Island Bay bus
I’m pretty annoyed at this article and the Go Wellington response to it [“No bus stop here”, Capital Times, Feb 24]. The fact is that there was a bus stop on the east side of the Island Bay Parade outside the hairdresser until the owner petitioned the Wellington City Council to have it removed. Since then buses have been forced to let people off in the middle of the road if there is a bus already in the stop on the other side of the road. I have found the dairy owner to be constantly abusive towards drivers including myself. I cannot imagine any driver not cooperating where ever possible with his need to get in and out of his shop. The Go Wellington solution, to attach signs to the lampposts forbidding buses to park outside those shops and to instruct buses to wait, with passengers at Humber St, for the only bus stop to become available is untenable. Would anyone want to wait for 10 minutes one stop short of their destination when they have paid their fare to ride to the terminus? Some may choose to walk the distance but what about those who are disabled. What about those days when it rains? Did the company consult with any driver or with the union before making this decision? Does it make any sense to allow two belligerent and constantly unpleasant shop keepers to dictate to the major public transport provide in the region how they run their service? Is that provider not obliged to fulfil their contract with the passenger by taking them to the last stop on the route?
Nigel Allan Hefford, Melrose

Public transport
The anti-road lobby gets ever shriller as they realise that people are increasingly seeing through their nonsense about resources, climate change, and the environment, and that people are realising that free market capitalism brings continual improvement and solutions to these things. Like the communists who are their spiritual ancestors, they would prefer poverty, degradation, and shortened lives, just as long as it is “equally” shared. The environmentalists “solutions”; carbon taxes, development bans, energy abolition, eugenics, and so on; will bring this about just as surely as Communism did, and on the basis of similar “sun rises in the West” imposed beliefs which were lampooned so effectively by George Orwell. Demetrius Christoforou gives examples of highway projects abandoned in the USA. Almost every such case is a privately built toll road for which the finance has collapsed in the current crisis. As for Portland, Oregon, this is the city that a modern-day Orwell should write his book about, given the apparent consequences of three decades of Green ideology. Unaffordable housing; population loss; urban densification occurring at the fringes instead of the centre; average commuting distances increasing instead of decreasing; insupportable increases in rates/ taxes; efficient public transport services having to be abandoned due to the costliest, most inefficient ones sucking up all the available subsidy money. All to get public transport use up to about one twelfth of car use, compared to about one fifteenth for the USA as a whole. I hope our elected representatives are not so stupid as to follow Portland off the cliff.
Philip G Hayward, Naenae

Residents meeting
On my latest visit to Wellington, I read the issue of Feb 24 and found the feature “Citizens Unite” most interesting and informative. I wish Jarrod Coburn every success in his plan to have a meeting for residents associations from around the country. In districts where no such association currently exists, it is to be hoped that public spirited and motivated individuals will start them. If local councils maintain the status quo, it is predicted that rates will increase 39 % over the next 10 years. Like the Minister of Local Government I find that unacceptable. Rodney Hide has said that he wants to reform the Local Government Act 2002, I urge readers to nail him to specifics by sending him an e-mail asking for details.
James J Read, Huntly

5/5 for Apollo 13
I attended the opening performance of Apollo 13: Mission Control [at Downstage Theatre].  As this was an interactive performance and not having been to a show of this type before, I was not quite sure what to expect but knew it would be good and I was right. Having a “console” seat, I was sitting in the midst of the action with the drama of the emergencies and successful return of the Apollo 13 crew unfolding around me. At one point I was “on the spot” jumping up to respond to a “situation” that required a console operator to take the initiative. The audience gets so wrapped up in the action that there is relief and joy when the astronauts successfully splash down in the Pacific Ocean. I would give it 5 stars.
Darcy Waters, Ngaio.

Auckland here
Great article Martin, you’re on the money [Capital Times, “According to Doyle”, Feb 24]. After living in Auckland for 16 years and returning home to Wellington four years ago, I have rated Wellington drivers as being far more knowledgeable, courteous and skilled, compared to the hyper agro and ignorant drivers you deal with in Auckland. That was however until we moved to Hataitai. What is going on here? It’s crazy, like a slice of the Auckland driving environment has been layered over the entire Roseneath, Hataitai, Mt Victoria area. Lots of SUV (Stupid Urban Vehicle) drivers barreling toward you at speed, playing chicken on a goat track like road, narrowly escaping death as they hurtle toward you on the wrong side of the road or around a blind corner, yapping on their cell phones whilst charging blindly through intersections plus other assorted manic driving behaviour. Do other suburbs experience pockets of driver craziness or is it just this area? What happened to the well mannered Wellingtonian?
Catherine Bindon, Hataitai