KEY POINTS:
March madness has hit Auckland motorways, with traffic queues stretching up to 1.5km further than in any other month.
Transit officials put the phenomenon down to 60,000 tertiary students returning and workers taking no holidays after the summer break.
An extra 8000 cars are on the southern motorway each weekday, raising the total to 200,000 and adding at least five minutes to each journey.
The rise has occurred in each of the nine years Transit Auckland regional manager Peter Spies has been with the organisation.
"Historically, March is the busiest month of the year on the roads and it puts a lot of pressure on the network," he said. "But the traffic tends to tail off when students realise a friend down the road has the same lecture and they carpool."
Antony Wraight has no doubt his daily commute has worsened in the past fortnight. The 31-year-old mechanical design engineer drives from his home in Hillcrest on the North Shore to Onehunga each day. The awkward journey means catching a bus is not a realistic option.
On a good day, the 20-kilometre journey in his 1.5-litre "economical" Nissan Pulsar can take 45 minutes each way.
If the roads are clogged it can easily take twice as long and the record is two hours. "If there's a crash on the Harbour Bridge the motorways come to a halt."
Wraight said problems getting on to the motorway at Northcote Rd had eased since last year but it's been slow going through Spaghetti Junction in the past fortnight.
He copes by leaving before the height of the morning rush and staying late at work, and by plugging his iPod into his car stereo and listening to everything from jazz to rock.
Despite the lengthy drive times, Auckland's love affair with the car shows no sign of slowing. An extra 40 vehicles a day travel on local roads.
Once confined to 90-minute periods from 7.30am and 5pm, the peaks run from 6.30am to 9.30am and resume from 3.30pm.
The opening before Christmas of the Greenhithe motorway extension, linking the North Shore and Waitakere, has eased congestion at Spaghetti Junction. But the full effect will not be seen until other pieces of the Transit puzzle, such as the Victoria Park tunnel and Western ring route joining Manukau, Waitakere and the North Shore, are completed. Work on those projects will not start until next year.
A mix of strategies, including cameras to monitor and detour traffic to other routes, and ramp signals, have improved traffic flow, according to Transit.
Transit was committed to providing effective public transport and Peter Spies pointed to the North Shore busway as proof. The final stage of the $300 million project opened in February and figures released last week show it carried 82,373 passengers last month - 38 per cent ahead of forecast.
- Chris Reed
