Rob Rattenbury is a retired police officer who lives in Whanganui. He has written a weekly column for the Chronicle since 2019.
Recently I had reason to get up early.
I had to take the red rocket down for a new warrant of fitness and a fine tune. When Igot up at 7.30am I looked outside and it was all misty. I haven’t seen that for years. It was cold too. The house heating was slowly kicking in but still a bit nippy.
How quickly one forgets the habits of a lifetime of work when those days are over.
My working days started early and went all day. I was often on the road by 6.30am off to Wellington or New Plymouth in the company car for meetings all day.
The traffic was so light. I wondered if I had the wrong day. Was it Sunday? I had to think. No, the service is due today. The keys and wallet with my licence in it were on the breakfast bar where I had left them the previous night to remind me about the appointment.
There was no traffic. That’s unusual.
Now I don’t poke my nose out that early much any more but even I know Whanganui’s morning traffic can be pretty busy from before 8am to around 9am.
I got every green light and was there in a flash.
Rob Rattenbury.
When I got a lift back home at 8.15am the traffic was atrocious. Every red light at every intersection stopped us. Nose-to-tail until we got off Anzac Parade.
Within about 10 minutes Whanganui had gone from Sleepy Hollow to a bad day on the Wellington motorway.
As I was driving from home through the almost deserted streets I had thought what a wonderful place we live in.
Thinking of all those poor Aucklanders battling at least an hour each way every day on their flash motorways.
One wonders why anybody would do that to themselves when there are many places in New Zealand where a sedate few minutes drive into work and back home is still possible. Even home for lunch.
The brief window of heavy traffic we drove back to home in was nothing really compared with what those in our big cities have to deal with daily.
We all otherwise live with the illusion of safety a white line drawn down the middle of the road provides.
I am a fan of safer roads. I am not a fan of reduced speed limits on those safe roads though. We now have the engineering know-how to build main roads for 100km/h and motorways and expressways that can be safe at slightly higher speeds.
I am now one of those slow drivers. I have all day to go anywhere, no need to hurry.
What will the future hold for Whanganui drivers? Well, the traffic density will slowly increase for sure as our town grows. It is already pretty busy compared with even 20 years ago.
Will we see more traffic lights and roundabouts?
I guess one day we may even see an expressway between Palmerston North and Whanganui, especially as towns like Bulls, Feilding and Marton grow.
The centreline safety barrier is a start.
Who would have dreamed in the 1970s that there would be an expressway along the Kapiti Coast? Change often comes slowly but it does come.
