Surely a joke?

I read this press release from Colin Craig, distant third-place runner in the race for super city mayor, with some amusement – but also a bit of fear that someone might take his public transport ideas seriously. It is tempting to not give such silly ideas any life by giving them coverage – but I just can’t help myself pointing out how silly this is.…
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A solution to the “density dilemma”?

Following on from posts made last week on both the Humantransit blog and on my blog about the complex relationship between urban density and public transport use – and how sometimes we end up with some rather bizarre relationships between the two – Jarrett at Humantransit has done a post that I really think finally cracks the issue of linking density and public transport use.…
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Fast-tracking the Airport Line?

The level of support amongst the general public, coupled with the recent reopening of the Onehunga Branch Line, has really put the idea of rail to Auckland Airport back on the agenda in a big way. Mayoral frontrunner Len Brown, as well as Mike Lee (who seems likely to end up with one of the two council seats on the board of the Transport CCO), have thrown their full support behind completing the Airport Line as soon as possible.…
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ARTA’s Public Transport Vision

At the July 2010 Board Meeting of NZTA, ARTA made a quite interesting presentation – what they called “Auckland’s Public Transport Strategy”. The whole presentation can be downloaded here (it’s really just a quick Microsoft Powerpoint display), and there are some parts of it that are worthy of sharing – and of further comment.…
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Update on PTMA changes

There were quite a few terrible things that happened to public transport last year, thanks to our good friend the Minister of Transport. One of the most depressing were announcements that the Public Transport Management Act – an utterly critical piece of legislation passed in 2008 to create better integration and cost-effectiveness in public transport delivery – was going to be gutted.…
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Transport in Montreal

Quite interestingly, out of all the cities we visited I think that perhaps Montreal had transport aspects that Auckland can learn from more than any other place. Perhaps it was because New York is just so different from anywhere else, because Boston’s system is very old and we pretty much walked everywhere anyway, and because Washington DC’s system is just so unique in its design.…
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