PT trips getting longer
There’s a fascinating article in the NZ Herald today about how trips on Auckland’s public transport system are getting longer and longer (distance wise, hopefully not time-wise!) These sections are particularly noteworthy:
Although a 7.7 per cent rise in public transport patronage in 2008-2009 was hailed as impressive when announced late last year, a table at the back of a report presented to the Auckland Regional Transport Committee yesterday disclosed a far higher proportional leap in kilometres travelled…
…The Auckland Regional Transport Authority reported 58.62 million subsidised passenger trips in 2008-09, covering 435.4 million km, at a cost to ratepayers and taxpayers through regional and Government subsidies of $143.5 million.…
7 Comments How to fix congestion
Earlier this week the Auckland Regional Council released their “State of the Environment Report” The whole report makes for quite interesting reading, analysing the pressures faced by Auckland, what steps have been taken to protect the environment from the pressures, and what further steps probably need to be taken.…
Car Dependency: cultural or logical?
A couple of great posts are doing the rounds of transport blogs at the moment, and I think they’re essential for me to comment on. Ultimately, they focus on the question of whether our transport patterns result from some sort of ‘culture’, or whether they simply respond to what the logical decision to make is.…
More info on the CBD rail tunnel
Last week at Auckand City Council’s Transport Committee meeting, representatives from ARTA and KiwiRail gave an interesting presentation on the CBD rail tunnel. The whole presentation is available on the city council website. It doesn’t have that much actual information that we don’t know about already, but does include a number of interesting and useful diagrams.…
February Rail Statistics – still pathetic
ARTA has released the performance statistics for trains in February, and the result is predictably pathetic. Things have improved slightly in some areas compared to the January statistics, when punctuality on the Western Line was a mere 36%. However, in other respects the February results are even worse than January, as the system operated throughout the whole of February (as opposed to the last couple of weeks of January only).…
Mt Albert – a big opportunity?
Last night I went to an interesting workshop, run by Auckland City Council, to help discuss important matters that should be included in a future District Plan for the Mt Albert area. This is all part of the Future Planning Framework that was supposed to inform the next generation District Plan for the isthmus area of Auckland City – until the whole Super City thing killed off that idea.…
Onehunga: good news?
After my post the other day, complaining about the lack of progress on building the train station at Onehunga as well as some concerning signs on the ProjectDART website, it seems as though some of my concerns have been alleviated. The ProjectDART website says this:
Work is now well underway on the rehabilitation of the Onehunga Branch Line, which is scheduled to open for passenger rail services in 2010.…
Beware of “PT-Washing”
The term “Greenwash” is quite well known, meaning situations where companies disingenuously promote their products as environmentally friendly when they aren’t, or over-sell what are really quite modest environmental benefits. Wikipedia defines the term as follows:
Greenwashing (green whitewash) is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.…
How to save $100 million
An interesting agenda item in the recent Auckland City Council City Development Committee meeting provides an interesting insight into how the supply of parking can impact upon the need to build expensive roading projects. While the whole report is an interesting read, basically in short there is going to be a lot of redevelopment around the Wynyard Quarter/Tank Farm area of Auckland’s CBD over the next 20-30 years which raises some potentially difficult traffic problems.…
NZ Herald on CCOs
There are three interesting articles published in the NZ Herald yesterday and today, including two editorials, raising further concern about the power that will be wielded by the “Council Controlled (controlling?) Organisations” that are being established as part of the Super City.…
Processing...