CBD Tunnel Review: my thoughts on the MOT document
Well, what an interesting day. The review of the CBD rail tunnel project – a process that has been ongoing since December last year – finally spat out its results. And I stress the plurality of those results, because effectively we have ended up with two reviews: one from Ministry of Transport and Treasury officials, and one from Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and their various consultants.…
34 Comments Auckland Council’s CBD Tunnel Review
In addition to the government’s review, here is Auckland Council’s full review of the CBD Tunnel – http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/City-Rail-Link-Summary-Report-13-May-2011.pdf
The executive summary:
Historically, a range of proposals have been developed for a rail tunnel through the Auckland city centre. In 2010, a preferred route for a tunnel, the City Rail Link, was identified and work commenced on a concept design and Business Case to support designation of the route.…
CBD Tunnel Review
My understanding is that the review of the CBD rail tunnel project is to be released today by the Ministry of Transport. The key question is whether the Minister will allow KiwiRail to proceed with the designation protecting the tunnel’s route, with Auckland Council paying for that work at this point.…
What happened to “B-Line”?
Back in the middle of last year two “B-Line” routes were launched in Auckland, along Dominion Road and Mt Eden Road. I was a bit ambivalent about them at the time, mainly because they “undersold” the actual quality of those two bus routes.…
Darby Street Video
Auckland Council have put together a really great video on the Darby Street shared space: I was just wandering around Darby and Elliott streets at lunch time today. It was heartening to see so many pedestrians, and also to see what good progress there is on Elliott Street.…
Falling into your own trap: the problem with fixating over technology
It’s impossible to be in transport circles for too long before the good old arguments of ‘buses versus trains’ or ‘BRT versus LRT’ and so forth come along. I suppose that it’s inevitable to end up in such technological debates – as while each technology tends to be best suited for a particular type of job, there’s an enormous level of crossover.…
New York’s pedestrian improvements
Here’s a great video I came across explaining the improvements for pedestrians that have been made in Midtown Manhattan over the past few years. A few things really stood out for me: That reducing the roadspace didn’t lead to more congestion – in fact the simplified intersections meant less congestion and better flowing streets.…
Stupid urban planning
As a planner by profession, I can quite honestly say that more often than not we do urban planning in Auckland utterly terribly. We focus enormously on silly details: recession planes, consistency with minutely detailed assessment criteria, road-widths, numbers of parking spaces per unit, number of units coming off driveways and so forth – but we miss the really obvious stuff.…
Rail rolling stock: looking ahead
Broadly speaking, there are two distinct types of trains in Auckland: the “Diesel Multiple Units” that we bought second-hand from Perth in the mid-1990s and the locomotive hauled carriages that were bought second-hand from the UK and then significantly refurbished, and now get hauled around by locomotives leased off KiwiRail.…
Bus route planning – a challenging balancing act
The significant changes proposed to buses in central Auckland, plus my recent blog posts about how to improve bus flow through the city centre have highlighted to me what a challenging balancing act it must be for people whose job it is to improve the bus route network.…
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