A new business case released this week by the NZTA (New Zealand Tossers Association) recommends a new $5 billion rail tunnel be built within the next twenty years and before any additional roading network. THIS IS INSANE! What planet are these people living on? They don’t seem to have the slightest notion of why Auckland is, and will continue to be a city where cars are the main form of transport. If you look at Auckland’s topography and the reasons people use cars over public transport it is nothing short of commonsense.
I am prepared to admit that on the face of it the preferred mode of transport for those going to and from work should be the bus, train or ferry. For many it is. But for the majority it isn’t and for many reasons. Commercial vehicles are obvious as are those used by tradesmen but they don’t make up the majority on the road at any given time. There are professional people and salespersons attending meetings, people picking up goods they have ordered, going to the supermarket, the school run which many parents prefer to do for safety reasons, going to the airport with luggage, private visiting, hospital visiting, going to the mall, these are all reasons where a car is the first preference. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the car is quicker.
I have consulted the Auckland Transport website and looked at the commute travel time from Browns Bay to Henderson by bus. The average time during the day appears to be 1 hour 30 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. By car it is 29 minutes! Only a fool would catch the bus. This will be the same all over Auckland due to it being so spread out. It’s not the frequency of the service so much as the time it takes. This is where the Northern Busway works with short travel times. Overall though, this is why the car is king. As of March last year 90 per cent of Aucklanders owned a car and 54 per cent of families owned more than one. Hundreds of new vehicles are registered each week in Auckland. A few years ago the figure was 800.
Flying in the face of all this compelling evidence the NZTA, emulating an ostrich with its head in the sand, releases a report saying there will not be any additional roading network for at least twenty years. This is lunacy. Rather than adding new lanes to the country’s busiest road, the harbour bridge, or building a new road these blockheads at the NZTA recommend work be done on improving public transport options. With all due respect, this was done not so many years ago and now we have lots of local suburban buses running around most of the day often with only two or three people in them.
NZTA, as is Auckland Transport, are convinced the answer is to get more people on public transport. Despite their trumpeting, all the extra train and bus passenger trips the motorways are still jammed for a large part of the day. There was a respite post-Covid but now things appear to be pretty much back to normal. The answer from NZTA is a rail tunnel. I wouldn’t disagree in principle but the timeframe is ridiculous as is the idea it is rail only. It must be rail and road.
Sydney gets it with a major new road opened just recently. Judith Collins gets it with a proposed four-lane highway from Whangarei to Tauranga via Auckland and Hamilton. She said with infrastructure projects we need to do them BEFORE they are needed, something we haven’t done till now. Obviously, the dunderheads at NZTA are not taking her thoughts seriously. It appears to me that the NZTA is simply following the flawed thinking of their clueless clot masters, otherwise known as the Government. A tram up Dominion Road will not solve the congestion on the motorway any more than a double-decker bus.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that while Auckland is controlled by the left at both local and central government level, it is doomed. The place is creaking at the seams. The infrastructure is on its last legs. It is increasingly looking like a third world town. It’s a far cry from Mayor Goff’s most liveable city rubbish. Like all places where the left try to run things it is a disaster with poor prioritising of expenditure and as a result shocking wasteful use of ratepayers hard earned monies.
Having arranged the deck chairs on it, the Government appears to be the Titanic looking for an iceberg to hit. Auckland could just be it.
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