KEY POINTS:
Calls to rename SH1 as tribute to Sir Ed - News item
To be fair, they mean well. State Highway 1 is, after all, a vital piece of infrastructure. It's our main artery, the dual (pun intended) in our transport crown. We'd be lost without it. The great extruded noodle stretched thin from frozen south to winterless north, without which NZ could not go about its business or its pleasure.
So you can see why some think a name change is a good idea. But it isn't. And we shouldn't do it. Not unless we wish to remember the excellent by rebranding the woefully inadequate.
Because that's what State Highway 1 is. As autobahns go, it's a goat track, well past its over-use by date. Anyone who endured its many shortcomings - and even shorter passing lanes - over Christmas will attest to that.
If a total stranger asked you to pick just one thing that might explain why so many of us, sour and frustrated, are packing our bags and heading off to Oz, then State Highway 1 would have to be the obvious example.
Truth to tell, we shouldn't put any famous name to this mediocre strip of seal. State Highway 1 is more of an embarrassment than a source of honour.
The advantage of leaving its name unchanged is that we know who to blame. We know who to harangue as we crawl through the congested centre of yet another town or hamlet instead of using the bypass that should have been built years ago.
We know whose ear to bash when we grind to a carbon-pumping halt at yet another set of traffic lights, abjectly installed to manage traffic the road can no longer bear.
You'd have thought, wouldn't you, that some senior highways manager in Gridlock House would have long since issued a thundersome memo to their underlings: There will be NO traffic lights on State Highway 1. None at all. Traffic lights have NO PLACE on our premier highway.
Or that any self-respecting traffic engineer charged with installing more and more of the damned things would choose instead to make their weary way to the roof and fling themselves off.
"Oh, that's a bit harsh," you may say. And even if you don't, the politicians would. They would point to the conflicting demands on the exchequer, all equally urgent. They will insist that people are already grumpy about the amount being wrung from their purses.
After all, they would say, at the end of the day, there's simply not that many people here. In terms of population. we're a city trapped in a country's body and there's only so much we can afford.
Trouble is, if that's the problem, we'll never find a solution. Arguing that it would cost a lot to make SH1 the road it should be is like saying it's a long way to the Moon.
It is. But there's no short cut. If you want to get there, that's the distance you have to travel. The same goes for the highway. Making it what it needs to be will cost what it costs. Full stop.
Besides, our glorious leaders can't say they've been taken by surprise. Successive governments have had decades to develop plans to enhance this truly essential service.
They could have long since started straightening its bends and shortening its length - if only to delay global warming. They could have long since decreed the safety standards required (four lanes, perhaps, with a central barrier) then progressively set about implementing them.
Quite apart from anything else, SH1 is a workplace for the thousands of people who drive trucks, buses and vans upon it. Yet you don't find OSH (a government agency) telling Transit (another government agency) to eliminate accident black spots ASAP or face prosecution.
The state, it seems, can do what its citizen can't. It can operate facilities that kill people but only put them right when it chooses. It can save itself money by making drivers solely responsible for the safe passage of their vehicles.
All that does is perpetuate the unacceptable. Think of the last trip you took on SH1 and the number of times you saw a cluster of cars trapped behind a lorry or camper van (the truckies call them "road lice")?
Recall the number of times you saw a car - its driver made reckless by frustration - sweep past two or three others before cutting back perilously close to the oncoming traffic.
"What an idiot!" you might have angrily said. But we should be reserving our anger for the people in charge of this sub-standard rural road.
If we're going to name this tarsealed travesty after anybody, it should be Mr X. He's probably the only one who'll take responsibility.
