EDITORIAL:
Retailers who have battled through tough economic times will be hoping for queues at the checkout as the shopping season kicks off in the lead up to Christmas.
Shoppers, however, will no doubt be battling queues of a different kind if scenes around Auckland malls in the past week are anything to go by — with people spending hours in their cars struggling to get out of carparks.
There will no doubt be an element of schadenfreude at these reports of shopping gridlock; there are people with far greater problems in this country than those stuck at malls after browsing for a new television.
But this carpark congestion speaks to a wider problem across the isthmus — the growing problem with traffic in New Zealand’s biggest city.