Auckland Transport’s draft SOI
When it became clear that the establishment of the Auckland Super City would involve the divesting of around 75% of the council’s business into standalone “council controlled organisations” (CCOs), the big question became to what extent the council would really control those organisations.…
Comment Sorting out Dominion Road
One of the issues this year that got talked about quite a bit was the old Auckland Councils plans for Dominion Rd. It started out well and the plan had two main designs, in the mid-block sections (between the town centres) the plan was to widen the road to 22.6m, have a permanent cycle lanes, bus lanes as seen in the image below.In…
Electric Train Procurement: turning into a shambles?
Some rather odd news in the NZ Herald today about “progress” on what’s happening regarding the procurement of Auckland’s future electric trains. It’s probably necessary to do a little bit of a history lesson to understand what’s going on: Back in November last year the government confirms its support (by way of a loan to KiwiRail) of Auckland’s rail electrification.…
Slow and unreliable buses
There’s an amusing video on Streetfilms talking about the annual “awards” for the slowest and most unreliable bus route in New York City: New York City has some of the slowest bus service in the country. The 9th annual Pokey and Shleppie Awards, given by NYPIRG’s Straphanger Campaign and Transportation Alternatives, shine a spotlight on this unfortunate fact by recognizing the slowest and most unreliable buses in the Big Apple.…
Guest Post: Alternative Auckland? Notes on Perth
This is a Guest Post by transport expert Chris Harris.
Earlier this November, I paid a visit to the roughly Auckland-sized Australian cities of Perth and Brisbane. This blog entry records my impressions of Perth, which of all cities is perhaps the closest to an “Alternative Auckland,” for the following reasons: Perth’s urban area extends north-south for roughly 100km, between coastline and coastal ranges.…
$300m on new roads in eight months?
As I noted in my post on the papers from Auckland Transport’s first board meeting, there was included a very basic eight month budget for what that organisation will be doing between now and June 30, 2011. Transport is the biggest item on the spending list for the Auckland Council – as the budget below shows that over $440 million of Auckland Council funding will be required for the activities undertaken by Auckland Transport between November 1 this year and 30 June next year.…
AMETI Busway extends to Botany
I have often been very scathing of the AMETI transport project in the past, accusing it of being a roadsfest and barely paying lip-service to improving public transport. Well, either my criticisms are starting to pay off – or I was being a bit harsh on the project all along.…
Auckland Transport – first board papers
Auckland Transport have sent me copies of the board papers presented at their first board meeting, on November 17th. There are five documents I have – which I’ve uploaded so everyone can have a good look through: Board Agenda: this just lists what the AT board considered at their November 17th meeting.…
1000th Post
As you may have guessed from the title of this blog post, this is the 1000th post of Auckland Transport Blog, since the very first back in May 2008. The early posts of this blog were really simply a part of a previous blog that I used to run – that was more focused on my personal life.…
CBD Tunnel vs Puhoi-Wellsford: an in-depth analysis
An interesting question and answer session in parliament today on the merits of the CBD Rail Tunnel and the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway”. A transcript can be read here (and by the way it’s interesting to see in the video how keen Bill English & Gerry Brownlee were to say that they’re even less keen on the CBD Rail Tunnel project than Steven Joyce is).…
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