Ian Mackinnon Drive: the costs of excessive car priority
Tuesday’s Herald had a lot of good coverage of transport issues. No fewer than four good reports by Mathew Dearnaley. Rudman on the Remuera buslane rebellion, covered here on this site. And even a piece on the transformation of LA back towards being a transit town.…
32 Comments Burning down the CRL
A few days ago a comment by Greg N hinted that Auckland Transport are starting to investigate changes to how they plan to build the City Rail Link (CRL) so it is probably worthwhile looking at what is going on. Greg’s comment was based on a presentation by Auckland Transport’s Elected Member Liaison Manager, Stephen Rainbow, at a recent Orakei Local Board meeting as well as discussion Greg had with Stephen after the meeting.…
Spineless AT gives up on Remuera Rd bus lanes
Brian Rudman didn’t hold back in his column yesterday criticising Auckland Transport for folding under pressure of the utterly retarded Orakei Local Board, and agreeing the get rid of the Remuera Road bus lane and turn it into a T3 lane:
To eastern suburbanites stuck in rush-hour traffic on Remuera Rd, it seems there’s nothing more infuriating than being passed on the inside by a busload of commuters from less-salubrious suburbs to the south.…
Why are we driving less?
Stuart’s two posts on traffic volumes in the last couple of weeks have highlighted the indisputable fact that we’re driving less, that we’ve been driving less for quite some time now and perhaps most interestingly, that us driving less is actually not a bad thing for the economy.…
Does the market really still want sprawl?
A couple of excellent posts by Stu Donovan over the last couple of weeks have highlighted a fundamental change in transportation trends across not just New Zealand, but many developed world countries: we’re not driving more – in fact, on a per capita basis, we’re driving a lot less.…
Google Traffic for NZ
For a couple of years we have been able to see traffic info and even webcams for Aucklands motorways care of the NZTA. The system is also tied into the message boards at motorway onramps to give indications as to travel times to certain destinations, the main routes to/from the airport were also added last year just before the RWC.…
The “missing middle density” housing
With the Auckland spatial plan finalised, the next few years will be a really challenging process of figuring out how to implement the plan – particularly in relation to how we achieve the level of intensification envisaged by the plan. I noted in this previous post how it will be challenging for Auckland to build its way to housing affordability, but that’s only a part of the challenge.…
Does this sound familiar?
From “The Limits to Travel“:
The Department of Transport published last January, with no publicity, its latest National Road Traffic Forecasts. This is an output of the National Transport Model. Although traffic levels have levelled off in recent years, the projection is for a 44% increase by 2035, even though population growth is assumed to be only 18%.…
The Poor Quality of our State Highway Spending
It has been really refreshing to see transport discussed so much in parliament this week – with the results of the exchanges spilling into the media, as evidenced by the interviews on Breakfast TV a couple of days back.
What seems to have really kicked this off are numbers coming out of the Ministry of Transport, and in a series of answers to written questions, highlighting the ever-increasing dominance of our transport budget by projects that have very low cost-benefit ratios.…
Traffic Volumes in Parliament – part 2
This week we have have seen Green MP Julie Anne Genter attacking Gerry Brownlee on transport spending, that attack continued again yesterday in parliament. You can read a transcript here
Gerry’s answers seem to be getting worse and worse. Now he seems to be saying that the party that sold itself as having sensible solutions to solve the economy shouldn’t get hung up on how well a project stacks up economically.…
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