It was the final year of smoking in bars and a new site called The Facebook was launched. In a 2004 Wellington newsroom, a series of predictions were made about how the region’s transport would look in the year 2025.
The article was informed by the then-released regional land transport strategy, which looked at what the region could look like in 20 years – 2025.
It predicted Wellington could lose its status of second-biggest North Island city to Hamilton or Tauranga by 2050 if the transport plan failed. Infometrics data has Wellington City’s population now at 210,800 with Tauranga on 161,000 and Hamilton on 192,100. The 2024 Census found Wellington was the only city not to grow.
