Myth Busting: Aucklands Geography
Myth: Auckland isn’t geographically suited to public transport.
I’m not sure where this myth even came from but if I had to guess, it would have been from the 50’s or 60’s, the same time that many of our transport myths originated from those looking to justify building the motorways instead of public transport.…
54 Comments Closing Sarawia St Level Crossing
Auckland Transport is looking to close the Sarawia St level crossing in Newmarket. It is perhaps the most pesky crossing on the network, not due to how many cars use the street but how many trains pass through it and combined with its proximity to the Newmarket junction, makes things really tricky from a train operational perspective.…
Transport Spending: what’s the point?
As a country we spend a lot of money on transport, at three levels: central government, local government and personally. In the 2012 budget, around $3.8 billion of expenditure on transport by central government was proposed. Further to that, transport is generally the biggest item of expenditure for local government – the Auckland Council spends over half its money (more than half your rates bill) on transport each year.…
Urban Transport Economics
Recently Auckland Transport and Ernst and Young hosted a seminar on the economics of urban transport. Sadly we didn’t get an invite but at least AT have videoed the presentations and put them up online.
First we have Paul Buchanan who is an international transport economist.…
Choice bro
Occasionally I get a dose of status quo bizarro talk from my in-laws who filter it from talk radio. It usually comes in the form of generalisations presented as facts: “Kiwis don’t want to live in apartments”, “Kiwis want a big backyard to BBQ”, etc.…
Postcard from Brisbane
As some of you will know, my first forays into blogging here on the ATB came by way of several “postcards” from afar, in which I ranted about my travels in Amsterdam, Norway, and Greece. It was the appreciative and insightful tone of your responses to these postcards that got me enthused about blogging in the first instance.…
Southern Line Station Performance
Hidden in the business case for electrification to Pukekohe is some patronage data for the group of Southern, Eastern and Onehunga line stations. The data is for both the number of people boarding and alighting services at stations and my understanding is based on manual passenger counts done in May each year.…
Car vs Train Off Peak
Earlier this year I did a comparison between catching a train from my local station and driving to work at peak time. This is a similar look at the journey off peak. I had arranged with some friends to meet them for lunch today in town and the experience highlights perfectly just how far we have yet to go to truly have an alternative to getting around by car.…
What problems caused by high house prices are we really trying to address?
This is the second of a series of guest posts from Lucy JH on Housing affordability
This blog post is part of a series based on a talk I recently attended by some economists about housing affordability in Auckland. I’ve already blogged about their debate over the cause(s) of high house prices in Auckland.…
Myth busting: Roads Don’t Need Subsidies
People who oppose public transport, whether directly or through concern trolling are an increasingly small minority in Auckland but those that are left tend to be quite vocal. There are also plenty of people outside of the region, especially in rural areas who don’t see value in it and these people often spout all sorts of various urban myths to try and back up their claims.…
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