Dialogue: Talk to the mayors to solve Auckland's traffic snarl-ups

By BOB HARVEY

There is an invisible meter on my dashboard that ticks away just like a taxi's. Everyone's got one. It's called: why the hell am I stuck in this bloody traffic jam?

Every half-hour I am stuck on some idiot urban planner's stretch of tarmac, I curse them. Twenty-twenty hindsight is marvellous, they might say. Well, on behalf of the people of Auckland, all I can say is, if that was the best you could do, thanks for nothing.

And there isn't any e-paradise on the horizon that's going to make the need for cars disappear, either. A friend asked a law firm recently whether she could do some work from home or work slightly different hours. They watched her leave rather than accommodate her.

Sure, there are always a few shining counter-examples. But the rest of us have to get to work every day to get food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. And on Sunset Rd, Te Atatu Rd, Esmond Rd, Onewa Rd, Shore Rd, Pakuranga Dr, the Southern Motorway, we stay stuck.

Sure, the AA has a solution. Stick a motorway through Avondale. Stick a motorway through Mt Roskill. Stick a motorway through Wiri. I can tell the AA where to stick their motorways.

The AA live in a fantasy world where if you create enough roads, at some stage we'll all have a single road of our own to drive along and we can all wave to each other from our separate roads.

Which will be great, except there won't be any buildings, parks, houses or trees because Auckland will consist of one giant carpark as far as the eye can see.

Most of us are still paying hire purchase through the nose for our cars, anyway. Even when we get to our work after battling the traffic, we have to pay for parking through parking meters or private carparks or get to downtown Auckland at 5 in the morning to get the only three free parks left somewhere on Beach Rd.

No matter what the basic five car-manufacturers say, I don't actually care how I get there, I just want to get there on time. With a decent laptop and modem I could fax, call, e-mail and whatever from a train a lot more efficiently than I can now from a car. Then we'd all be safer on the road.

Except the trains are so scungy. Tranz Rail has allowed graffiti all over their lines that's so bad it makes you feel your carriage is going to be jumped by hoods inside every tunnel. It's the only area with graffiti in Waitakere City.

And the carriages are old. And the station platforms are the most horrible, sterile bits of bare steel you could imagine. Every time I take one, I feel like I'm on a one-way trip to the Gulag Archipelago.

Meanwhile, the petrol companies keep smiling and the car manufacturers keep smiling. I was actually quite impressed with the British and French truck drivers. They've got more balls than whoever represents truckies here.

Every mayor in this city is united and ready to offer a real public transport alternative to all this petrol-fuelled rage. Meanwhile, our Government ministers are driving around on their chauffeur-assisted butts looking uncomfortable and achieving stuff all.

I'm getting a little tired of the people who are running the country hiding behind funding structures when big issues come up and scare them.

Message to central Government from the mayors: Auckland's traffic problems are not going to go away. We're ready to do deals and fix things, so get with the programme.

The deal we're trying to drag the Government to involves leasing the rail corridor land, double-tracking the western line so we're not stuck on a platform waiting for the trains to pass each other down the line, new carriages, a better operator, safe platforms and carriages that make you feel like you're more than self-loading freight items.

Carriages and stations that are clean, well-designed, nice-smelling and comfortable.

Ones that are good enough to get us out of our traffic-jammed, fuel-ratcheted, insurance-premium-racketed cars and get us to where we want to go in peace and at low cost, and without having to fork over another ten bucks to some person in a carpark toll booth. And we're on track to complete the necessary roading network, and the North Shore bus lane.

People outside Auckland might say that's the price you pay for being a Jafa. Well, the next time they want to export something they should remember we all pay the transport cost - $800 million and growing. A transport solution for Auckland is a transport solution for the whole country, like it or not.

* Bob Harvey, Mayor of Waitakere, is chairman of the Auckland Mayoral Forum.

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