When it comes to the improvement of public transport as an essential solution to the traffic congestion that continues to plague Auckland, Groundhog Day has again arrived with a newly-elected, National Coalition Government…a Government that once more proposes to favour the Road Gang instead of public transport.

Back in 1975, despite a severe financial crisis of rampant inflation and a balance of payments deficit, the Labour Government had undertaken to seriously consider a partial funding of Dove-Myer Robinson’s rapid transit proposal for Auckland.

As the Auckland Star commented in May 1976:

“Serious planning of rapid rail had started in 1968, when the National Government of Keith Holyoake set up a working party to study the De Leuw Cather report. This had been interpreted as recommending a rapid underground and above-ground rail transit system. In 1973, the Cabinet agreed to set up a three-man Auckland Rapid Transit directorate composed of representatives of the Ministries of Works and Railways and the Auckland Regional Authority. The committee staff, installed in two floors of a Parnell office, has been preparing detailed plans ever since. Their studies were reported to have cost the Government $820,000 up to last May [1975].” [Auckland Star 20 May 1976]

But all hope was dashed in November of 1975 with the election of Robert Muldoon’s National Government. The National Party won with a sizeable majority and all bets were off as far as Auckland’s public transport plans were concerned. It was time for a new three-year cycle of talking, planning, and more talking and planning…

The New Zealand Herald later commented on the postponement of the rapid transit scheme:

“It is tempting to say that Auckland’s rapid-transit scheme has been derailed. But in fact it has never really been on the rails; it has been the victim for half a century of too many lukewarm, short-sighted political and civic leaders who have preferred to encourage an eminently wasteful form of transport, the motorcar, at the expense of what could be a fast, efficient and (mark the word) comfortable system of knitting Auckland together and shifting large numbers of people to where they want to go…” [The New Zealand Herald 31 March 1976]

Nevertheless, hope sprang eternal –– as another Herald editorial of May 1976 prophesied:

“It may well be that some future Administration may be impelled for cogent political reasons to support the rapid transit scheme, or some modification of it, in order to rescue congested streets from complete chaos. If the density of population continues to increase, it is hard to imagine that more and more buses would be poured into existing corridors while the railways were allowed to go to waste.” [The New Zealand Herald 20 May 1976]

The Herald was right all those years ago with the City Rail Link almost a reality now in the 21st century. With that optimism in mind, perhaps light rail, and even a harbour tunnel or new bridge, in another fifty years and after a dozen more elections?