Traffic on State Highway 2. Photo / Supplied
A partial solution to New Zealand's traffic woes looks fairly simple: two of our main causes of traffic gridlock is use of roads by huge (articulated) trucks and school drop-offs.
Trucks can be addressed by not allowing trucks on roads between 6am and 7pm unless certified as essential services or specified towns, eg, concrete trucks, milk tankers and the like which usually fall outside peak traffic hours.
This would mean loading times would involve shift workers and unloading also shift workers but the type of premises, foodmarkets, warehouses, ports, petrol stations and the like, this shouldn't cause any logistical problems and it also takes the shift workers out of the peak times too.
Large trucks are heavy, lumbering and not quick off the mark, holding up traffic at lights and halting flows.
Let's give it a try for 12 months and see how it goes, nothing to lose and sure beats building new roads (with roadworks) to nowhere.
On school drop-offs, this is a no-brainer – reinstate urban school buses, start school at 9-9.30am and finish at 3pm outside peak traffic times.
Exemptions could be granted for health and disability reasons.
"Walk, cycle or bus to school" - these interim measures could hold the fort until autonomous driving and ride-sharing, parked-up vehicles become operational and feasible in the next decade.
S L Paterson
Tauranga
I drove down Links Ave recently, a road I dislike due to the speed humps.
These are the broken humps, designed to allow buses, trucks, motorcycles and bikes to go as fast as they like while cars - the reason for having a road - must drive slowly.
Now there is an enormous bus lane, which only operates between 7.15am and 10am.
No reason why, when most of the parking has gone, replaced by the ever-increasing number of broken yellow lines.
How can this happen? Do they sneak in at night to do it? Why do the residents put up with it?
It is easy enough to replace the on-road parking with "behind the kerb" parking. It costs a bit more than yellow paint though, and it needs to be parallel parking so cars don't back into the cycle lanes.
I'm sure the council would find it worthwhile to offer this in conciliation for the removal of the car parks.
The bus lane, or clearway, wouldn't be needed (if indeed it is now) in the absence of on-road parking.
Dan Russell
Tauranga
The Government needs to make the highest risk roads safer, first Waikato, Auckland and Canterbury (Local News, January 29).
The Bay of Plenty's high-risk roads will be done after 2020 as good planning and development needs to be done first.
The cycleway and walkway is very much needed.
New Zealanders will use it as well as tourists who bring millions of dollars into the Bay of Plenty.
People who drive dangerously cause the accidents on State Highway 2. They make poor decisions. I saw this when I drove on State Highway 2 this new year, a green go and stop light needs to be installed on Wairoa Rd. I also saw drivers coming out of Clarke Rd forcing their way on to State Highway 2.
At the Te Puna roundabout drivers coming out of the petrol station as well as drivers from Te Puna Rd were causing traffic danger as they forced their cars on to the roundabout jamming up the intersection.
Emergency services would not be able to get through.
Hilary R Burrows
Pāpāmoa
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