There’s a lesson in what’s happened in Wellington today and that is that we can’t stop building roads.

Wellington was a shambles this morning. All it took to create chaos was one train coming off its tracks in the rail yard, and then thousands of people couldn’t get to work.

All rail lines were down with the exception of the Johnsonville line. They couldn’t find enough busses to replace the trains. People jumped straight back in their cars to try to get into the city, and then the motorways were clogged.

In the end, Wellingtonians were told to stay home if they could.

This is our capital city. Imagine what this looks like to visitors to the country. 

The lesson in this, again, is how much we need roads.

I’m a fan of public transport, don’t get me wrong, and I think we need to spend money on building that infrastructure up, but not at the expense of roads. And right now, it seems our authorities are taking an either or approach. Either roads or public transport, but not both.

Wellington is a perfect example of this. There, authorities are obsessed with public transport. They’re ripping up roads for cycleways up and down the city. They’re prioritising walking over driving in the central city. They’re clearing cars out of the city to give buses priority.

And they’re also shutting down massive roading projects. The Petone to Grenada link that is desperately needed for take pressure off SH1 and SH2 has delayed for ten years. The LGWM roading project, which is supposed to relieve the unreal congestion Wellington experiences, won’t be done for another 20 years. The Melling interchange which was supposed to help motorists get into Lower Hutt faster has been delayed a decade.

This is not just a Wellington problem. The East-West Link in Auckland was canned. Extending the motorway to Whangarei has been ruled out.

Let wellington today be a lesson. Yes, public transport is important, but that doesn’t mean you stop building roads. Because what’s the first thing people do when public transport goes down?  They get on the roads. And are our roads coping with our population now? No.

So this shouldn’t be an either or. It shouldn’t be National equals roads, Labour and Greens equals public transport. That’s going to cripple this country, in the same way that it crippled Wellington today.