Well a letter to the editor I wrote at the end of last week got published in the NZ Herald today. As they don’t publish their letters to the editor online, I shall copy it out in full:
All the announcements of roading projects to be completed by the 2011 Rugby World Cup, such as the Victoria Park tunnel and the Newmarket Viaduct, make me wonder if tourists here for that event are expected to bring their cars with them. Surely the transport projects that are actually necessary for the World Cup are for public transport. Trains and buses will get people to Eden Park, and chances are tourists will use them to get around Auckland. So why has rail electrification been delayed to the point where it is now not possible to be even partly complete by 2011, and integrated ticketing (which should be a simple project to get up and running quickly) is also delayed beyond 2011? Is the World Cup just being used as an excuse to build more motorways?
And I’m still waiting to find out how our electric trains are to be funded.
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Congrats, great letter… I’ll send one in about the CBD rail tunnel (a truncated version of the dialogue submission) and someone should do one about the wisdom of investing money in the SH network when gas prices are inevitably going to rise and traffic volumes are dropping…