Wellington has its share of urban legends, most of them false.

One of the more popular ones, and a recurring social media trope, claims that America’s Army Corps of Engineers was prepared to build a proper motorway between Wellington and Auckland after the Second World War. And that the New Zealand government turned them down.

A more restrained version claimed that the Americans would have built Transmission Gully to facilitate movement from their base at Paekākāriki through to the port at Wellington.

To read the article on the Newsroom website, click here.