Hindsight: Auckland’s growing pains
Through this excellent article by Tim Watkin, I came across a really interesting documentary on the history of Auckland’s growth and development: Click the pictures above to go through to the whole video.
It’s amusing to see how excited they were about building giant parking buildings.…
17 Comments Rail Link Review – digging deeper
The wealth of documents the Ministry of Transport has published on its website in relation to the review of the CBD Rail Link project provide a unique insight into the process that has gone on throughout the review process. If only the development of all business cases (yes, I’m looking at you Puhoi-Wellsford) were able to be so openly analysed.…
City Rail Link – who benefits?
Searching through the vast number of documents produced as part of the CBD Tunnel review shows up some interesting things from time to time. One is the distribution of the project’s benefits – by ‘point of origin’ – contained within this report by Richard Paling Consultants: The map obviously has some typical flaws – like the fact that clearly most of the Waitakere Ranges is being caught in the same Census Area Unit as a place like Swanson that will benefit significantly from the project.…
Auckland vs Government
The different positions taken by Central Government and the Auckland Council over the business case for the CBD Rail Tunnel project are at first difficult to reconcile. The business case process, the calculations of cost-benefit analyses, the work of the various officials should be objective and independent, theoretically at least there should be a right answer out there.…
Traffic volumes on Auckland’s motorway system
The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting of the Auckland Council Transport Committee has been uploaded (part 1, part 2) and there are a number of interesting items. Perhaps the most interesting will be a presentation and discussion on the CBD Rail Tunnel project – which it seems the council is now officially calling the “City Rail Link” (isn’t that what I suggested a few months back?)…
History Repeats?
A cartoon from the 1954 NZ Herald – talking about a previous occasion when central government cancelled the CBD rail tunnel. It happened again in the mid-1970s when Muldoon cancelled Mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson’s rapid rail plan. Seems like history repeats itself?…
e2 transport – cities leading from the front
For those slightly tired of endless analyses of the CBD Rail Tunnel’s business case, here’s a great video from the “e2 transport” series – which can often be seen on TVNZ7 at 7.30pm on Monday nights. It is interesting to note that on a lot of big picture issues – whether it be addressing climate change or changing transport patterns, it often seems to be city level governments that lead the way.…
What is the alternative to building the CBD Rail Tunnel?
As I’m sure most readers would have recognised from my most recent posts on the CBD Rail Tunnel review, the thing that frustrates me most about the work done by the Ministry of Transport is their blatant ignorance of the big question: “what is the alternative to the project?”…
CBD Tunnel Review: my thoughts on the Council document
As I noted in yesterday’s blog post, which focused on the Ministry of Transport review of the CBD Rail Tunnel business case, Auckland Council – in conjunction with Auckland Transport and a wide variety of international consultants, also reviewed the business case.…
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