Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says the city’s motorists could soon be charged $5 per trip on some of its busiest highways.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan on Tuesday, Brown said he is looking at placing the congestion charges on SH1 between the Penrose and Greenlane on-ramps, and SH16 between the Lincoln Rd and Te Atatu on-ramps.
“Between 7am and 9am, those two motorways jam up and between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, they jam up again,” Brown said.
He claimed travelling at peak times was “easily avoidable.
When du Plessis-Allan asked about parents dropping off children to school, which would fall in the morning peak hours, Brown said when he was a youngster ”you got to school on your own”.
“It isn’t the law you have to get to school in a BMW,” he said.
Brown added there would be “big discussions” about the price, but he said he thought a reasonable price would be $5 each time the motorists used the specified roads at the peak times.
He claimed the prices would ensure people would start to think, “maybe I should start work at that time, and work a bit later and go home a bit later”.
NZ Herald
Most of the congestion in Auckland is directly attributable to either Auckland Transport or Waka Kotahi. Let me explain all the ways:
1) Insufficient motorway planning, like Oteha Valley to Constellation, which was widened to five lanes each way, but that short 2.15km stretch of road terminates in two lanes each way, and the roadworks that took the best part of six years to complete and only succeeded in moving the traffic jams 2.15km closer to the city.
2) Poorly designed onramps that are far too short.
3) Stupid traffic lights on those poorly designed onramps that drip feed traffic onto the motorway but cause huge snarl-ups in suburban streets as a result.
4) Turning every pedestrian crossing into massive suspension wrecking judder bars slowing traffic to a crawl.
5) A million miles of bike lanes take up space on the roads we pay for (stolen lane) so the occasional road maggot, bludging off our road user charges, can cycle somewhere, but rarely to work.
6) Nonsensical bus lanes do the same as the cycle lanes so that mostly empty buses can transport the three people they carry somewhere not even remotely close to where they need to go.
7) Public Transport. A slow, expensive way of travelling from not where you are, to not where you want to be, at a time that doesn’t suit you, in the company of people you would never let into your home.
8) Reducing speed limits on many busy roads to 30 km/h, or 60 km/h on some rural roads
9) Persistently closing Auckland Harbour Bridge when a gentle zephyr threatens to blow some old nana off course as she trundles up the middle lane of the bridge at 60 km/h.
10) Road cones… everywhere!
11) Poor maintenance of city roads and highways, to such a point that driving an SUV is almost mandatory.
Wayne Brown wasn’t elected to introduce congestion charging; he was elected to gut Auckland Transport like a trout.
I suggest he starts sharpening his filleting knife, or get out of the way and let Maurice Williamson do it if he’s too squeamish at seeing bureaucrat guts splattering everywhere.
Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the BFD - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
Comparing PT between Auckland and Wellington is informative. Because Wellington is compact and there is limited and expensive parking in the city, buses have a history of being well used by all kinds of people. You see great fashion on the buses and the users are not people you would look down on. Auckland is very spread out and because PT has not been well-planned and used historically, people have become wedded to their cars and can't switch easily because of their psychological impairment. As for who is sharing the bus, if more people (like you!) were using the bus it wouldn't be an issue.
However one thing to be avoided is free PT. Since Covid and free fares the undesirables, who never used buses before, took to cruising around on buses all day and caused trouble. To the point where we had all the recent attacks on school bus users. If you make something free it won't be valued.
As for the speed bumps and slow-go areas, they increase driver stress and blood pressure. It's called traffic calming but it's driver inflaming. Thanks for nothing Waka Kotahi, you sure know how to waste taxpayer money. And the proof of the pudding; are the road toll and injuries reducing? Especially in the urban areas and absolute back streets that they have targeted. Titahi Bay has speed bumps FFS. It's a peninsular and no-one goes there unless they live there or visit family.
MC
Most of Brown's views are refreshing, practical and honestly and succinctly expressed in an age when few still do (or can). His judgement normally good, such as refraining from voting in the maori wards debate (presumably after careful assessment of the others). But I suspect he has misjudged here. Anybody who reasonably can avoids the motorway now. Very many are not headed downtown yet those are the only ones for which public transport may be an option, always assuming there is someone to take them to the distant bus stop, or somewhere to safely leave a car all day. Even with motorway delays few public transport options will approach the door to door speed of a car. A few businessmen with on site parking could use the bus but in their salary range $5 is nothing. Lesser city workoing folk have been forced out of their cars long ago by the demise of street parking.
Many attend schools out of area. Parents are in any case appropriately concerned about the 3 Ds, drivers, deviants and dogs. Years ago, before drivers were so disconnected and distracted, lanes were distant from the footway, deviants were less inspired and/or restrained, and dog breeds were mostly benign, risks were much lower.
Many who would like to live closer to the city are deterred by the neighbourhood risk posed by the new zoning rules, especially close to stations, and have settled for the country. (many of the replacement blocks are filled with non worker beneficiaries)
His comments on consultation sum up the futility of spending hours and days on submissions as I have over the years. If only he could bring to bear on the ultimate expensive time waster, maori consultation, now written into every Council document, including in his time.
Please be careful mayor, we do not want to lose you and end up with some non practical soft headed puppet of maori.
(And Cam forgot to mention the myriad buses which do not turn up, or the hopelessly delayed trains. How London runs the Underground beats me. Scaled up, based on our outage rates, it would be permanently closed.
If motorists are not deterred by an hour long commute from traveling to and from work at a particular time and extra five dollars a day will make no difference.
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