Editorial: Let our road rage be heard far and wide

It is easy for a newspaper to become an uncritical tub-thumper for its home city and to disregard the national interest. We do not think this column can be accused of that. Indeed, we do not think most Aucklanders can be accused of such blinkered parochialism. Citizens of New Zealand's most populous region are generally conscious that their fortunes are riding on the nation's welfare. No Aucklander truly expects, for example, that the city should receive more than its due in roading funds simply because Governments might fear to lose half a million votes. But they trust that Government agencies will not alter road funding allocations simply because much of the rest of the country might resent Auckland's needs. But that is what appears to have happened.

The latest schedule of national roading projects approved by Transit New Zealand is drastically different from a draft schedule issued in January. Originally, 18 of the 20 most urgently listed projects were in Auckland. Just three have survived in the revised list. The reason? "Wide consultation," said Transit's acting chief executive, Rick van Barneveld. He refers without doubt to the angry reception for the draft schedule in communities up and down the country, particularly Wellington.

It is time for Auckland to get angry. The needs of this city are not some idle subject of conversation or a complaint cooked up for the sake of pork-barrel politics. The traffic congestion in Auckland is real, infuriating and getting ever worse. It is a stressful daily experience for many and a considerable cost to the regional and national economies. It is an outrage that the motorway programme has been allowed to fall so far behind growing demand, and even now projects are being held up on the silliest of pretexts.

Take the widening of the region's worst bottleneck, the Victoria Park flyover. It should be well under way by now but it has been delayed by investigation of an expensive proposal to put that stretch of motorway underground. The culprits in this holdup are not Transit or resentment in other parts of the country. They are Auckland's own indecisive local bodies.

That is not an isolated example. Transit's frustration can be well imagined when it spends years to bring a project through the planning, design, land acquisition and consent stages only to have construction delayed by local dissent and lack of civic leadership. Transit could not be blamed if it took these experiences into account when it revised its priorities. Why buy into urban arguments when communities elsewhere welcome any improvement?

Much of the opposition to further roading in Auckland has come from advocates of better public transport. They are about to get their wish, with a more integrated rail and bus network to be introduced from this month. The opening of the Britomart terminal, bringing the railhead closer to Queen St, signals the beginning of a hopeful new era.

But regional planners have never pretended that public transport alone could solve the city's congestion, nor have they espoused the view that demand for more roads should not be resisted so commuters might be forced to use public transport. More of both are urgently needed, but with the Infrastructure Auckland fund largely earmarked for public transport, roading needs a windfall, too.

Aucklanders have had to be patient sitting in cars on their clogged roads, but their patience is doing them no favours so far. The rage they have to contain when behind the wheel needs to be heard. They need to start venting their feelings when local squabbling or national political pressures put their roading requirements well down the list. The city and the country pay more than enough petrol tax to build all the motorways we need. It is outrageous that much of that tax is siphoned away for other purposes while motorists wait and wonder why. We should tolerate it no longer than the next election.