The poorest pieceof writing I have seen in ages besmirches the comments page today. It is almost totally unreadable but if you soldier on you find it is totally unitelligble. It is a tirade against road tolls. And that is all. It is written by a spokesman for a mob calling themselves highwayrobbery.net.nz and has a link to their website which is even worse than the Herald article. Absolute drivel. Toll roads are a good idea as are congestion charges - the two are very different, of course. Full stop. Roads are expensive to build (even the rubbish they construct in this country) and I for one don't mind paying a couple of bucks to use a nice shiny new one. $2 to avoid having to drive round Waiwera - bargain of the century. I'm a bit concerned about the amounts of money bveing bandied around for collection and admin costs, but in principal I reckon toll roads are good.
But they are not quite as good as congestion charges. These are terrific. I've lived for ages in a country that had them (Singapore) and driven a little in a city that has them (London) and they work like a Swiss watch. Go past the barrier and you pay. Dnn't pay and you get fined - serious fines that are actually collected. Central city congestion virtually disappears.
I'll admit to one slight snag in the NZ/Auckland context; there is no viable public transport network to go in the place of shedfuls of cars. Get rid of five City Councils and the ARC and replace them with one body with a benign dictator of my chosing at the helm and we could have it all sortd in no time.
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