Replay: Ticketing
In the early days of this blog I generally got about as many visitors in a month as I now do in a day. But there were some interesting posts written, many of which are still as relevant now as they were then.…
16 Comments Hobsonville motorway opening next week
The next section of the Western Ring Route to be completed – a section known as the “Hobsonville Deviation” – is due to be opened to traffic the weekend after next, after an open day on August 6th. The NZ Herald describes the project a bit:
Combined with the 5.5km motorway section from Greenhithe to Albany, which opened in 2007, it will provide a seamless link between West Auckland and North Shore.…
The ultimate outcome of ignoring pedestrians
This is a pretty shocking video showing how pedestrians are treated along a major highway in auto-focused Atlanta. What is very interesting to note is how the USA is starting to see a shift in poverty from the inner city to the outer-suburbs – reversing the trend that occurred through most of the 20th century when the rich migrated to the suburbs, leaving the poor downtown: Watch the full episode.…
Auckland’s low PT use is not a “natural” outcome
At the talk I gave on public transport in Auckland on Tuesday night, I took a look back at Auckland’s transport history – in particular how in the mid 20th century we went from having some of the highest levels of PT use in the world to having some of the lowest.…
An inevitable photo…
Quite a few people I have met up with in person recently have asked how things are going with the little girl we had a few weeks back. Well here she is in a pretty inevitable hat – thanks to Auntie Bernice who did an excellent shop at the London Transport museum when she was there a few weeks ago: While she was five weeks early, and we needed to stay in the hospital for the first couple of weeks, little Adele Ophelia Clare is now doing great.…
GPS 2012: just plain dumb
Well I have had the chance to read through the final version of the 2012 Government Policy Statement for land transport funding and two conclusions immediately leap into my head: It’s remarkably similar to the draft version. All that “consultation” seems to have been just for show.…
Busting an annoying transport myth
One thing that perpetually annoys me is when Steven Joyce rolls out the “we’re spending $1.6 billion on rail in Auckland so please stop complaining about all the money we’re spending on roads.” We see this line being trotted in in some of the Questions and Answers section to the Government Policy Statement:
It is also important to note that the majority of central government funding for public transport infrastructure is provided outside of the National Land Transport Fund and so not included in the GPS.…
Gareth Hughes on the GPS
I’m still digging through the details of the Government Policy Statement myself, but here’s a good interview on TVNZ 7’s News at 8 programme with Green Party transport spokesman Gareth Hughes (click the image or here for the video):
While it may seem like he said the word “balance” a heck of a lot of times, looking at the funding allocations in the GPS for various different parts of the transport sector, it really is the lack of balance that shines through:
Even really basic stuff like maintaining state highways (funding frozen for the next 6 years) and building & looking after local roads (funding effectively frozen for the next 6 years) are getting screwed over in order to splurge more and more money on new state highways.…
Final 2012 GPS released
Just a quick post for now – more detail later.
The final version of the 2012 Government Policy Statement has been released today – and yes, it’s unsurprisingly bad. Really bad. By my calculations, between 2012 and 2018 the policy will have the following spread of funding:
When public transport use is booming, state highway traffic volumes have stagnated for a number of years and oil prices are high and likely to go higher (imagine the price of petrol if the NZ dollar was at its usual 60 US cents) having such a huge focus of spending on state highways (and $8b of the state highways total goes to new ones) is just downright stupid.…
Guest Post: Can Auckland do a Perth?
This is a Guest Post from regular commenter Patrick Reynolds
Rail boardings in Auckland are now approaching about 10 million annually. Setting aside issues of kilometres traveled and reports of under-counting on the existing network I thought it might be useful to look ahead to try to see where this number might be heading.…
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