Why building motorways can be daft

I’m reading an excellent book at the moment – Resilient Cities by Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer. I commented on this book a few posts ago, with particular reference to how pathetic our preparedness for peak oil is and how stupid Treasury’s oil price predictions are.…
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Hamilton to Auckland Commuter Trains

It’s certainly frustrating that inter-city passenger services in the North Island consist of one single train – the Overlander – which runs each way between Auckland and Wellington just the once. And even that’s only an “every day” service during the summer months, with the Overlander running just on Fridays, Saturday and Sundays at the moment.…
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Electric Cars – the pro-roads excuse?

I probably should have felt quite excited by the government’s announcement yesterday to encourage the uptake of electric cars by making them exempt from road user charges. After all, electric cars will undoubtedly play a big role in reducing our oil dependency and our CO2 emissions from the transportation sector.…
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Super City Submission – part two

Well I have finally got around to finishing my submission on the Super City legislation. I posted part one of my submission a while back, and here’s the rest of it: Section 11 – Status of Local Boards Comment: This section of the proposed Bill highlights the complete lack of power that the local boards are proposed to have.…
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Regional Land Transport Strategy – update

About a month ago I had a look at the work the Auckland Regional Council’s Regional Transport Committee is doing in developing a new Regional Land Transport Strategy (RLTS). In particular, at the way in which their direction potentially represented a “quantum shift” in the future of Auckland’s transportation – just what is needed.…
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State Highway Traffic Levels Falling

If one was to read through the “Government Policy Statement” for transport you would be convinced that our state highway system was bursting at the seams. As I have mentioned previously, the Government Policy Statement rips money out of just about every other area of transport funding in order to put around another billion dollars into funding state highways over the next three years.…
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Treasury’s Oil Price Predictions – Pathetic

A couple of days ago my latest purchase from Amazon, Resilient Cities by Peter Newman,Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer, arrived. I’m only part way through it so far, but it certainly makes for an interesting read. Basically, the book looks at how cities should be altered to ensure they can best respond to Peak Oil and Climate Change over the next few decades – how they can become resilient to the significant changes that face us in the future.…
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