Seems so!
'Motorists could be stung with a congestion charge for entering and leaving downtown Wellington during rush hour, in an ambitious proposal to boost public transport use. Greater Wellington regional council is pushing the Government for a law change that would allow councils to introduce a congestion charge on motorists' - quote & picture www.stuff.co.nz
Personally I dont think this is fair, although the public transport system is excellent in Wellington whilst living at the old house in Owhiro Bay which was 8 minutes away from the city by car - the only choice of public transport was bus. Very often buses would pass by as they were full, and when you could get a seat the journey would be 40 minutes.
We were never oposed to using public transport, it was just such a chore to do so. Not only that but there is a huge new issue in my eyes to do with how zero environmentally friendly these buses are.
I think there are better ways to deal with a 'congestion problem' such as a park and ride systems, creating out of the city carparks and helping people actually get to work correctly and easily or of course just more services and lower prices.
However with all this in mind I must say that some of my days are dominated by the traffic. I still meet up with my friends in the city every week and that involves a lot of clock watching to make sure I get away at a decent time otherwise I will be sitting on the highway all night.
But then again sometimes the traffic is nothing compared to the hassle we used to have getting home from work in the UK in our tiny town....the Kiwi's want to try that and then tell us we have a congestion problem here!!
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