His only suggestion is that "Northwestern regulars ... leave the car at home and take the bus to help reduce the numbers of vehicles using this tight space over the next few years".
If the buses had been allowed to retain their dedicated busway - or got a new one for the duration - that proposal makes a lot of sense.
Indeed it would be the ideal opportunity for public transport to seduce commuters out of their cars and on to the more efficient bus. But who in their right mind - in particular, a dyed-in-the-wool car commuter - would contemplate swapping the crawl along the motorway in a private car for the dubious pleasure of crowding on to a bus and crawling to work in a conveyance with seats and springs as severe as a Presbyterian church pew, surrounded by coughing, spluttering and increasingly grumpy strangers.
At least stuck in traffic in your own car, you can choose the company you keep, to say nothing of the air temperature and choice of music.
Back in July, commuters got a taste of what was to come when the priority lanes for buses and cars carrying two or more passengers on motorway ramps at Waterview were closed. That had Ritchies Transport's Andrew Ritchie fuming about delays of between 10 and 25 minutes in the evening travel peak. From today, things will only get worse, with buses and cars with more than one occupant progressively being forced off the existing narrow shoulder bus lanes and into the general traffic melee.
While claiming to be doing everything possible to alleviate the problems this will cause, NZTA has fallen back on the "have to break the eggs to make an omelet" approach. This is the country's largest roading project to date, says Mr Parker, and "regrettably, this does mean impacts on people using the Northwestern over the next few years. We're asking for your patience and care when driving ..."
Two months ago Labour's spokesman on Auckland issues, Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford, made the eminently sensible suggestion that one of the motorway's three general traffic lanes in each direction should become dedicated bus and high-occupancy vehicle lanes during the three-year construction period. At the time, both AT and NZTA said they were considering solutions - including Mr Twyford's.
Mr Twyford says he also got "a very reassuring" message back from NZTA saying their design team were working on answers. As of last Friday, they'd failed to come back to him.
Auckland Transport's solution is to admit defeat and revise bus timetables to accommodate the inevitable delays. An additional eight trips a day will be laid on Ritchies western services from mid-October to cope with buses taking much longer to complete their journeys. Buses will also gain an extra lane on the Great North Rd onramp - but that won't speed up the journey, once stuck on the motorway.
On the eve of the launch of the new electric train system, this was the time to seize the moment and give public transport a boost citywide.
On the Northwestern Motorway, it's going to be three years of negativity instead. The existing bus lanes along the motorway were incomplete afterthoughts, but they are, or were, better than nothing. To abandon that advantage is another sign that NZTA doesn't take public transport seriously.
