Aucklanders could be banned from parking on busy roads in a bid to ease the city's billion-dollar congestion problem.
Transport and logistics companies are backing an Infrastructure New Zealand report which suggests traffic snarl-ups are costing businesses $5 million a day in lost productivity.
The report says it's costing the economy almost $2 billion each year, and Auckland Mayor Phil Goff says it's not a surprise.
"It confirms what every Auckland knows," he told Newshub.
National Road Carriers Association chairman Don Wilson says it's a huge cost to productivity.
"We're down somewhere between 25 and 30 percent on where we were five to 10 years ago."
Mr Wilson also runs a transport company and says businesses like his are not only having to fork out to increase their fleet sizes, but are struggling to hire drivers willing to work longer days stuck in traffic.
"Most businesses are short of staff and they just get frustrated. They don't want to have to sit on the motorway," he said.
The report found Auckland's economy would get a $3.5 million boost each day if the city's roading network operated at its designed capacity.
The National Road Carriers Association, which helped commission the report, believes a short-term solution is obvious - extend clearways to most of the day, to open up more lanes on busy roads.
"That helps not only us, but it helps the buses, the emergency vehicles... it helps everybody on the road," Mr Wilson says.
But just like Auckland's traffic, finding a solution is slow. Mr Goff says it takes too long for decisions to be made, and change needs to happen now.
"We need the decisions, we need the funding committed and we need to get on and do the job," he said.
Otherwise he says the cost won't just be to Auckland's economy, but to the whole country.
Newshub.
