Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

Our beautiful meandering harbour and estuaries make it really difficult to design a good transport system. Tauranga will inevitably have traffic bottlenecks during peak times because of our geography.

Tauranga's strength over many cities is our ease of getting around. This is proven by the NZ Transport Agency's travel time survey, which measures congestion across NZ's six largest cities.

But increasing ratepayers' debt by $30 million to widen 15^th Ave to four lanes is a silly way to address peak-time traffic. Especially when a Welcome Bay resident told me it takes him just 20 minutes to drive to Te Puna for work at rush hour on weekdays.

Widening 15^th Ave is unlikely to speed up the morning commute from the Hairini roundabout into town, because it would create flow-on bottlenecks on Fraser St and Cameron Rd, requiring further expenditure.

Building fatter roads is not the answer to Tauranga's transport needs, as proven by Auckland's congested motorways.

Times are changing; cars are not getting cheaper to run (albeit more fuel efficient), mobility scooters are growing popular with our aging population, and next year the Ministry of Education will stop funding free school buses in urban areas.

This is not a tree-hugger crusade for cycling or public transport. It's about having the most cost-effective transport system.

People will naturally take the easiest, most cost-effective option to get around.

But Tauranga cannot be compared to European cities that generally have a lot more population, higher density living, and stand-still traffic congestion making cycling and public transport more convenient than driving.

Council usually allocates $100,000 each year to completing our cycleway network. But there won't be a huge shift for people cycling to work until people believe it's safer and easier than driving.

A shift towards cycling is happening with young students, judging by the demand for council's cycle safety programme run through schools. Demand for cycling will magnify when students are faced with paying for public buses to get to school.

In our upcoming Long Term Plan, I want to leverage off our school cycling programme to improve the safety of cycling around schools.

During time we can complete a city-wide cycling network, while also catering for the growing use of mobility scooters.

I haven't mentioned the best transport decisions are made before new developments are built, but that's a separate topic.

Note: A correction to last week's column: Council contributes $110,000 to BOP Cricket to maintain 22 wickets at Blake Park (of which Bay Oval has eight) to a basic standard and some mowing. BOP Cricket provides its own funding to get Bay Oval up to international standards.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 027 6989 548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.