Consider the Bays?

Rapidly closing in on the intersection that led either to the Mount Vic tunnel or around the bays I had about 20 seconds to make a crucial decision. I hesitated, thinking that perhaps the Basin and Cambridge Terrace might work better but being a compliant sort of guy, took the official advice and headed around the bays.

All was good for the first kilometre but then I came to a sudden halt as the tailback stretched to NIWA in Evans Bay.

Being a slow learner, I stuck with the crawl. My quick-witted wife, following in another vehicle a short time after, also took the “Consider the Bays” bait but then changed her mind and took the Rata Road exit and headed over to the Mount Vic tunnel via Hataitai. She arrived home in Porirua about 40 minutes later after a quick detour to Moore Wilsons Fresh in the City, as you do. Me? Well it took 1 hour 45 minutes to get home – all but 20 minutes of it getting to the point of the Cable Street traffic lights and into Wakefield Street for a clearer run.

It was a nice sunny day in the holidays, so no harm done. I thought that if I had been a passenger on one of the two cruise ships in port that day I may have been well and truly stressed about getting back to the ship on time. As I passed Aotea Quay the ships officers were studying their watches and I wondered whether the grid lock had delayed their departure.

The cause of the problem was of course, the individual who went the wrong way through the Terrace Tunnel, had a head on crash then took to the pipes above the road and refused to come down for something like 11 hours.

The focus of the news was on the amazingly patient approach the Police took to resolving the situation without further injuries to anyone other than the innocent individuals injured in the “head on”.

For me, with my communications hat on, I pondered on the consequences of the decision-making of whomever it was that posted the electronic advisory notice for drivers to “Consider the Bays”.

It was clever wording. It wasn’t an instruction – just a thought no doubt intended to be helpful and the decision-maker(s) covered themselves by making it so.

It all comes down to a balance between speed of creating a message and getting it to market. Have too many steps in the process and it takes far too long to get meaningful advice up in real time. Have too few and you can perhaps be reliant on the knowledge, skill and judgement of a single or couple of individuals.

I think the NZTA traffic control centre operators do a great job. Occasionally, like all humans, they may not make an optimum decision. So, I am still left wondering whether in the situation above it may have been preferable to leave drivers to make their own choices about the routes into Wellington and around the Terrace Tunnel blockage.