Transmission Gully

Transmission Gully road revisited

This short piece updates an earlier post I wrote in 2018 on a roading project in my local area, Transmission Gully. I write this the day after the road has finally been opened, almost 8 years after the work on it commenced.  The chart of the official opening - a ribbon-cutting affair by Prime Minister Ardern - is shown below, drawn for an approximate time taken from photos and news reports on the day.

It won’t surprise to see, given the ‘Project’ was initiated with Saturn-ruled Capricorn rising (see original post), that it was completed only after significant (over 2 years) delays and vastly over-budget. Also, at the opening transiting Saturn squared its original placement in the Project chart (orb 3º18’), indicative of a challenge-rich threshold moment, one of completion and a testing time of bedding down a further stage of development.


As expected by far the majority of the road’s problems arose as Pluto crossed Project Ascendant, from 2019 to early 2022 (see here for a timeline including some of these difficulties).  The Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 2020, which crossed the Ascendant over that year, was the crux of this, which, as predicted, threatened to destroy the whole project. Time-bound Saturn’s connection with this road is also shown in the almost 100-years it’s taken for the initial impulse to be finally realised.


There are many interesting and significant connections between the two charts - for example both have forceful and ruthlessly determined Mars-Saturn conjunctions in fixed signs - but I leave it for the reader to explore these. 


In the Road Opened map, chart-ruler Venus closely conjuncts Saturn, suggesting that the road may continue to be beset by difficulties, including those of a political and management nature. I am also intrigued to see Uranus rising - remember its importance in the Project chart explored above. Beyond being a planet associated with ‘transmission’ (of both sorts - electrical but also the direct transferral of ideas), this also carries symbolism of the fault line that the road follows and its geological instability, its use of experimental or emergent technologies, and its controversy. Perhaps even its name (something associated with the 1st house), Te Ara Nui o Te Rangihaeata, or Great Path of Te Rangihaeata (a chief who played an important role in the area in the 1840s), gifted by the local tribe, might prove contentious. The coming two years, as Uranus moves to square the Road Opened Mars-Saturn-Venus conjunction and oppose the Project Saturn-Mars conjunction, may see this volatility expressed. 

Transmission Gully: the astrology of a roading project

Transmission Gully: the astrology of a roading project

 Transmission Gully is the name of a massive road-building project, involving the construction a 4-lane motorway between Paekakariki and Porirua in the Wellington area, New Zealand. Controversial due to its high cost, environmental implications, the challenging terrain and the earthquake-prone route, it has been promoted as a road that will provide less-congested access into Wellington as well as an alternative to the three main ways into the city, all of which might be cut off in the event of a severe earthquake. The road is expected to be completed in 2020.

The project was officially started on the 8th September 2012, although work didn’t begin on the route for some months. However, this date was marked with a  ‘turning the sod’ ceremony by the then-Prime Minister John Key. Photo records show this to have taken place at 1:41pm, just outside Paekakariki, and the chart below is drawn for this moment.

What might we expect to see from such a chart?