OPINION

Apparently Wayne Brown is floating the idea of congestion charging for Auckland. Either he is being very cunning, suggesting it so when the ensuing outcry from angry ratepayers erupts he can say he is listening to concerns and cancel the idea, or deliberately provocative as he seeks new ways to gouge ratepayers.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says the city’s motorists could soon be charged $5 per trip on some of its busiest highways.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan on Tuesday, Brown said he is looking at placing the congestion charges on SH1 between the Penrose and Greenlane on-ramps, and SH16 between the Lincoln Rd and Te Atatu on-ramps.

“Between 7am and 9am, those two motorways jam up and between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, they jam up again,” Brown said.

He claimed travelling at peak times was “easily avoidable.

When du Plessis-Allan asked about parents dropping off children to school, which would fall in the morning peak hours, Brown said when he was a youngster ”you got to school on your own”.

“It isn’t the law you have to get to school in a BMW,” he said.

Brown added there would be “big discussions” about the price, but he said he thought a reasonable price would be $5 each time the motorists used the specified roads at the peak times.

He claimed the prices would ensure people would start to think, “maybe I should start work at that time, and work a bit later and go home a bit later”.

NZ Herald

Most of the congestion in Auckland is directly attributable to either Auckland Transport or Waka Kotahi. Let me explain all the ways:

  1. Insufficient motorway planning, like Oteha Valley to Constellation, which was widened to five lanes each way, but that short 2.15km stretch of road terminates in two lanes each way, and the roadworks that took the best part of six years to complete and only succeeded in moving the traffic jams 2.15km closer to the city.
  2. Poorly designed onramps that are far too short.
  3. Stupid traffic lights on those poorly designed onramps that drip feed traffic onto the motorway but cause huge snarl-ups in suburban streets as a result.
  4. Turning every pedestrian crossing into massive suspension wrecking judder bars slowing traffic to a crawl.
  5. A million miles of bike lanes take up space on the roads we pay for (stolen lane) so the occasional road maggot, bludging off our road user charges, can cycle somewhere, but rarely to work.
  6. Nonsensical bus lanes do the same as the cycle lanes so that mostly empty buses can transport the three people they carry somewhere not even remotely close to where they need to go.
  7. Public Transport. A slow, expensive way of travelling from not where you are, to not where you want to be, at a time that doesn’t suit you, in the company of people you would never let into your home.
  8. Reducing speed limits on many busy roads to 30 km/h, or 60 km/h on some rural roads
  9. Persistently closing Auckland Harbour Bridge when a gentle zephyr threatens to blow some old nana off course as she trundles up the middle lane of the bridge at 60 km/h.
  10. Road cones… everywhere!
  11. Poor maintenance of city roads and highways, to such a point that driving an SUV is almost mandatory.

Wayne Brown wasn’t elected to introduce congestion charging; he was elected to gut Auckland Transport like a trout.

I suggest he starts sharpening his filleting knife, or get out of the way and let Maurice Williamson do it if he’s too squeamish at seeing bureaucrat guts splattering everywhere.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...