Editorial: Dangerous road needs fixing now

On the eve of an Easter holiday it is infuriating to learn that improvements to State Highway 2 through northern Waikato might not now go ahead as early as planned. This winding stretch of road, narrow in places and widened in others, takes traffic from Auckland to the Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty. It links the two fastest-growing populations in the country and some of the most popular weekend and holiday destinations. It has claimed 35 lives in the past five years and its crash toll is 40 per cent higher than the national average for highways of its type. Its need of urgent attention is obvious to everyone, it seems, except the bureaucrats who set national priorities for roadworks.

Just seven weeks ago there was a sign of hope. Transit New Zealand published a 10-year roading programme for public discussion, The list of intended projects included two improvements to the highway with deviations at Mangatawhiri and Maramarua. Transit's manager for Waikato said at that time that work on the Mangatawhiri deviation could start in the next fiscal year 2005-06, although the Maramarua bypass was probably 10 years away. Now he warns that while the Mangatawhiri diversion had been earmarked to go ahead in the coming year, Transit had been careful not to commit itself. The $43 million needed for the project had still not been approved by the body that holds the roading purse, Land Transport New Zealand.

The local MP, Paul Hutchison, accuses the roading agencies and the Government of "scandalous irresponsibility", and he is right. This stretch of highway has been left in a lethal state largely because of this kind of piecemeal attention in the past. Some sections have been straightened and widened but in between there is two-lane highway utterly inadequate for the traffic volume it now carries. The route from the Bombay Hills to the Thames turnoff needs to be completed now in one proper project. And with an additional 5c levy on petrol the authorities ought to have the funds to do it.

The disturbing element of the latest sign of delay is that it comes only days after the closing of public submissions on Transit's 10-year draft programme. Possibly Transit received fewer exhortations than it expected on the Mangatawhiri-Maramarua proposals and misreads that response to be a true measure of public concern. If so, it would be mistaken. People do not generally go to the trouble of writing letters to the providers of public services. They are accustomed to receiving most of life's requirements from the private sector where providers have an interest in finding out for themselves what consumers might want or need.

Roading priorities are decided by a plethora of political bodies - Transit NZ, Land Transport NZ, regional land transport committees, regional and district councils. The funds come from petrol sales and are put into a national pool to be parcelled out for projects around the country, partly according to population, partly according to need. The result is that Transit has just $21.7 million for urgent work to what is undoubtedly the country's most dangerous highway. With that miserable sum Transit plans to put safety messages on billboards, remove power poles and trees from the road verge and put down "rumble strips".

The strips sound like a poor substitute for the median barriers urged by Middlemore Hospital's director of trauma who is tired of attending to the highway's toll. Transit says median barriers are too expensive, as it did when they were demanded for the Auckland motorways. When Prime Minister David Lange took an interest, the problem seemed to disappear. A little prime ministerial interest in State Highway 2 might work similar magic. Something must happen to shake the bureaucrats from their torpor. Let us hope it does not take an Easter addition to the highway's toll.