Brian Rudman: It's easy, Transit - just show the lost ones a sign that you care

Transit New Zealand has a duty not to splatter too many signs around the motorway system, but refusing to put one up to guide the lost burghers of Newmarket home does seem parsimonious.

Would Spaghetti Junction really come to a halt if a sign was installed before the Gillies Ave off-ramp warning that this was the last stop before civilisation ended?

If signs need to be rationed at this spot as Transit says, why not remove the confusing advice that Gillies Ave is the exit to the airport? That's almost as unhelpful to the geographically challenged as my favourite, the sign opposite Motat in Western Springs announcing Remuera.

Both are accurate - as is telling a sailor leaving London that if he sails south he'll reach Antarctica. But is this sort of advice helpful?

Not as helpful, surely, as a sign before the Gillies Ave off-ramp pointing out that you'd missed the big smoke but the off-course substitute, Newmarket, was nigh.

Newmarket Business Association action man Cameron Brewer is all lights flashing, arms flapping and plots abounding about Transit's playing favourites by installing signs pointing to the new Sylvia Park shopping area but refusing to signpost his much more ancient shopping strip.

If he wanted - and he probably already has - he could also throw in Wairau Park on the North Shore as another area favoured over Newmarket for a Transit sign of recognition.

It's more likely, though, that Mr Brewer's little empire is the victim not of a conspiracy but of one of those hide-bound rulebooks which bureaucrats unearth at times like this.

Transit's Auckland regional manager, Peter Spies, acknowledges Newmarket is "a significant shopping district" which "in principle" qualifies for a sign.

But to elevate it to the Transit hall of recognition would require a breach of the dreaded code of "international best practice".

That ordains that you have to have a minimum distance of 200m between signs. So sorry, no sign.

Why the word Newmarket can't be added beneath whatever is on the existing sign is not clear, but no doubt this would infringe some other code.

That SkyCity, the high-visibility gambling den, merits several Transit signs really gets up Newmarket's nose.

As one of those motorists who is grateful for any directional reassurance, I can't see what the fuss is about.

Mr Spies says this area of the motorway network is so complex - read confusing - it has reached sign saturation point. Any more, and we'll be running off the road or into one another as we try to absorb the added information.

But if that's so, why is Transit adding to our sensory overload by numbering each exit according to its distance from where the highway started. Gillies Ave, for instance, is Exit 431, based on its distance from the start of State Highway 1 at Cape Reinga.

But unless they have a gazeteer on their knee, how many strangers navigating the central Auckland motorway system will understand the significance of sign Exit 431. And those with the book on their knees will cause a huge prang trying to decide.

Perhaps it would be smart to go with international second best practice and see what happens.

After all, second best is still much better than our OECD ratings on just about anything else you can name - be it health, PhDs per 1000 people, teenage pregnancies or performances of international sports teams.

An extra name or two on a sign can only help rather than hinder travellers. When you're sailing through Spaghetti Junction, no one's going to read every word overhead. All you're looking for is a word you recognise, something, in my case, that offers a glimmer of hope that I haven't overshot and missed the last exit before the bridge.

I can't remember what it is now. It used to be Nelson St, now I think it says Ponsonby. Whatever, it leaps from the other signs like a lit-up Christmas tree. It's like reading a newspaper while overseas, and your eye involuntarily homes in on the one Z on the page, tuned to expect a reference to the homeland.

Transit has got itself tangled in its own red tape. Tacking a reference to Newmarket to its existing signs is not going to kill anyone.

It should get on with it and be thankful Mr Brewer is not of Ngati Whatua and demanding the sign be bilingual.