“It’s like making a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.”   

That’s a quote from the boss at Transporting New Zealand, which represents the transport sector, talking about Brougham Street in Christchurch.  

Because it’s been revealed by NZTA that the $150 million revamp of Brougham Street, one of Christchurch’s busiest streets, will include T2 transit lanes – which the truckies are brassed-off about because they won’t be able to use them.  

And I’m with the truckies. I think it’s nuts that on a street like Brougham Street —which is a pig’s ear of a road if ever there was one— we’re going to go all “rules are rules” on it and not do something that I think would make a genuine difference.  

As the truckies do as well.  

So these transit lanes, or T2 lanes, can only be used by vehicles carrying more than one person. They’ve been on the Northern Motorway since 2021. There is a stretch of T2 that trucks can use there, on the Tram Road on-ramp near the Waimakariri Bridge.   

It's probably just to make it easier for them to turn onto the motorway, but don’t go telling us NZTA that you can’t do the same on Brougham Street because it “might set a precedent”.  

So Dom Kalasih from Transporting New Zealand says Brougham Street is a pig of a road and Scott McAlister from logistics company Mackleys says traffic congestion there is “bad and getting worse”.  

He says: “All the improvements are focused on pedestrians and cyclists. That’s fine. But it needs to conjointly be done with freight.”  

Tell that to some people living in the area though, who are happy that the T2 lanes will mean the trucks being closer to the middle of the road and not travelling so close to the footpath.  

I understand where they’re coming from but the bigger picture, surely, has to be getting that stretch of road moving – especially the trucks.  

And I know rules are rules, but I reckon Brougham Street is a special case. And truckies should, of course, be allowed to use these transit lanes.  

It’s a key link for freight and it makes no sense to keep them stuck in the slow lanes.  

Forty-five thousand vehicles use Brougham Street each day —trucks make up 10% percent of them— and the truckies are saying it adds 30 minutes to their trip. Which I think is a very compelling argument for bending the rules. If not bending the rules, then re-writing them.  

You only need to travel on a bus in one of those bus lanes to get an idea of how much quicker trucks could get through in a T2 lane. I know they would be sharing the lanes with other vehicles —unlike the buses which have the bus lanes to themselves— but it’s worth a go, isn’t it?  

The other part of this is that NZTA is going to have to make sure that these new transit lanes on Brougham Street are policed.  

You might have seen it reported earlier this week that the T2 lanes on the Northern Motorway haven’t been policed since they opened four years ago. Which means people are sailing through when they shouldn’t be. So there will need to be monitoring and enforcement on Brougham Street, otherwise the T2 lanes will be a complete waste of time.  

They’ll also be a complete waste of time if trucks aren’t allowed to use them.