Greg Murphy – Time to get moving

I’ve been driving in Sydney and Brisbane recently and the tunnels they have constructed there are phenomenal. I travelled through a couple I didn’t know existed previously.

What they have achieved over there in terms of helping get their people around is nothing short of amazing.

As the election nears, political parties here are luring voters with transport packages, including new tunnel options for Aucklanders. But they are years away, and we just know these will run into objections from all manner of minority interests.

Over the Tasman, they get on and get the job done. There’s a bigger population and with that more scale but we are so far behind here.

These tunnels are all tolled. It’s time for us as a country to mature and accept that’s what it will take.

There’s the choice to take the free route but by travelling through one of these fast moving tunnels, direct to your destination, the toll cost versus your time is nothing. And then there’s the saving in fuel and wear on your vehicle. The toll is cheap by comparison.

We’ve talked about inefficiencies with regard to everyone sitting still on a motorway going nowhere, and how much time and money that’s costing.

We have to get on and build these vital road links in our biggest city, as population growth doesn’t show any sign of slowing.

We want to cram more people in, only to make their lives more frustrating. The longer we delay while we argue about it, the more expensive it becomes.

It seems we are confused in this country; we say we want to grow, then those in charge sit on their hands, not making the critical decisions on what needs to be done to help people get around.

In Australia, they are getting on with it to make a transport system that is both efficient and convenient. We are not going to get people to give up their cars.

The sooner the minority that believes everyone is going to get on a bus or a bike realises that this is never going to happen, the better off we are going to be.

They seem intent on strangling society, not just the economy, by making things harder for everyone on a day to day basis. We are not going to get the shift they desire. It’s the same problem as looking to Europe for road safety solutions; what works there doesn’t work here.

And neither does holding up those countries that get around on bikes or in trains as something that will work in New Zealand.

Some of those systems have been in place for more than a century over there; we’ve simply left it too late here to change things so drastically.

There is already a drain of talent to Australia and we can’t compete when it comes to the weather. So we really need to be doing more to keep people from moving.

And while they get on with making it easier to get around, our inaction here leaves us further behind.