Exploring the CBD tunnel’s employment benefits
A major part of the CBD Rail Tunnel’s justification comes in the form of its wider economic benefits – and specifically, wider economic benefits which relate to employment. Put simply, employees in the CBD tend to be more productive and contribute more to GDP than workers anywhere else in the city (or indeed, in the country) – so therefore there’s a gain from finding ways to enable a concentration of employment.…
7 Comments Martin Gummer’s Opinion Piece
Martin Gummer. the former head of transport funding agency Transfund, wrote an excellent opinion piece in today’s Herald on some of the transport decisions being made at the moment. Here are some key segments.
Recent political comment about two big transport proposals – the Puhoi to Wellsford Highway, and the CBD rail loop – are starting to frame them in polarised terms.…
Oram v Joyce: the battle continues
Business commentator Rod Oram has another transport related article in yesterday’s Sunday Star Times – responding to the points made in Steven Joyce’s opinion piece from last week. Joyce’s piece itself was a response to an earlier article by Oram – so this is turning into an interesting ‘back and forth’ between the two.…
The argument for lower speed limits
I am of the view that a 50 kph speed limit is too high for local (non-arterial) urban roads. Aucklanders have a nasty habit of generally driving at about 10 kph over the speed limit, so often vehicles are travelling at around 60 kph along local roads that may have kids along them, certainly have a lot of people living along them and in general will be much nicer places with slower traffic.…
The importance of road-width
In my opinion, perhaps the most important factor determining how a particular part of the city will feel are the road widths. The wider the road is, generally the faster people will be encouraged to drive – the opposite is obviously true too.…
Design ideas for CBD Tunnel stations
One thing I really like about rail systems, particularly underground rail systems, is the ability of the stations to become key parts of the urban fabric – key public spaces that help define a city. Some systems around the world have used this potential with spectacular results.…
CBD Tunnel: how should we operate the trains?
There’s an interesting section in the CBD Rail Tunnel business case that looks at a couple of different options for how trains should run around Auckland’s rail network once the CBD Tunnel is completed (pages 44-47 if you’re interested in taking a full look).…
Bikes for Life
If you can get along to this event on Sunday I think it will be well worth the effort: Compared with most other transport projects, cycling infrastructure is incredibly inexpensive to implement and can lead to significant benefits: including reduced pollution, reduced congestion and – perhaps most of all – reduced health costs in the longer run as it’s great exercise.…
Puhoi-Warkworth’s time savings questioned
In a media statement, Warkworth resident and cycling advocate Bevan Woodward has questioned the time-savings benefits (all five to seven minutes of them) promised by the Puhoi-Warkworth section of the “holiday highway”. Here’s his whole statement:
Puhoi to Warkworth motorway time savings unrealistic
Warkworth based transport planning consultant Bevan Woodward has been studying the travel time savings claimed by NZTA for the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway.…
David Hensher on Radio NZ
There was an interesting interview of Australian transport academic David Hensher on National Radio’s “Nine to Noon” programme this morning. It’s well worth a listen. From listening to the interview, I felt that Hensher made three major points: That we need to strongly consider congestion charging to alleviate urban traffic congestion – and now we’re starting to develop the technology to do congestion charging in new ways (through GPS), if we’re smart we can develop quite a fair system (or a system that’s certainly a lot fairer than what we have now.…
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