Will Heavier Trucks Last?
Something has been bugging me (okay a lot of things) about the announcement of heavier trucks by Steven Joyce last week and today I realised what it is. Once we get them they aren’t going away, at least not through political channels (unless a Green MP is Transport Minister).…
20 Comments What cost-benefit ratios should be like
With many motorway projects having extremely marginal cost-benefit ratios, such as the Transmission Gully motorway near Wellington having a BCR of 0.6 and the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” having a BCR of around 0.8, one can wonder whether the analysis process is perhaps a bit too harsh.…
Progress on Auckland’s PT
I learned quite a few interesting and useful things about the progress of various public transport projects throughout Auckland today, as well as various other aspects of how things are going. I will briefly outline what I can remember, but feel free to ask for further information on anything in particular in the comments thread: Resource consent for building the Onehunga Station was received last week, and construction has just begun on this station (the first step being to demolish existing buildings on the site).…
Future CBD Rail
As the CBD Rail Tunnel project slowly inches towards potentially becoming a reality, as a good public transport dreamer I feel that it is my task to look beyond this project to see what longer-term future projects might be needed to ensure that Auckland’s central city has the ability to cope with possible future railway lines that may feed into it – including a North Shore Line, a “Far East Auckland” Line (that I generally refer to as the Howick/Botany Line), an airport line and so forth.…
ARTA cracking down on fare evaders
As the ticketing system on Auckland’s rail system is basically unchanged from how it would have worked 60 years ago, rather unsurprisingly a lot of people manage to avoid paying for their rides. ARTA have estimated that fare evaders cost the system around $1.5 million a year – which is fairly significant.…
Planning for rail expansion: Phase 2
Last month I wrote a post about how we could expand our rail system in a cost effective manner on the isthmus and East Auckland over the next twenty years. Some of the comments and reading I’ve done has lead me to rethink the possibilities for the Airport Line and how to expand over to the Shore as Phase 2.…
The Grafton Bridge Saga
Back in February I wrote a blog post about how lucrative Grafton Bridge’s bus lanes are proving for Auckland City Council, with well over a million dollars in fines having been issued in the few months that the bridge has been open to buses only from 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday.…
LA and Auckland: Shared Histories
Both Los Angeles and Auckland are remarkably alike in many ways, but not in the only ways that you might think (sprawled, auto-dependent cities). In actual fact, both cities are relatively dense (new world) cities and both developed around rail (in particular tramways).…
The world’s best rail system?
I always love debates about which city has the world’s best rail system (one could extend that debate to the world’s best public transport system, but for simplicity’s sake let’s keep it to rail for the moment). A number of possible candidates come to mind – some of which are cities that I have visited, most are cities that I have not.…
I’ll put in for the ticket
This is William S. Lind, he is the Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism (sounds like someone I wouldn’t get along with usually) but he is one of the biggest conservative supporters of public transport in America and co-author of, Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation, here he is talking about some of the points made in the book.…
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