Letters to the editor: Traffic is a 'bloody shambles'

Traffic snarled up on Turret Rd. Photo/file

Traffic shambles

So our councillors don't know where the traffic comes from that overloads Welcome Bay Rd every morning. Well, they won't find out by sitting in the council chambers wishing they had a museum. Much of it comes from Papamoa or that end of town. They are commuters who are sick of sitting in traffic at Te Maunga. Don't ask our transport manager what to do about it, he will just tell you to get everybody on bikes and the problem will go away. Don't talk about tidal flows on the Hairini Bridge as his traffic modelling has said that won't work. I suggest he models a four-lane Hairini causeway and bridge and see what that does. Don't worry about having two major roads under construction at once, you see that all the time when you drive a car. Other solutions? Put pressure on NZTA to sort their Te Maunga site out. It's a bloody shambles. Traffic will move faster if they have a bit of room. Close off the Maunganui Rd-end of Girven Rd to traffic entering the highway during peak hours, that should get more of them over the Harbour Bridge via Golf Rd. Stop selling sections for a few years.
Dan Russell
Tauranga

Labour pains

It would appear that the Labour pains have arrived early. This youth camp business is all a bit "she'll be right, mate". A rather telling chapter in a rather dirty book perhaps. Where's Nicky Hagar when you need him?
Graeme Martin
Tauranga

Help your neighbours

Why don't the residents of Tauranga, Mount Maunganui and Papamoa get behind those residents of Omokoroa and Katikati when it comes to a four-lane road from Tauranga to beyond Katikati? This is your road too, to places such as Waihi, Coromandel Peninsula and Auckland. Everybody's safety is paramount. Don't sit on your backside leaving this to someone else, the few residents of Omokoroa and Katikati. Email your MP today. Email the NZTA. They need your help. Just do it.
Phil Christophersen
Katikati

Census issues

Just how representative is this new whizz-bang Census meant to be? More than a week since Census day and we were still waiting to receive our access number. So were all the neighbours I have spoken to about it. An email to the Census website has so far elicited no meaningful reply.
Paul Chapman
Te Puna

Royal rights

Mr Lally's reason for calling Peter Dey "Mr Day" (Letters, March 20) is as pathetic as would be me calling him "Mr Lilly", albeit no further explanation is needed. I never asked him to give Maori special privilege. I simply ask that they be given the rights that are theirs. If he understood New Zealand history properly (which in my opinion he clearly does not) he would understand their rights as given them by Queen Victoria. He only has to read the preface to the Treaty to realise. Meanwhile, he thinks it is democracy to deprive Maori of local government consultation and representation. By his own admittance, he only represents and consults with Maori through his council that I understand acknowledges that what they do is insufficient. And he still refuses to comment on the widely-acknowledged successes on both sides of the Maori wards at regional council level.
And I never bemoaned an extra 50 years in Maori life expectancy. I simply noted the impact of people like him and his ideological attitudes and lack of knowledge of New Zealand history on the quality of those 50 years.
Geoff Wane
Bellevue