Brian Rudman: Should we believe Brash over eastern highway?

National Party leader Don Brash is insisting the controversial eastern highway is off his agenda if he becomes prime minister. The question is: For how long? Certainly he's having trouble muzzling his car-crazed transport spokesman, Maurice Williamson.

Just a month ago, Mr Williamson sat down with Herald staff to outline National's transport policy for the election. The proposed highway was a crucial link in completing Auckland's roading network, he said. "It's like arteries in your body - if your arteries didn't join up you'd be dead, and these don't join up."

In this he was echoing a speech in May 2004 by Dr Brash, who declared he was willing "to give an absolute commitment that the next National government would ensure that the Auckland corridor network was built within no more than 10 years of our election. We will get the job done." The network he referred to included the proposed eastern highway.

Last Monday, after Dr Brash declared that absolute commitment dead and buried, Mr Williamson did his best to back up his leader by explaining that "it is not a state highway and you can't just decide to do things in a local roading area by foisting it on a local authority".

Which is a very commendable sentiment. But it was the opposite of what he was saying just a few weeks before to the Herald reporters.

Then, he queried why the highway "has got to be built as a local road", arguing: "I think the delineation between what is a local road and what is a state highway has literally come to an end."

He said: "I can't find anyone that can explain to me why that is not a state highway. You would never build these things if you had to rely on local authorities through which they run."

Warming to his theme, he said that if we were to listen to those who didn't want a motorway in their backyard, "Auckland will never build any more motorways ... and we are grossly short of them".

Taken in the context of National's pledges to streamline the Resource Management Act, scrapping legal aid for objectors and introducing mechanisms "to prevent vexatious and frivolous objections" - whatever that might mean - it's a nightmare scenario. Particularly when it's based on an erroneous claim in both Dr Brash's speech on Monday and in National's campaign literature that "the congestion on Auckland's roads is worse than in Sydney or Melbourne".

It's a claim Mr Williamson has been peddling for months, and it's simply not true. Not according to on-going congestion surveys conducted on behalf the national highway operators, Transit New Zealand.

In the latest report, prepared for the April Transit board meeting, the conclusion was that "in absolute terms, New South Wales [Sydney] and Victoria [Melbourne] report significantly higher levels of congestion than for New Zealand cities. Queensland [Brisbane] reports similar congestion to Auckland, although the morning peak is significantly lower". It noted that average actual travel speed in 2004 in the morning peak was 38km/h, interpeak, 57km/h, evening peak, 42km/h and average all day, 45km/h.

This survey mirrors an earlier pilot study reported in October 2002.

Depressingly, the only reference to public transport in "National's plans for roads" is the pledge to establish "a stand-alone, single agency - Transport Auckland - to oversee all parts of the public transport system". This would be a giant new bureaucracy, absorbing all the functions of existing local and central Government transport and roading agencies.

Exactly how another round of restructuring is going to speed up anything is hard to fathom. Particularly when local and central Government over the past five years have put together a highly achievable programme for the revival of public transport and the completion of the highway network in Auckland which seems to have gained wide acceptance.

Establishing Transport Auckland seems to be a case of change for change's sake. Unless, of course, it's being proposed as a way of stalling further progress on public transport. For that is what it will do.

And that would bring no tears to Mr Williamson's eyes. In June he sneered at "public transport" - presumably meaning rail - saying it can "do a bit to help but, in general, buses will be the main solution and buses run on roads. ... The time has come to get the bulldozer engines started ... "