Samantha Motion: Who deserves the most credit for the Tauranga Northern Link?

Patience may still be needed before Western Bay residents get the road they deserve. Photo / File

COMMENT:

Has any project ever had so many people rushing to claim credit than the Tauranga Northern Link?

The project, also known as the Tauranga Northern Arterial, has been discussed since the 1990s and was designated in 2001.

The Government on Wednesday finally agreed to provide $478m to build the whole four-lanes deal - plus bonus cycle lanes and footpaths.

This was an improvement on the two-lane plus maybe-if-you're-lucky T3 lane consolation prize it promised in 2018.

Wednesday's announcement was followed by a flurry of political back-patting.

Labour MPs claimed kudos for getting the funding over the line and promised to deliver the road while also glossing over the 2-1/2 years spent faffing about with assessments.

National said it was its idea first and - even though it didn't get a single spade in the ground for this project in nine years of governing - if we actually want the road delivered New Zealand has to re-elect National.

A New Zealand First MP claimed it was all the result of the party's hard work in not letting its coalition partners forget this suddenly essential piece of infrastructure.

Watching the comments roll in, it became apparent that someone needed to settle the most important question in all of this: Who deserves the most credit?

I've decided to hand the biggest slice of the credit pie not to crowing MPs, but to the Western Bay of Plenty District Council and especially to the long-suffering ratepayers and taxpaying residents in the district's north.

Their hopes been lifted and crushed, lifted and crushed, on the whims of successive slow-moving governments.

They've mourned people lost on an unforgiving stretch of highway and lamented the ever-longer hours of the day they spent sitting, seething, in traffic with no alternative.

The council, meanwhile, earnestly held up its end of the bargain, making way for much-needed housing developments in Ōmokoroa and beyond, as central government-led transport upgrade projects languished in a tar pit of bureaucratic prioritisations assessments.

Garry Webber - Ōmokoroa resident, councillor since 2010, and mayor since 2016 - deserves a particular nod for his relentless quiet diplomacy on the issue in recent years.

Let's hope he has some patience in reserve because I'm willing to bet that, in an election year, we're going to have to sit through a few more rounds of political point-scoring before anyone actually builds this road — albeit 10 years too late.