The Tide is Turning on the RoNS
We have been pretty critical of the Roads of National Significance over the last few years for a number of reasons. The key reasons being that many of them will have very poor economic performance and that are sucking up huge amounts of transport funding which means other areas in the transport budget are being neglected.…
12 Comments How to improve housing affordability?
The Q & A show on TVNZ yesterday morning looked at the vexed issue of housing affordability. Guests Bernard Hickey and Murray Sherwin agreed wholeheartedly that something needs to be done. That’s no surprise really – you have to be living under a rock to not know that housing affordability is a significant problem for Auckland.…
Fare Gates Appear
Users of Newmarket train station on Friday night would have seen some new additions to the station. On the concourse above the platforms the first fare gates have started to be installed ready to be used when the real HOP system finally goes live.…
Is the shopping mall dying?
The indoor shopping mall turns 60 this year, but an Atlantic Cities article questions whether it’s dying:
At the mall’s peak popularity, in 1990, America opened 19 of them. But we haven’t cut the ribbon on a new one since 2006, for reasons that go beyond the recession.…
Tiverton-Wolverton upgrade about to start
Another decent sized transport project is about to be started near New Lynn. In just over a weeks time work will start on upgrading and widening Tiverton And Wolverton Sts between Clark St and the intersection of New Windsor Rd and Maioro St.…
Other RoNS to cut back?
Yesterday’s announcement by NZTA that they are scaling back the Otaki to Levin section of the Wellington Northern Corridor Road of National Significance, from a four-lane highway to an upgrade of the existing road, has some really interesting implications – as Matt commented on in his post last night.…
AT improving their marketing of the CRL
One positive thing I have noticed recently is that Auckland Transport have started to improve the way they communicate the benefits of City Rail Link. I first noticed it at the announcement of the confirmed CRL route but it appears to be coming through in other channels too.…
Is the NZTA starting to scale back the RoNS?
An interesting development was announcement today by the NZTA. For the Wellington Road of National Significance they have decided on what they will do between Otaki and Levin. Here’s the press release: The NZ Transport Agency has today announced its plans for the next stage of the Otaki to Levin section of the State Highway 1 Wellington Northern Corridor Road of National Significance, proposing a staged upgrade of the existing highway, starting with a series of safety improvements between Otaki and SH57.…
Learning from Los Angeles
Typically Los Angeles is considered a textbook guide on what “not to do” when it comes to transport and land-use planning. In so many ways it is the utterly stereotypical post World War II city: without a strong core, without a functioning public transport system, with enormous congestion, with terrible air pollution, and so forth.…
Transport Issues Across the Country
The NZTA has just released to me a document they had initially withheld from an earlier OIA request, it shows what the agency consider to be the high and medium impacts for each region around the country. What I found interesting looking at it was not only how intertwined that the many of the issues are but how the current spending and priorities are so far removed from the issues.…
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