Managed Lanes
There are some interesting bits and pieces in Auckland City Council’s recent Transport Committee meeting agenda. I moaned about the loss of the Tamaki Drive bus lane (and, more particularly $350,000 of precious public transport funding) the other day, which was debated at that meeting, but there is actually a bit more in relation to establishing “Managed Lanes” throughout Auckland City.…
0 Comments Good Riddance Auckland City Council
Whilst I do have some huge reservations about the details of Auckland’s future super-city, and also about the way it’s being completely rammed through by the government, at its core I think the idea will be a step forwards for Auckland, and in particular, for transport.…
What $2.2 billion can buy
Let’s just say Auckland had $2.2 billion to spend on transportation. This money is from a crown grant rather than from petrol taxes, so there’s no real bias from the school of thought that petrol tax money should be spent on roads.…
What is Urban Sprawl?
There’s been a rather long ongoing debate on the Better Transport forums about whether sprawl or intensification is the best way to grow a city. In particular, issues relating to housing affordability, whether sprawl has to lead to auto-dependency, and the environmental effects of sprawl have become particularly debated.…
Waterview Connection – it’s $2.2 billion and upwards!
As well as mentioning me yesterday, parliament also had some interesting discussion about progress on deciding which option of the Waterview Connection is likely to be built, if any at all. It seems like Steven Joyce has got it into his head that the poor cost-benefit ratio of the Waterview Connection (only 1.15 and I have my suspicions that’s vastly over-estimated) can be fixed simply by finding a much cheaper option – never mind the environmental or social effects it will have.…
Holy Heck I’m Mentioned in Parliament!
I never quite realised that my vent about being ignored by the RMA Amendment Bill hearings organisers would become such a big issue. First, it caused a bit of a stir in online discussions at Frog Blog, then it made the NZ Herald, where I was quoted quite extensively in an article last Thursday.…
Auckland Transport Plan – hearing
Well I got to tell ARTA what I think about their draft 2009 Auckland Tranport Plan today. It was quite interesting and I think they were quite impressed. My submission is here, and what I told ARTA today is shown below:
My submission was in relation to the Auckland Transport Plan 2009.…
A Record Breaking Month
March 2009 was a record breaking month for public transport usage in Auckland. The ARTA monthly business report confirms that there were 6,115,155 bus, ferry and rail boardings in March across Auckland’s network. This is up 19.7% on last March. It also means that the 12 month rolling total for Auckland at the end of March was 58,325,170 boardings – a 10.6% increase upon the 12 month rolling total for the previous year.…
Is America’s love affair with the “exburbs” over?
An interesting article that I came across – from April 10 this year, looks at whether the decades long process of cities sprawling more and more has come to a halt. There are some bits to it which are particularly noteworthy:
Though the recession has left few areas of the United States unscathed, the sprawling neighborhoods out on the far edges of the United States’ metropolitan areas have been especially hard-hit.…
Processing...