Whangaparaoa commuters revel in fast run

Whangaparaoa residents had easy drives to and from work yesterday after the completion of a $13 million road-widening project which gave them months of congestion headaches.

Public relations consultant Pauline Southwick said her 15km drive to work from Gulf Harbour took her just 22 minutes. A week ago the trip took almost 2 1/2 hours.

She left home soon after 6.45am, convinced she would run into a queue of traffic somewhere along the route, but arrived at work by 7.10am - well ahead of her starting time of 8am.

The return trip last night took an even faster 18 minutes. "It was a dream run - the whole thing has been fixed," Ms Southwick said.

Other commuters were equally delighted, although it was touch and go whether the four lanes of widened road between Red Beach and Vipond Rds would be ready in time for residents returning to work after Queen's Birthday Weekend.

Rodney District Mayor John Law said contractors finished marking up the 1.8km stretch only at 5.45am, but were ready in time for traffic to flow so easily "that we even had to slow people down".

But he and Ms Southwick said the project was just a short-term solution for the only land link from the peninsula to the outside world, and a $192 million toll road across the Weiti River from Stillwater must be built to avoid future congestion.

Mr Law said his council had already bought enough land for the new road at a cost of $22 million, the route was fully designated and all that was now needed was to persuade Transit New Zealand to build it as a state highway.

Opposing district councillor Wayne Walker said last night that while he was not against building the road, there were many cheaper transport initiatives which could be tried first to keep traffic moving on the peninsula.

These included high-occupancy transit lanes down Whangaparaoa Rd, for vehicles with three or more people, as seen in North Shore City, and a local loop bus service.

Mr Walker believed some of the pressure for a toll link, which is expected to build at a public meeting at Stanmore Bay on Sunday, was aimed at diverting attention from the disruption caused over the past seven months by roadworks that were years overdue.