Unrepresentative Road Campaign Panics

Today's hundred-thousand-dollar-plus advertisements in favour of more motorways are evidence of panic by the pro-road campaign, Action Hobson said today.

Christine Caughey, an Action Hobson candidate for the Auckland City Council, said the level of advertising was unprecedented and demonstrated that the pro-road campaign feared defeat in this year's local body elections.

"A small group of powerful business interests know they do not have the community behind them," she said. "This is an attempt to influence community opinion with glossy advertisements but it will not work."

Christine Caughey said one amusing feature of today's advertising was the graphic of Hobson Bay with the planned one-lane-each-way 'motorway'.

"If the pro-road lobby really believes a one-lane-each-way road is going to do anything to solve Auckland's traffic woes, I fear for the standard of management in their businesses," she said.

As well as being unrepresentative of the community, Christine Caughey said the pro-road campaign was increasingly unrepresentative of big business.

"Attracting investment capital and world-class human resources to Auckland depends on this city being a great place to live with efficient public services and infrastructure," she said.

"Increasingly, businesspeople such as Kim Ellis of Waste Management, are recognising that building more motorways will achieve neither. It would position Auckland as a business city alongside Bangkok or Cairo rather than Vancouver or Hong Kong, both of which have world-class public transport systems and are far better places to work and do business.

"Auckland needs Rapid Transit Solutions that preserve our environment and community, make it faster and easier to get around town, and which can be used by business - in association where necessary with trucking on roads that are no longer gridlocked.

"Building new motorways that will immediately become gridlocked is not good for our environment, is not good for our community and is not good for business."

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