Why are we ignoring a Northwest Busway?
Well I went along to a fairly significant chunk of NZTA’s Waterview Connection expo today. While I criticised the wisdom of running something for seven hours in a previous post, I must say that having all that time available meant that issues could be delved into in far greater detail than I’ve ever seen at any previous consultation.…
29 Comments What’s happening at Onehunga?
I have asked various people from ARTA this question over recent times – “what’s happening at Onehunga, when’s the railway line opening?” I have received assurances on a number of occasions that the line will be opening in mid 2010. I must say I’ve been a bit skeptical of this, as when you visit Onehunga and have a look at where the station should be, you see this: This was taken a while ago, but I was in Onehunga briefly today and it didn’t seem like anything had changed.…
Guest Post: CBD rail tunnel concept
This is a Guest Post by regular commenter Nick R. If anyone else wishes to submit a guest post please email it to jarbury[at]yahoo[dot]com. It is written as the executive summary of a (as yet draft) proposal to ARTA/KiwiRail. Once the proposal has been finalised it will be linked to from here.…
What can ARTA do about our trains?
In a typically well thought out comment on my recent post that ARTA should focus on getting the train system sorted before getting stuck into all these bizarre promotions they have going on, Nick R pointed out that I was perhaps being a little bit harsh on ARTA and that the problems being experienced by our rail system at the moment are – just like they’ve been for years – the result of decades of neglect.…
Super Gold card being “reviewed”
Perhaps the only good thing Winston Peters ever did for New Zealand’s politics was introduce the “Super Gold Card”, allowing elderly free off-peak travel of public transport. There are a number of reasons why this is a good policy:
• It’s a good boost to off-peak public transport services by giving them the patronage they need to operate at decent frequencies.…
Super City structure still unfair
The Local Government Commission has today released its finalised findings for what the details of the boundary of Auckland’s Super City should be, the boundaries for the various wards and the boundaries of the various local boards. Back in November their draft plans got absolutely panned for being unfair, unrepresentative and – at worst – appeared like blatant gerrymandering.…
Preferred alignment of CBD Rail Tunnel chosen
In another critical step forwards for what I consider to be Auckland’s most important transport projects, today ARTA have announced the preferred alignment for the CBD Rail Tunnel. Here’s the media release:
Prefered Route Chosen for Transformational CBD Rail Loop Project
11 Mar 2010
A preferred route has now been identified for Auckland’s proposed CBD Rail Loop tunnel.…
Petrol at its most expensive in 18 months
I noticed on the bus yesterday that BP had put their prices up to $1.829 a litre for 91 octane petrol, and thought that was the highest price I’d seen in a while. It turns out that prices haven’t been this high for around 18 months, since the tail end of the oil spike in mid 2008.…
Designing an integrated fare system for Auckland
We haven’t heard much about progress on the implementation of Auckland’s integrated ticketing system recently, although I have been assured by ARTA that things are “coming along”. The winning tenderer, Thales, has set up an office in Auckland and it seems that things are slowly grinding into action.…
Message to ARTA: please just get the basics right
As I noted a couple of days ago it has been a pretty horrific year for Auckland’s train system so far, with signalling failures, points failures and train failures seemingly occurring on a daily basis (quite literally actually). In that previous post I questioned whether the $11 million cutback to the rail contract was behind many of these problems (the train breakdowns, the daily signal and points failures are KiwiRail’s fault).…
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