MEDIA RELEASE

Wednesday 25 August 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Motorway Scale-Back ''A Sham''

Action Hobson has slammed the purported scale-back of the planned Eastern Motorway as “a sham”.

“The only thing more stupid than a four-lane motorway is a two-lane motorway,” Christine Caughey, an Action Hobson candidate for the Auckland City Council, said today. “It would do the same environmental and community damage to Auckland, but do even less to solve our city’s traffic woes. There is no serious commitment even to old-fashioned public transport, let alone to the Rapid Transit Solutions that Action Hobson believes Auckland needs.”

Christine Caughey said today’s orchestrated PR exercise was “simply not believable”.

“From Citizens & Ratepayers, we’ll see six weeks of backtracking followed by six years of motorway construction,” she said. “This is a sham and a sop to Hobson voters in the lead-up to the election, and it should not be believed.”

Greg Liggins, another Action Hobson candidate for the Auckland City Council, said the worst part of today’s exercise was the “false relief” some of those with houses in the way of the planned motorway could feel.

“There is no certainty for anyone out of today’s announcement,” he said. “People have been told their homes will be demolished, then that they won’t be, and then that they will be. They are being used again today as pawns by a cynical city administration, but any relief they feel will not survive long after the election, if Citizens & Ratepayers is returned,” he said.

“This city needs a serious commitment to Rapid Transit Solutions to our traffic woes – modern rail, better buses, faster ferries, and all with integrated fares and timetabling. There is no evidence of that today, but that is what Auckland needs if it is to have transport services that stand alongside those of the other great international cities of the world.”

Action Hobson says the results of this year’s Auckland City Council elections will determine whether the environmental and community destruction to be caused by the planned motorway will go ahead, or whether the city will make a serious commitment to Rapid Transit Solutions to get Auckland moving again.

It sees the Mayoral election as less important in this regard, and has pledged to work constructively with whomever the people of Auckland elect as Mayor.

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