June PT patronage: spectacular once again
The June public transport patronage report has been released by Auckland Transport, and the results are once again pretty spectacular. Here’s the headline information:For the last couple of months we have seen really high percentage increases from the same month in 2010 – both on the rail network and also for PT patronage in general.…
16 Comments Different approach to density
My post earlier today about the real reasons behind the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” generated some interesting discussion about urban sprawl, intensification and typical “how should Auckland grow” questions. A really big problem in all these discussions is the fact that most of the time Auckland has done intensification, it hasn’t done it very well.…
The real reason for the holiday highway?
Reading through the two Herald articles last week that related to the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” really got me wondering why the government is so utterly determined to ram through this road. It’s very unpopular, with only 24.8% of Aucklanders and 19.2% of non-Aucklanders supporting the project, plus the Warkworth to Wellsford section of the road appears to have exceedingly difficult geotechnical issues to resolve.…
Making congestion charging politically feasible
Transport economists and planners have long argued that the only way to really solve traffic congestion is through some form of road pricing, or as it is commonly known – congestion charging. The theory behind it is simple: congestion is the result of there being excess demand for road space in comparison to the level of ‘supply’ that exists.…
Exciting ideas in Waitemata Local Board plan
Digging through the details of how Auckland Council operates is quite a challenging task: what is the responsibility of the council, what is the responsibility of any of the CCOs and how on earth do these “local boards” fit into the whole thing?…
Is a PT funding crisis around the corner?
An article in today’s Sunday Star Times looks at the possible repercussions of NZTA’s decision (forced upon them by the upcoming government policy statement) to cut the funding assistance rate for public transport around the country. The results are potentially pretty ugly:
The government will cut up to $17 million from its public transport budget for the 2011-12 financial year.…
Celebrating urbanism
In New Zealand we struggle to celebrate urbanism – perhaps central Wellington aside. For some reason our national psyche is very rural, even though we’re a highly urbanised country, and there’s something almost apologetic about our cities – so we try to make them as quasi-rural as possible.…
Peak travel?
I came across an interesting journal article the other day – entitled Are We Reaching Peak Travel? Trends in Passenger Transport in Eight Industrialized Countries by Adam Millard-Ball and Lee Schipper. It is an interesting examination of an issue that I’ve been looking at in my analysis of recent traffic trends on roads in New Zealand – the idea that perhaps we’re shifting away from the decades long process of people travelling more and more each year.…
Huge problems for the holiday highway
There was an interesting article on the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” in the NZ Herald today – which notes the enormous difficulties NZTA is facing in finding a route that is feasible for the Warkworth-Wellsford section through Dome Valley.
Unstable ground around Dome Valley north of Auckland threatens to rip the wheels off the Government’s “road of national significance” from Puhoi to Wellsford.…
A different approach to bus routes
A few days back the Human Transit blog superbly outlined the basics of designing bus routes – using Halifax in Nova Scotia as the example. There are some excellent “basics” outlined in that post: the need to identify choke points, the need to have good “anchors” at each end of your route, the benefits of bouncing routes off at right-angles once you reach the edge of a grid system and so forth.…
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