Missing road links

Build the tunnel but use it to catch the glacier melt, stick a turbine in it for power generation, and run the water off at the other end for irrigation. Stuff the tourists. This would be at least more practical than many other schemes promoted over the years.

Drill a large tunnel at sea level from Milford Sound through to the bottom of Lake Wakatipu. Drain the lake. Pay for it with a huge opencast goldmine extracting all the gold that must be at the bottom of the lake. Now you've got a nice flat lakebed followed by a straight and level tunnel to run a highway straight through to Milford Sound. I should now be possible to do the trip from Queenstown to Milford Sound in less than an hour. (It's only about 65 km as the crow flies). The flaw with all previous plans involving monorails or tunnels has been that you still have to get around the steep sides of Lake Wakatipu and then across the Dart before you can take the shortcut through the mountains. Additional value in using the 300 m drop of the Dart River exiting through to Milford Sound to generate electricity, plus think of all the land it would free up for further real estate development in the area.

There's an obvious 'missing link' tunnel between John Key's mansions in Parnell and Hawaii. Now that would be a Road of National Significance!

"Additional value in using the 300 m drop of the Dart River exiting through to Milford Sound to generate electricity, plus think of all the land it would free up for further real estate development in the area." Problem with that idea is that most of the Dart already ends up in the Clutha scheme so you would be removing it from one power scheme just to feed another. Ps dont mention the Hawiki scheme. Last time it was used it was used to transport fire

a road through parliament..

@waynowski No that's no good, they wouldn't even notice.