'Horrible' congestion sparks Bay of Plenty carpooling plan

A Welcome Bay mum intends to start a carpooling Facebook page after spending nearly 40 minutes driving her children to school yesterday.

''It was horrible,'' photographer Erica Wilson said after coming to a halt behind cars banked up along Welcome Bay Rd almost to her house at the rural boundary.

At first she thought there had been by a crash but she now believed it was simply because all the schools were back. It took her 37 minutes to get to Selwyn Ridge Primary School and back - a trip that normally took 10 minutes.

Her post on the Welcome Bay Notice Board drew a big response, including comments about how most cars had one occupant. Others offered to carpool, saying ''I drive this way, you can come with me''.

Wilson thought that online carpooling sites would work better based on suburbs rather than across the whole city. She intended to create the page and see if it snowballed.

But mixing her job as a photographer with raising a family meant she hoped that someone else would volunteer to manage the Facebook page.

Wilson envisaged that carpooling would appeal to Welcome Bay commuters and parents who drove their children to school.

She did not think Bayhopper buses offered enough of an incentive to lure people out of their cars because of the slow progress caused by bus stops. ''They take just as long as a car to get to work - even longer.

Neither did she believe the Welcome Bay underpass would make much of a difference to peak-time congestion which she noticed had been building from a year ago.

Welcome Bay resident and city councillor Bill Grainger was late to yesterday's 9am council meeting because he got stuck in traffic. He said it was his worst ever run, taking 41 minutes to travel 9.2km.