Brian Rudman: Congestion's terror more in mind than on road

The last thing I'd want to be labelled is a "congestion denier". If only to avoid the flood of invitations to Auckland's motorways at the crack of dawn to show me the error of my ways. So let's just say that in my admittedly limited experience, finding a decent traffic jam can prove a tad difficult.

Not that I'm any less susceptible to the scare stories.

A few weeks ago I was all of a sweat about a 7.45am appointment in Remuera with my eye surgeon. It wasn't the pond life that seemed to have taken up residence in my right eye that had me awake at 6 and fretting. It was my indecision, having heard so many horror stories about congestion, about how long it would take to cross the city from Ponsonby. Half an hour? Forty-five minutes?

Just 15 minutes in reality, leaving me filling in time with the NZ Herald at the other end. The return journey an hour later took no longer, nudging the speed limit through Newmarket and up Khyber Pass. Presumably the congesting was taking place alongside me on the motorway.

I treated my easy peak hour journey as a fluke, until I came across Auckland International Airport's report on "Improving surface access to New Zealand's gateway".

The airport company has long been clamouring for better public roading to Mangere. In April it was demanding a $146 million four-lane bridge across Mangere Harbour to avoid intolerable future traffic congestion for air passengers.

The new report takes up the old chorus about potential bottlenecks on the roads connecting with the airport, but it also makes you wonder how bad the situation really is.

To give an accurate picture of travel times to and from the central business district, the report plugged into the satellite navigation system fitted to the Airbus shuttle service between the CBD and the airport. No taxi driver horror stories here. Just "black box" data from the buses.

Surprise, surprise, the average travel time to the airport from the CBD was 23.5 minutes, varying from 16.5 minutes in the early morning to a maximum of of 36.5 minutes in the evening peak. Average morning peak (7am-8pm) travel time was 27 minutes. The most congested period was the evening peak (5pm-6pm) in which average travel time was 28 minutes and varied between 24 minutes and 36.5 minutes.

As for travelling the 18.6 km into the city from the airport, the average travel time was 26 minutes, with the quickest trip taking 19 minutes and the longest 47 minutes. Average for the morning peak was 30 minutes compared with 24.5 minutes during the interpeak period. The most congested period was the evening peak, between 5pm and 6 pm, in which the average was 34 minutes but varied between 26 and 47 minutes.

I guess I'm supposed to fall down in a faint over these figures. If I were to, it would be because they hardly back up the horror stories the pro-roaders delight in spreading. And I'm as gullible as the rest. Every time I get to the airport in 30 minutes I think I've fluked it. But these figures suggest the contrary. That it was just another average trip.

For the true believers who will mock these figures, perhaps before they dismiss them, they should see for themselves by "following that bus" - or better still, catching one.

Another statistic that caught my eye is that over the next 10 years, daily vehicle trips to and from the airport precinct will increase at 8 per cent a year, from 81,000 today to 154,500. By then, airport-related trips - passengers, staff, freight and service vehicles - will be in a minority. The majority, 55 per cent of trips, will be generated by adjacent industrial development, much of it being promoted by the airport company despite its fears of the risks of future congestion - congestion at least partly driven by the airport's extra-curricular empire building.

The airport company's solution is to join the big business clamour for more taxpayer-funded bridges, roads and public transport.

How nice it would have been to have read instead that the airport company was going to guarantee its clients a congestion-free trip to Mangere by funding a rail spur line from Onehunga or Manukau.