Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I know that every member of the Parliament will be slightly biased but I must say as the member for North Shore that it is a very beautiful and stunning place. Our beautiful beaches our business community—life is good but could be so much better. Today I'd like to talk to you about Lake Road. Lake Road is a key arterial route in and out of Devonport peninsula. It is a road that is a key connection for the people of the North Shore to get into Auckland City and around the wider North Shore. Some 32000 people every day use this road so it is a road that is significant. Look congestion on this road is not unique to this road; it is an issue across Auckland. But particularly for the people that live on the North Shore congestion on Lake Road is a significant factor. Auckland Transport has spent the last two years and over $2 million doing an assessment of options around solutions for this problem. However what is frustrating is even though the solutions are available the funding has not been made available to them. Some of the solutions that have been raised because of the lack of funding really only address the symptoms but not the true root cause of this problem. What I can say is that in terms of the solutions we must deal with the growth that we are seeing across my electorate in the areas of Belmont Bayswater and Devonport and therefore the solution needs to be sustainable and one that does consider and cater for future generations. This project needs to be done once and done properly. We cannot afford to have band-aid solutions put in place in order to fix it and the reason why I bring it to the House is because we need action and not more talk on this issue. Over the last year and with all the particular lockdowns our business community has struggled as have many of our families and I know more and more people are looking for opportunities to avoid the challenges that come with congestion. They don't want to be sitting in their cars for so much time. Tragically Lake Road is also a dangerous road. In the last fortnight it was highlighted when we had the death of a cyclist who was actually cycling in the cycle lane. That tragic passing has spotlighted on us the importance of coming up with a solution. To that person's family we grieve for the senseless loss of that man and I know I speak for the whole of the North Shore when I raise that. There have been 28 serious crashes in the last 10 years on that road 10 of them involving pedestrians and cyclists. This road has got a number of dangerous areas. There are three major schools on this road Takapuna Grammar Belmont Intermediate Belmont Primary. This affects the families of all the people who live in this part of the Shore whether it's getting your kids to school whether it's driving to or from work—people are spending more time in this traffic and less time on the things that really matter. We have to get travel times down and there's no longer time to wait. We need to get solutions in place to deal with this issue. We need to expand the capacity of Lake Road. We need to ensure that we can cater for high-capacity public transport and we need to make sure that that is put in place fast. This is a road that has national significance and deserves to be treated as such. Auckland Transport and local government alone do not have the resources that deal with this problem. We need intervention at central government on this issue. The Hon Michael Wood Minister of Transport how about you come for a visit to the North Shore? You and I could go for a drive down Lake Road and I can show you myself what the desperate problem is and the need that we have within our community. Now is the time for action.