Brian Rudman: Tomorrow never comes when roads are clogged

The Government is promising to pour billions of dollars into alleviating Auckland's traffic congestion problems.

But while we wait, we could try a little harder to better manage the roads we already have.

Take the mysterious barriers at the bottom of Grafton Rd. Indeed the senior local politician who rang to complain about them on Friday wishes someone would take them, not as an example, but as an obstacle to be removed, so traffic could flow more easily.

I won't name him, because his fiefdom is not involved and igniting a squabble with whichever rival is responsible is hardly the point, but he reckons the only activity he has seen in months was a workman staring down a hole.

He asks why there is no sense of urgency about avoiding such unnecessary road blockages and talks about the manana approach, the she'll be right, tomorrow's another day attitude, that seems to pervade this sort of work in Auckland.

While he's been obsessing about the Grafton obstacles, I've been fixated by one of my own, the slowly moving blockages to Victoria St West, one of the main arteries west out of the city.

The chaos began mid-January with the blocking of the right turn into Halsey St for traffic heading to Westhaven across the harbour bridge.

In the evening rush hours, traffic quickly stalled back up Victoria St to Albert St as those wanting to turn dithered. Then came the Vector crew to lay a new electricity cable to Freemans Bay.

Complete with diggers and safety barriers, they've been snailing their way down the hill from Television New Zealand and past the Victoria Park Market for the past two - or is it three? - weeks, narrowing traffic flow out of the city past the work site to a single lane.

On a particularly bad day it took the bus half an hour just to get down the hill - which serves me right for not walking.

It wasn't until last Thursday that the penny dropped and some bright spark thought to relieve the pressure by temporarily moving the centre line across and borrowing an under-used lane from the other direction.

Unfortunately, the chap in charge of the temporary signage hadn't been briefed on this brainwave. So he plonked a big sign at the beginning of the new diversion which displayed a bent arrow directing drivers back into the clogged single lane. To the shame of all Westies, most were too scared, or confused, to make a break for it.

I rang Des Hughes, Auckland City's manager of utility relationships, the next morning and he went to check it out - and got caught up in the congestion himself. The good news was that the Victoria St work should have been completed by today.

And to think people seriously believed that a V8 car street race around Victoria Park, including weeks of set-up, would have not gridlocked the city. On that cheery thought, Auckland City councillor Penny Sefuiva rang with her own little traffic tale - not her council's fault, she insisted, but Transit New Zealand's.

Seems it is doing motorway realignment at Western Springs and has temporarily reduced the underpass at Ivanhoe Rd to a single lane, controlled by portable lights.

Councillor Sefuiva was patiently queued at the red light on Friday when someone drove past her and others waiting, through the red light and down the one-way passage. He stopped at the other end and furiously beckoned them to come through. Nervously they did.

When they got through he revealed he was a local and the lights had been stuck on red for two weeks. Manana.

But nothing embodies the manana approach quite as dramatically as the continuing leisurely approach to clearing roads after a serious accident.

In mid-January a fatal crash north of Wellsford on State Highway 1 shut the main road north for five hours.

Despite a diversion, holiday traffic remained bumper to bumper for hours after the road reopened.

In mid-July 2004, after a major crash closed Fanshawe St links to the harbour bridge for 3 1/2 hours, everyone from the Minister of Transport down promised action. The Minister for Auckland Affairs, Judith Tizard, declared ministers were "just about at the end of our tether" about such delays in reopening the roads.

In November 2002, the emergency services and Transit signed an "open roads philosophy", backing the idea that reopening the road after an accident would be a prime focus. From when, though?