Veteran tackles road congestion

George Claridge, aged 98, wants to leave Tauranga a legacy of free-flowing traffic.

The veteran town planner and property developer, who retired to Mt Maunganui from Dunedin 23 years ago, is unhappy with proposals to relieve serious road congestion.

He has come up with well-considered alternatives which, he says, would do more for Tauranga in a shorter time and at less cost.

The key to his detailed scheme is realigning rail to take a more direct route to the busy Port of Tauranga and converting the rail bridge from Matapihi into a new city road link.

Mayor Stuart Crosby likes some of the well-respected expert's ideas, but says the Claridge "City Link" initiative will not replace the official Harbour Link project "which we require urgently".

However, the mayor said, components of Mr Claridge's blueprint had merit and could complement city council plans in the next 10 years. "He is a very smart man. We are not ignoring City Link. Some aspects of it, I believe, will supplement Harbour Link."

Public information days this week at Mt Maunganui and Tauranga have showcased proposals for the city's $210 million Harbour Link - an expressway including a second harbour bridge connecting central Tauranga with Hewletts Rd and Mt Maunganui.

The project is not included in the National Land Transport Programme, meaning construction could be at least 10 years away.

Tauranga City Council and Transit New Zealand want to bring it forward by using tolls to finance half the cost and are calling for public submissions to the controversial suggestion.

Mr Claridge - who insists there is no need for "all that concrete and steel" or for committing motorists to 35 years of tolls - feels partly responsible for Tauranga's traffic snarls.

He was one of the developers who got growth going when he bought a Matapihi farm and created the Bayfair Estate. Since then, subdivisions have sprouted all around the district as more and more people move to the western Bay of Plenty for the lifestyle and the warm climate which attracted Mr Claridge from the South Island more than two decades ago.

"It was like a beach resort then, but it has got bigger and bigger and bigger as more people have opened up land."

The need for adequate roading had become critical, and he believed it would be much worse if steps were not taken urgently.

Good town planning started from the centre and fanned out, whereas Tauranga had been concentrating on perimeter roads, he said.

"In the next few years you will not be able to move in this town. It will be worse than Auckland."

A new, shorter rail link would take the ever-increasing number of logging and coal trains - which wind their way over about eight crossroads, disrupting traffic flow - direct to the port. Getting rid of about 13km of existing rail would free up much-needed commercial and residential land on the city's narrow peninsula for sale and help to pay for the project.

Conversion of the existing rail bridge would bring new road links to downtown Tauranga, doing away with the need for another (tolled) bridge. And dedicated truck lanes could separate heavy traffic from light vehicles.

Mr Claridge, whose past extensive projects in Otago did not have to meet the time-consuming demands of the Resource Management Act, is certain his plan would work, given the chance.

* For the record, George Claridge has also studied Auckland's roading problems. "I could straighten out the traffic there in a fortnight."