On this week's Buzzworthy 'Future Buzz' podcast, producer Ross Crowley sits down with Tauranga City Council transport director Brendan Bisley to talk about making Tauranga a sustainable city.

Brendan and Ross talk hot topics such as Links Ave, public transport, road construction and much more.

"Tauranga is unique in the sense that a lot of our [road] network is local, but a lot of what we would call our arterial routes that most people use to get to and from work are actually on State Highways," says Brendan.

"Takitimu Drive, Hewletts Road, SH29A are all State Highways, meaning they are controlled by Waka Kotahi.

"We work really close with them, but it does mean it is difficult because we don't directly control those roads. They're roads have influence on ours, and our roads have influence on theirs.

"For example the B2B project, or the Bay Park to Bayfair is part of the reason Links Avenue had such an increase in traffic."

Brendan also says the last "big investment" into the transport network was "about 25 years ago".

"One of the issues we've got is 25 years ago the population was about half what it is now. There was heaps of capacity, traffic wasn't really an issue and trips would take about 10 to 15 minutes.

"Now, as the population has built up, there's not really much capacity left."

"That's why often a small incident somewhere, like a small accident on Hewletts Road or an accident on the Kaimai Range, traffic jams all the way up, there's just no capacity left.

"So that's why you're seeing so much activity on the roading network. This is us trying to do 20 years of work to bring that capacity back."

To hear more of Brendan's chat with Ross, as well as his thoughts on Tauranga's contentious roading topics, visit the full episode on the Buzzworthy website.