In a week where commuter Tamsyn Parker complained of her 90minute commute AT comes up with a very underwhelming and austerity orientated “Statement of Intent”.

PTUA chairman Niall Robertson says, “There’s nothing new here apart from a few more lanes for busses and T3 vehicles”. Robertson adds, “there is nothing here that will deal with the huge problem of congestion that Auckland has, that Tamsyn Parker, a commuter from Kumeu complained about last week.”

Parker has a 90 minute commute from Kumeu every day. Robertson says, “I was returning to Auckland last week as I do on a weekly basis and it took me one hour and four minutes to go from Puhunui to Onehunga on the South Western Motorway”.

Robertson points out that the PTUA campaigned for a heavy rail line to run from Wiri and Puhinui to Onehunga via the airport and the Mangere employment hub (MEH) which was hijacked by vested interests and turned into the light rail to the airport debacle which never went anywhere and Robertson adds “…and should never be allowed to”.

As for Tamsyn Parker’s plight in the Northwest, the PTUA point out that she is travelling out of Kumeu on a two lane road that carries 37,000 vehicles every day. That is 1000 more that Transmission Gully, 16,000 more that the Waikato expressway and 12,000 more than the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway! To add to this, as the area has no high school, parents are driving their children to a variety of other Auckland schools, most of which are on the Western Line route.

Further, the PTUA has helped to broker a deal with a private developer and a private railway organisation to run a shuttle train from Swanson to Huapai at NO COST to the ratepayer, but AT and KiwiRail are blocking this by claiming that the line needs upgrading for this to occur. The PTUA believe that the line is already fit for purpose and can be used as is. However, the PTUA concede that some improvements may be preferable, but that these could be done for not much more than $9.2m and should be done over the next year to enable these trains to be ready for the North Western commuters as soon as possible.

Robertson says, “When you see the plight of those in the North West, the stress of their commute, the lack of any functional public transport, the need to transport children to out-of-area schools and combine that with the rates that these citizens still have to pay, one can only say it’s a disgrace that both AT and KiwiRail have conspired to block any train services beyond Swanson for fear of demand to go beyond Huapai and for no other good reason!”

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