Yes. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. One of the first things that this government did was to cancel many of the previous government’s major roading projects; the ‘Roads of National Significance’. One of the next things they did was to impose fuel taxes for transport projects such as the Auckland Light Rail plan, which might be a ‘nice to have’, but it won’t get many people to work and it hasn’t even been started yet.
I can’t believe the nerve of Jacinda Ardern as she stood in front of the cameras and told everyone that motorists here are being fleeced. Of course we are… by a greedy government that is gathering money for transport projects it probably has no chance of ever delivering. In the meantime, much-needed roads, many of which would have been well underway by now, are never to be completed, and congestion is getting so bad, the country is rapidly becoming gridlocked everywhere.
Probably waiting for another working group and in the meantime, motorists are paying up to 11 cents per litre in additional fuel taxes for absolutely nothing.
This is your classic ‘chicken and egg’ situation. This government wants to focus on public transport projects, but such projects take years, if not decades to complete. In the meantime, people still have to get to work, and the best way they can do that, with grossly inadequate public transport in most major cities (and definitely in most of the smaller towns) is to drive. But the government does not want us to drive. It wants us to use public transport, so it won’t build any more roads and on and on it goes.
Honestly, this is scandalous. Impose the taxes, force people to pay, but have no idea when their new transport projects will even be started, let alone ready to use. Such is the madness of this hopeless government.
It is going to struggle much more with the witless Phil Twyford in charge, along with Julie Anne Genter, who describes people who want to get to work on time as ‘car fascists’.
In the meantime, in Wellington at least, the bus timetable has been turned on its head, and many services cancelled because there are not enough drivers; the trains seem to regularly go off the rails, and we have no new roads. Actually, that is not true. Transmission Gully is going to go live next year but because two Hutt Valley roading projects have been shelved by this government, there is likely to be a 30% increase in the number of vehicles on SH2 going into Wellington via Transmission Gully.
Gee, I can’t wait. I live up the hill from the Melling intersection which is one of the projects that has been shelved by Twyford and his motley crew until 2029.
Just another failure by the Coalition of Total Losers. It is hard to keep up with the number of things that they have talked up massively, but haven’t done.
RONS...new road to your exclusive holiday home for National supporters and donors.
Most expensive per Kilometre cost in the WORLD...onya Natz.