Holidays here we come - at a crawl

By CATHY ARONSON AND NATASHA HARRIS

Holidaymakers faced a traffic jam stretching from just north of Auckland to Warkworth today, and there is no end in sight to growing holiday congestion for at least another five years.

Thousands of northbound cars sat almost motionless for more than an hour along the narrow 10km section between Orewa and Puhoi.

It took motorists more than an hour to drive through Orewa itself, and the blockage backed up the motorway to the Silverdale exit.

Police said the sheer volume of traffic, not accidents, caused the delay.

Senior Constable Barry Rose of Orewa said he had never seen the traffic so heavy.

Sandspit Motor Camp owner Vanessa Morrison said it took one camper and his family 2 1/2 hours to get from Silverdale to the camping ground near Warkworth instead of half an hour.

"They arrive looking absolutely exhausted but pleased to finally be here.

"Their kids have been in the car for two hours, it's not moving and it's hot."

Mrs Morrison has owned the camp for eight years. She said the traffic had always been bad but became "horrendous" when the motorway was extended to Orewa in 1999.

"All of a sudden everyone in a two lane motorway has to merge into one lane and go through roundabouts and lights. It's ridiculous."

In the past few years peak holiday traffic has regularly slowed to a crawl at Orewa as the new three-lane motorway shrinks into a 50-70km/h link road through suburbia and then joins the old one-lane State Highway 1 up the coast.

Today, more than 20,000 cars passed through the bottleneck, almost double the 11,000 average but still below last year's record of 27,000.

A $158 million, 6km bypass from Orewa to Puhoi was due to be built by the end of next year but was delayed in 2000 by Environment Court challenges.

The plan has since dropped to the bottom of the region's roading wish-list in favour of completing Auckland's congested motorways, meaning it may not be built for another 10 years.

The Auckland Regional Council is considering a private or public toll road for the bypass.

However, any deal could still take at least one year and the road would take four years to build.

The Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee, made up of transport decision makers including the Auckland Regional Council, Transit and Transfund, ranked the Albany-Puhoi bypass at number eight.

Auckland Regional Council transport committee chair Catherine Harland said today that it was due to make its final decision on roading priorities in March.

"All of the projects are critical but unless we get more money or find some other source of funding we just can't build them all at once."

The committee accepted there was a need for the road sooner and would consider other forms of funding, including toll roads to repay public debt financing.

It would have to decide whether Transit, Transfund, councils or Infrastructure Auckland would take on the debt.

A letter has gone out to councils to see if they are willing to finance roads through debt.

Transport Minister Paul Swain has already suggested the Orewa link be a front-runner for toll-roads.

Ms Harland was unsure whether the committee could make a detailed proposal for toll roads by March, as the legislation allowing them was not due to be passed until June.

Daily traffic through Orewa has increased by at least 3000 vehicles a day since the first stage of the Northern Motorway extension, from Albany to Orewa, opened in 1999.

The Rodney District Council has estimated delays in building the new motorway will cost the local economy $400 million in the next five years.

* A 16-year-old girl was killed and her stepmother and a friend seriously injured when their car and a ute collided head-on on State Highway 2 near Waipukurau today.

Her death brought the Christmas holiday road toll to seven.

Police said the woman was driving when the vehicle crossed the centre-line near Waipukurau Golf Course and collided with a Toyota utility shortly after 11am.

The woman's stepmother and friend were airlifted to Hastings Hospital where they remained in a serious condition tonight.

Herald feature: Getting Auckland moving