There are many ways to get from A to B and we need them all. Photo / Mark Mitchell
There are many ways to get from A to B and we need them all. Photo / Mark Mitchell
COMMENT:
Transport's become a strangely emotive issue lately.
Nothing infuriates some like a cycleway. Nothing is as pathetic, to others, as a new road.
It seems like you're either in one camp or the other. You either agree with Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter that road-loving motorists are "car fascists".Or you want to run self-righteous cyclists off the road.
It's a pity the debate has got so shrill. It's going to hurt us all in the end. Because politics is politics. And if you and I are choosing sides, then so are our vote-hunting politicians. And the side they seem to have chosen - the ones in charge of transport decisions at least - is the roads-are-bad side.
And, as I say, it will hurt us all in the end. Just look at what happened in Wellington this week.
On Wednesday, all it took was one mishap in the railyard to shut down all the train routes except for one. Twenty thousand commuters were stranded, trying to get to work.
There weren't enough buses to replace the trains, so the stranded Wellingtonians got back into their cars to try to get to the city.
And they hit the traffic snarl up. Because, even on a good day, Wellington's motorways are snarled up. Never mind when thousands of other cars also join the traffic jam.
In the end, authorities told gridlocked Wellingtonians to go home for the day.
And in Auckland, commuters faced massive delays this week after a large panel was blown off a CBD apartment building during a storm on Thursday. Part of Nelson St - a major thoroughfare - is expected to be closed for at least a week.
The lesson here is that you can't have only new public transport, or only new roads. You need both. You need new public transport to keep taking pressure off the roads. And you need new roads for those times that public transport stops working. Which, in Wellington, is often.
The other lesson, is that our existing roads already aren't coping. So, even now, we could do with bigger, better and more roads. Fast forward 20 years, when we add another half a million people to New Zealand's population, and our existing roads will be even more congested.
Which brings us to how this debate is going to hurt all of us.
Traffic congestion on State Highway 1 between the Basin Reserve and Mt Victoria Tunnel, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
At the moment, new roads seem like a no-no. You can't be a cycle-luvvie and be seen to build roads. So, authorities answering to Genter and Phil Twyford have called off major and crucial roading projects.
In Wellington alone, the Grenada to Petone link and the Melling Interchange are now so delayed they won't even be started in this Government's term. Let's Get Wellington Moving won't wrap up within 20 years, by which time thousands more cars will be nose-to-tail in the capital.
In Auckland, the East-West link was a yes, this Government made it a no, now it's been bumped to a maybe, maybe not. The highway south of Whāngarei is delayed. The four-lane Te Puna highway in the Bay of Plenty has been halved to two lanes.
That's like pumping the brakes on the economy.
Without the highway to Whāngarei, underdeveloped Northland won't ever reach its full potential. Without the linking roads in our major cities, couriers and delivery trucks and workers will waste valuable hours just battling to get to their destinations.
We need good infrastructure to lift our productivity. For us, low productivity has been a frustrating problem for 30-40 years. We've had countless reports look at it and they keep telling us infrastructure is important. We need to be able to get goods and people around the cities and country as fast as we can because time is money.
So we need roads. And yes, we need cycleways and trains and buses too. But also we need roads.
