{"id":308383,"date":"2026-03-01T20:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/308383\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T20:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:01:07","slug":"auckland-commuters-warned-to-prepare-for-congestion-as-march-madness-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/308383\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland commuters warned to prepare for congestion as March Madness begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public transport operations group manager Rachel Cara said commuters are likely to be affected, regardless of how they travel.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cWith our buses, trains and ferries making 13,500 trips per day, including 500 school trips, AT anticipates there will be over two million passenger journeys each week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Automobile Association policy director Martin Glynn said traffic had already risen over the past week <\/a>and would only get worse as tens of thousands of university students head back.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if it\u2019s anything like past years, we should definitely see an increase this week and into March,\u201d Glynn said.<\/p>\n

He said the average journey on the Southern Motorway is expected to climb by at least six minutes this week, and three minutes on the Northwestern Motorway and the Southwestern Motorway.<\/p>\n

It was difficult to predict if traffic would be worse than in previous years, as typical indicators were inconsistent, Glynn said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAuckland\u2019s population grew a little last year, I think about 1%, so that does mean more people on the roads. But the economy hasn\u2019t been in great shape, which tends to mean less traffic, especially at peak times.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s kind of hard to say, to be really frank.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland commuters are warned to prepare for heavy traffic. Herald photo by Sylvie Whinray <\/p>\n

Auckland Transport Operations Centre (AOTC) manager Claire Howard said her team would be \u201cimplementing reactive responses\u201d during the busy period to optimise traffic flow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese include managing signals to clear traffic, deploying estimated journey times on digital displays and monitoring the roads with a one network lens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that no matter where you are travelling through, arterial roads or state highways, there is a team working 24 hours to ensure that Aucklanders get to where they need to get to safely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public transport operations group manager Rachel Cara said commuters are likely to be affected, regardless of how they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[806,51,11154,29463,97846,2082,2064,1535,111,43,139,69,10711,5353,13084,5257,1515,61,3946,8222,1455],"class_list":{"0":"post-308383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-as","9":"tag-auckland","10":"tag-begins","11":"tag-commuters","12":"tag-congestion","13":"tag-for","14":"tag-madness","15":"tag-march","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-officials","21":"tag-period","22":"tag-prepare","23":"tag-significant","24":"tag-surge","25":"tag-to","26":"tag-traffic","27":"tag-warned","28":"tag-warning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}