Claims the council will save five minutes by painting in a 450m bus lane on Welcome Bay Road are refuted by resident Alan Northcote who has been timing the traffic flows this week.

He's become a familiar figure to commuters as they slowly creep by at a speed he estimates to be about 10km/h.

At that speed it takes traffic a little over two minutes to cover the 450m from the Welcome Bay Foodmarket towards the Meadowviews Drive intersection, not the five minutes that the council claims will be saved by giving buses their own lane.

He's been keeping an eye on the traffic since the city council announced it plans to slap a bus lane there sometime over the next two months.

He's got two main issues. Alan says by removing the centre median the council is making a safe road unsafe. And he says the council is rushing. It should wait until the underpass is operational.

'They were indicating they were wanting to get the thing done in May,” says Alan. 'They seem to be wanting to rush this through.”

When the underpass is open traffic will back up on both routes, reducing the tailback on Welcome Bay road, says Alan.

'The traffic's not going to go any faster over the bridge entering turret road,” says Alan. 'But the volume of traffic waiting closer to town will increase considerably. But when the new route fills up, they will use the old route as a rat run. That will happen, they can't stop that.

'Once they have got used to the slowness going under the underpass, when they arrive at the underpass and see it's full, they will carry on up the hill with the people going to Greerton. They will use the old route and merge with it along with the buses.

'Wait till you see how much traffic gets absorbed numerically in that area of both the new road and the existing road, and this will suck up the length of the queue going towards there.”

But like a tsunami the queue does keeping coming, says Alan. But the congestion period is only 7am to 9am on school days. The rest of the day there is a bus expected every 20 minutes, which will be travelling at 60km/h with the rest of the traffic.

'We have got a safe road there at the moment,” says Alan. 'It's going to undermine the safety by having the main stream of traffic going in the middle of the road.”

There are many properties on both sides of the road with street access by single driveway. One such driveway provides street access for about 50 vehicles, says Alan.

At the moment the median strip is used as a safe turning bay going into the dairy. Once a bus lane is painted in, through traffic will be forced to use the bus lane to get past people waiting to turn, says Alan.

'I'm absolutely appalled that they are trying make a major case out of putting a bus lane over 450m of road with four curves in it,” says Alan.

'They are so ingrained in wanting this project to go through that a safety audit will have to be independently done, not by these people that are handling the job at the moment. It wold have to be called by and independent traffic engineer.”

Alan's questions have been put to the Tauranga City Council media team, which is yet to reply.