Auckland’s red light district – is Central Government the problem?
The title of the post says it all really. Nonetheless it’s worth elaborating on a few interesting angles to this debate.
First some personal context. As a car-less household, I spend a lot of time walking around Auckland’s City Centre. When I do I’m constantly amazed by the number of drivers that run red lights. …
50 Comments Letting taxis in bus lanes
An article in the herald today has open up an interesting can of worms, should we let Taxis in to bus lanes.
Taxis may be let loose in some of Auckland’s bus lanes in a plan to ease congestion on roads in the Super City.…
Tauranga Eastern Link – another white elephant motorway?
NZTA were pleased to announce on Wednesday that they are making good progress on the “Tauranga Eastern Link” road, a Road of National Significance that we haven’t paid much attention to in the past. Given our general disdain of the justification for projects given this title (Victoria Park Tunnel and Waterview Connection excepted) I thought I’d look in a bit more detail around what the Tauranga Eastern Link road actually is – and whether it falls into the category of pointless and stupid RoNS (like Puhoi-Wellsford, parts of the Waikato Expressway and most of the Wellington Northern Corridor project) or more reasonable RoNS (like the aforementioned Auckland projects and perhaps part of the Christchurch projects though I’m not too familiar with them).…
The Great Reset?
We have talked quite a bit recently about what is happening with traffic volumes, both here and overseas. If you haven’t seen those posts then a quick recap, all across the developed world we have seen stats showing that traffic and total distances travelled by people have not only stalled but fallen.…
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Manukau?
Matt’s recent post on running patterns for the Manukau Branch line uncovered a fairly polarised set of views on operating this new station. So I thought it might be useful to a look at the situation in wider context and ask- Why is Manukau such a problem?…
What really happened with Snapper/HOP – Part 2
Following on from my post yesterday on the Snapper/HOP mess, I felt that a lot of further questions remained unanswered. Phil Twyford attempted to get some answers out of the Minister of Transport in parliament: While questions around why Auckland Transport decided to allow Snapper to become involved in the HOP scheme remain frustratingly unanswered (perhaps until I read a bit further into the mountain of information I have), a question that I want to look at in this post relates a bit more closely to the title of this post – why did things go wrong?…
Summer holiday travel plans – blending cars, buses, and planes
For those of you who have been spending too much time on the blog, I just wanted to quietly let you know that summer is coming. And if the early spring weather patterns are any indication then it’s shaping up to be a cracker, which is quite a relief given last year’s disappointingly wet affair.…
What really happened with Snapper/HOP?
Back in August Auckland Transport kicked Snapper out of helping to deliver integrated ticketing in Auckland. Subject to any legal battles over whether compensation is due or not, this was the final line in a very sad and sorry tale about Snapper’s involvement in Auckland’s integrated ticketing system.…
Auckland’s Place Premium
In a recent post I graphically represented the land values throughout the Auckland city centre as a function of their “frontage value” which generated some surprising results. The exercise revealed a place premium associated with real estate located in the lower Queen Street valley.…
David vs Goliath
It appears that Auckland is now down a train following an accident in the Westfield yards last week. I’m not sure how it happened or who was at fault but one of Kiwirails new DL freight locomotives got a little to up close and personal with one of the driving cars on an SA train.…
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