Rail looks winner to commuter

Peter Naber is the ideal voter for parties to pitch their transport policies to. The IT worker lives in West Auckland and usually travels by bus to his workplace in Newton. It can take from 45 minutes to two hours-plus. “I would like to see more of the Government stepping in and funding transport projects,” says Naber, who was the face of a push by the Rodney Local Board to extend commuter trains to Huapai and Kumeu in the fastgrowing northwest. The residents of the Helensville electorate — National heartland — are so fed up with clogged roads they raised their hands to pay more in rates to secure a rail service. Naber says he attended a meeting of Helensville candidates where transport was canvassed. These are his impressions of the candidates and party policies: National candidate Chris Penk supported extending rail to Huapai-Kumeu and the party had committed to the Northwest Busway but Naber did not have much faith in the Nats delivering public transport after committing $10 billion on roads. He thought it was stupid of National not to do anything about transport to the airport. Labour and the Greens had adopted the policy of lobby group Greater Auckland without any of their own touches, which disappointed Naber. The Green candidate was opposed to extending trains to Huapai-Kumeu and favoured turning car lanes into bus lanes. Naber liked the NZ First policies with emphasis on heavy rail, including extending rail from Swanson to Huapai-Kumeu, “which would probably lead me more to NZ First way . . . in terms of who I would vote for”.