New Plymouth Roading Expansion Needs

For many years New Plymouth has needed a new connection road north and south of the city. From the port around the city outskirts south to SH3, and from the top end of Waiwhakaiho Road Smart Road with a new connecting bridge over the Waiwhakaiho river through to SH3 . Providing a ring road around the city from the port to Bell Block and beyond connecting all major arterial roads in and out of the city. This is the only way New Plymouth will resolve New Plymouth future population subdivision and industrial expansion needs. Expansion that is already starting to clog New Plymouth's existing roading system. The government by passing some of their roading financial responsibility over to the local Taranaki Regional Council, allowing them to raise rate's by 10% for roading purposes is an insult. And won't be nearly enough to fix our roading problems now or in the future.. Instead it will only raise rates to unacceptable levels providing more of the same, fine tuning existing routes. The New Plymouth and Taranaki road uses have for years paid road user taxes and levees to the government for roads. The government has instead been diverting that money into the governments consolidated found. It's just not good enough, New Plymouth needs the government to invest in a proper new New Plymouth by-pass roading interlinking connection route around the city now. It is election year next year, and it's time we the citizens of New Plymouth got real with central government and its bureaucrats, forcing them to refund a fair share of that money back into this much needed new roading system. By voting for candidates and political parties that support it. For the environmentalists for which I am akin, a good roading system saves on energy costs, keeps heavy traffic and vehicle congestion out of the central CBD. It's not the vehicles but the fuel they use that is the bigger environmental problem, and that will change in time to environmentally friendly fuels and vehicles.

Rusty Kane NP/NZ