Protestors bring Capital's traffic to standstill

Protesters taking part in yesterday's hikoi to Parliament caused few problems for police, but brought motorists and commuters to a standstill as they hit the city streets.

Detective Inspector Rod Drew, head of Operation Hikoi, said that despite Parliament's grounds being packed, police had little trouble controlling the colourful crowd.

"The crowd was passionate as you would expect in making their views known but we had no real problems and no arrests."

About 220 officers, including reinforcements from throughout the lower and central North Island, were involved in the operation.

The main problem was with managing traffic flows as the city virtually ground to a standstill with the throngs of marchers.

Many inner-city streets were blocked off, leaving motorists to crawl along detours skirting the city centre.

Mr Drew said traffic was also reduced to a crawl in the peak morning period as hikoi vehicles came down State Highways 1 and 2.

A convoy of vehicles from Porirua that stretched for 2km flowed freely along State Highway 1 but, on State Highway 2, motorists encountered extreme delays.

"Some hikoi-associated vehicles unfortunately went across all southbound lanes, backing up other traffic behind them," he said.

Despite attempts by police to get cars to use just one lane, traffic was forced to crawl at about 30km/h from Upper Hutt through to Wellington.

At the Ngauranga interchange, the convoy took over all four lanes of traffic, with pilot vehicles refusing to let traffic past. Commuters from Wairarapa reported taking three hours to make it to town, twice as long as normal.

Hundreds of bus passengers were left stranded when all bus services ground to a halt for about 45 minutes mid-morning as the protesters wound their way through town.

Stagecoach acting operations manager Joe Nepia said power was cut to trolley bus wires about 10am after police feared flags and banners could touch live overhead wires.

Staff were dispatched to inner-city bus stops to tell passengers of the delays and to advise of alternative routes once services restarted. Trolley buses resumed service about 2.45pm.

A Tranz Metro spokeswoman said extra carriages had been put on morning peak-time commuter trains, and were enough to prevent any overcrowding or delays in coping with the extra passengers.

Hikoi vehicles were allowed to park in Chaffers Park and its surrounding streets all day without being ticketed, and Te Papa opened its carpark to the vehicles free.

A council spokesman said parking wardens used their discretion with motorists whose vehicles had been trapped along the hikoi route.

- NZPA