Like most cities in NZ there is a CBD where people work and the suburbs where people live. Every morning and evening thousands of people have to travel down a two lane road to get to and from work. Throw in an accident, slip, or roadworks and you get massive travel delays.

The commute times described are not normal commute times. They are commute times during one of those types of incidents. There aren’t enough lanes to keep the traffic flowing and even if there were slowdowns tend to cause massive backups.