KEY POINTS:
Auckland City councillors and their transport planners should get out and about a bit more. A good place to start would be the Mt Roskill stomping ground of deputy mayor David Hay.
In yesterday's Herald, we learned that despite the opening of State Highway 20 extension to Mt Roskill next year, the already clogged traditional route along Pah Rd, Manukau Rd and Gillies Ave will continue to be the primary access between the city centre and the airport.
To cope with the increased volumes linked with the 2011 Rugby World Cup, rapid transit clearways will have to be installed, restricting parking and access to selected side roads.
Now maybe transport planners get their jollies upsetting residents and shopkeepers by installing clearways through unwelcoming neighbourhoods, but wouldn't it be less complicated and much cheaper, to just erect a few signs recommending travellers avoid the traditional Queenstown Rd exit altogether? Instead they could come off the motorway further west, entering the city along Three Kings Road or Dominion Road instead.
After all, isn't the southwestern bypass, which is costing us millions upon millions of dollars, being constructed exactly for the purpose of ending bottle-necks like this by spreading the flow of traffic around a bit?
Even without the new Mt Roskill extension, my preferred route from Ponsonby and the city has always been via Three Kings and Mt Eden. It's usually speedier and, with a bit more motorway to play with, it can only get better. But instead of taking advantage of this new ring road, the council experts seem stuck in the narrow old rut through Epsom. I guess I should be grateful. It will leave my way uncluttered.
Of course, for a better long-term solution, the city should join forces with the regional council and spend its time and our money, ensuring a passenger rail link to the airport by 2011.
After years of lobbying from passenger transport enthusiasts, the Government finally got the message and has agreed to reopen the Onehunga branch rail line from Penrose by the end of next year.
But what an opportunity lost. With an election looming, I'd be hunting the Auckland vote with a pledge to extend that rail link across the Manukau Harbour to the airport.
Alternatively, a possibly quicker and cheaper first step might be to offer a link from the main rail line at Wiri to the airport, with a pledge to continue this line as a loop through Mangere to Onehunga.
Earlier this month when the Campaign for Better Transport presented the ARC with a petition for an airport rail link signed by more than 10,000 Aucklanders, councillors backed the proposal with chairman Mike Lee declaring "until there is a rail link ... Auckland will not be an international-class city".
More than 40 years ago, our politicians threw their lot in with the internal combustion engine, deciding Auckland's transport future lay with the personal car.
By luck, or foresight, they didn't get round to selling off the existing rail corridors.
Now that petrol sniffing is slowly losing its appeal, politicians are starting to appreciate the rail corridors for the valuable resource they are. But not fast enough.
Surely one of the strangest exercises under way today is the $43 million bus corridor being created to link the grand $204 million Britomart train station with Newmarket, where $70 million of public funds is being spent on a revamped train station and interchange.
The new bus corridor involves strengthening historic Grafton Bridge and its conversion to a dedicated busway. Street trees are to topple, as is the 86-year-old rough-cast plaster cottage in Park Rd, all to make way for the planned 1500 bus trips a day by 2009.
It is hoped the dedicated bus corridor will save passengers 14 minutes a trip, but what would the savings be if they'd caught a train instead? Not just in savings to the public purse, which currently has to subsidise competing modes of public transport, but in peace and quiet for the university, the hospital and the park.
