The Parsons Brinkerhoff Study
As part of the formulation of the Regional Land Transport Strategy, which is now open for submissions until December 18th, the Auckland Regional Council looked at a range of options to set the ‘strategic direction’ behind the RLTS that they have eventually come up with.…
6 Comments Could congestion be a good thing?
If there’s one over-riding dogma for transport planners throughout the past 50 years it would be this: “congestion is bad”. Almost everything that transport planning, traffic engineering and anything else related to this field has been about over the past 50 years is based on the belief that congestion is a bad thing, and we should do everything we can to minimise, avoid or – at best – completely banish congestion.…
RLTS Released Tomorrow
Tomorrow the 2010-2040 Regional Land Transport Strategy will be released for consultation. This is a key strategy that will guide Auckland’s transport development over the next thirty years, so I am very glad to see that it is a well balanced document, providing around $21.5 billion for public transport improvements and operating costs over the next thirty years, compared to $24 billion for road improvements and maintenance.…
Electrification – a solution
Auckland’s rail electrification project has had a torrid history. For years the previous government put it off, put it off, refused to stump up any money, put it off some more… and then finally came up with a solution where Aucklanders would pay for the project via a regional fuel tax.…
CBD Rail Tunnel – the 2004 study
The CBD Rail Tunnel project has been proposed for around 80 years now, and has popped up at various point during that time: in the 1920s, the 1950s, the 1970s and most recently since 2004. This latest occasion will hopefully be the “real thing”, and we will finally get this critical project constructed after 80 years.…
Sydney’s Breakfast on the Bridge
Unlike Auckland, you can actually walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge – and it’s one heck of a nice walk actually. But Sydney aren’t just satisfied with having proper pedestrian and cycle paths across the harbour, they actually celebrate how nice their bridge is by relatively frequently closing it off to traffic and holding special events on it.…
Benefits of Rail Transit
In my searching for interesting academic studies into transportation issues I came across an excellent analysis of the benefits of rail transportation by Todd Litman, an Australian transport academic. It’s a very detailed study, running to around 60 pages long, and I certainly haven’t read the whole thing yet.…
Auckland’s secret bus route
Now hands up – who’s heard of Macarthur Busline Limited? Who here knows that there’s a bus route that runs from Point Chevalier to Newmarket all day weekends and during peak hour on weekdays? Not many, yeah didn’t think so. Which is a pity actually.…
Integrated Ticketing fiasco
Jon C at Auckland Trains has done an excellent post on the fiasco that Auckland’s integrated ticketing project is becoming, with Infratil using every dirty trick in the book trying to win the integrated ticketing contract, even though: ARTA announced in July that they had awarded the contract to Thales.…
Exploring the CBD Rail Tunnel
The lengthy thread of comments in response to my post about the CBD Rail Tunnel on Tuesday have raised a number of questions about the details of that project that I think are worth exploring a bit further. One interesting point discussed was the issue of the grade of the tunnel, how problematic that might be, and what could potentially be done about it.…
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