New Lynn Station – photos

I got out to New Lynn station yesterday to take a few photos. I’m pretty damn impressed with how this station is coming together and I think it’s going to be an enormous asset for the rail network once completed. The photo above is taken from around the limit of where you were able to get to until a couple of weeks ago.…
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Carpool parking space priority

An article in the NZ Herald today notes that North Shore City Council is looking to utilise the park and ride spaces the feed the Albany busway station a bit more effectively by giving priority to those who arrive at the station in a “carpool” with two or more people sharing the car.…
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Joyce on rail in Auckland

There was an interesting radio interview of Transport Minister Steven Joyce on Radio NZ this evening, with the topic of conversation being his response to the various large promises being made by mayoral candidates for the Auckland Super City. The interview is available to listen here, and it’s certainly worth having a listen to.…
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“Operation Lifesaver” – a better solution for Puhoi-Wellsford

Today I helped present to the ARC’s Transport and Urban Development Committee an alternative to the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” that I have been working on, in conjunction with the Campaign for Better Transport.  As regular readers of this blog would well know, I do not think that the current proposal – a 38 kilometre “off-line” motorway between Puhoi and Wellsford is a good use of $1.7 billion that it is likely to cost.…
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Integrated ticketing: latest news

We are still yet to hear anything much from ARTA about the progress of integrated ticketing, aside from a rather bizarre press release from NZTA a few weeks back that some agreement had been reached on a technical standard. Big questions like whether we will have zoned based ticketing, whether we’ll have free transfers, whether we’ll have time-based ticketing and so forth remain unknown for now, although hopefully ARTA will decide at some point in the near future to share their grand plans for integrated ticketing with the rest of the world.…
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Bus changes: Q&A

A week or so back I blogged some preliminary thoughts on the changes to bus routes that ARTA is currently consulting on. In general, I supported the changes as they provide some level of simplification – although I noted that it could be argued the changes didn’t go far enough and some level of unnecessary complexity remained.…
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Bus lane debacle: damaging to PT?

While it seems (hopefully) that the big “bus lane debacle” is finally coming to an end, I think it’s probably time to take a look at what the effects of this completely unnecessary and avoidable issues have been. ARC Chairman Mike Lee, as quoted in an NZ Herald article today, highlights the potential for long-lasting damage from this issue: Council chairman Mike Lee said yesterday that a public backlash against bus lanes might undermine support for public transport.…
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