Fallout for rail from the election result
The election result on the weekend was obviously not particularly conducive to achieving where I think the country’s transport policy should be heading, but I wasn’t quite expecting things to go bad quite so quickly. First, here’s new North Shore MP Maggie Barry talking about the City Rail Link and a duplicate harbour crossing (road based, one assumes):
Maggie Barry hit the ground running as the North Shore electorate’s first woman MP.…
27 Comments Tiverton/Wolverton upgrade moves forward
The upgrade of Tiverton Road and Wolverton Street, linking SH20 with New Lynn, is shifting forwards – with construction due to begin next year and continue for around two years. The project will effectively widen these two roads from being one lane each way to two lanes each way, as well as turning a couple of existing roundabouts into signalised intersections.…
PT Basics – operating costs
Human Transit has an excellently detailed analysis of public transport operating costs, which comes from Jarrett Walker’s upcoming book that’s bound to end up being a bible for public transport planners around the world. Each year we spend close to $150 million subsidising public transport in Auckland, so it’s utterly essential for us to ensure we’re running the most efficient system possible and making best use of that money.…
Is the end of sprawl nigh?
A fascinating article in the New York Times looks at how changing demographics and the housing crash the USA has experienced over the past five years is changing the future form of their cities – away from car dependent urban sprawl and towards higher-density walkable urban areas.…
Auckland bucks the trend?
The interactive maps of the election results hosted on Scoop are a highly addictive tool to play around with. A map that I found particularly interesting runs a comparison of how Labour & Greens did in 2008 and 2011, with how National & Act did in the last two elections.…
Removing expensive bus/rail duplication
The weekend election results confirmed that money will be tight for public transport over the next three years. The proposed Government Policy Statement cuts PT infrastructure funding quite dramatically and while PT services (subsidies) funding increases, this will largely be eaten up by repayment for Auckland’s electric trains and the increased track access fee.…
Transport in the next three years
With special votes seeming likely to result in the Green Party getting one more MP, at the cost of National, and the chances of Auckland Central and/or Waitakere swinging from National to Labour being relatively (but not impossibly) slim, we have a fairly good idea about the shape of the future government.…
Thoughts on the election result
Things went largely as expected last night with the election results, although a few of the results (particularly NZ First getting back in) were a bit of a surprise. Here are the preliminary party vote results – with another 220,000 odd special votes still to be counted: The 13 seats for the Greens Party (and they traditionally go up a seat on special votes) means that Julie-Anne Genter will get into parliament, which is pretty awesome as we’ll have a transport planner there to put the tough questions to Steven Joyce over the next three years.…
The Election
After a comparatively short campaign, thanks to the Rugby World Cup, the election is upon us tomorrow. I have previously written about the transport policies of National, Labour and the Greens in separate posts so I won’t go over those again.…
Wellington Street onramp to stay closed?
There was an interesting media release from NZTA today about the Wellington Street onramp, which has stayed closed since the opening of the Victoria Park Tunnel on Monday last week.
The NZ Transport Agency has deferred a decision on re-opening Auckland’s Wellington Street on-ramp until after the Victoria Park Tunnel Project is completed next year.…
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