t indicated.

A City Engineer’s file in the Archives contains a letter from a member of the public holidaying at Lower Hutt Motor Camp in 1984 asking why the tunnel was never completed. The streetworks engineer of the time replied: " because of the difference in level between the floor of the Wainuiomata Valley…and the floor of the Hutt Valley…there would have been a very steep grade…The size…would not be suitable for modern traffic."  

(Plan reference: Arch 5913)