Letters to the editor: Building more roads is a long-term liability

With total road reliance, transport planned for all the major developments in and around Tauranga, this constitutes an impending transportation logistics disaster. Photo / File

Glen Crowther (Opinion, June 3) correctly describes the ongoing fiasco of the city council's blind adherence to failing so-called Smart Growth policies and the shortcomings of the incumbent 800-page Long Term Plan.

With total road reliance, transport planned for all the major residential, commercial and industrial developments occurring in and around Tauranga, this constitutes an impending transportation logistics disaster.

This will not only cost billions but as a contradiction will also accelerate climate de-stabilisation to a tipping point when life as we know it, will be forced to change.

The practice of building more roads is a long-term liability, drains the economy but presently hugely profits the oil, trucking, roading and motor industries, and giant corporate interests.

Crowther espouses to now change from the existing billion-dollar plan that does not work to a plan that results in a sustainable city.

I have submitted a six-page document to Tauranga City Council and sent previously in March 2021 to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.

This document broadly presents a visionary, common-sense, affordable direction and is able to be done benefitting the greater public good and instilling accountability for decisions.

Tauranga needs to avoid Auckland's super city model which has become a $10b goldmine for big, mainly foreign corporates.

Jos Nagels
Brookfield

Good luck with petition

Good luck to Christina Humphreys with her petition (News, June 4).

This Government won't like it and they have already shown their true colours. Even if the petition gets the required numbers to be effective, it will just be quashed.

Ian Young
Pāpāmoa Beach

Technology comes at a price

Many years ago, back in the 1940s and 1950s, we wrote letters and made phone calls from boxes and house phones.

If a company wanted to contact you or another company it either wrote a letter, telephoned or sent a telegram (something that never should have been discontinued). The only way to eavesdrop or read this information was to have a party line, tap a telephone or steal the mail - strictly frowned on and punished.

As a result, businesses were not compromised and held to ransom by villains.

Technology really does come at a price. A step back perhaps?

Jim Adams
Rotorua

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