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.…
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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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Should we build the Southern Link at Manukau?

On the agenda for this weeks Transport Committee meeting there is a notice of motion being put forward b George Wood in regard to the southern link at Manukau. If you don’t know what the southern link is, it is in the image below: Basically when the Manukau branch was built, it was only constructed with a link to the north however as part of the motorway construction, the NZTA designed the bridge that spans the motorway so that a southern link could be built in the future if needed.…
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Melding Cycling and Transit

A great video from Streetfilms looking at how Vancouver is integrating cycling with public transit to extend the reach of its system and provide people with a really high quality alternative to travelling by car: There’s always an interesting debate around whether we should encourage cyclists to carry their bikes with them on PT (either chucking them on the front of a bus or carrying them on the train) or whether the goal should be on storage at stations.…
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Where and how will Auckland sprawl?

Back in August I commented on plans being developed to decide where and how Auckland’s urban area should expand. The Auckland spatial plan required that up to 40% of growth in the next 30 years be provided for outside the 2010 urban limits, which translates to quite a lot of sprawl as Auckland’s population may grow by a million people during the time.…
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Turn roads into houses?

A really interesting article in yesterday’s Herald, analysing an idea put forward by a Parnell community group looking into ways of increasing the number of houses by taking back a few of the more pointless roads in the area. The Auckland Council is being urged to use roads for housing as a way of solving the city’s accommodation crisis.…
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Time running out to submit on the RPTP

A timely reminder from Auckland Transport that submissions on the draft Regional Public Transport Plan close on November 5th: next Monday. Time is running out to have your say on the future of public transport services in Auckland. Transforming Auckland’s current complex mix of public transport services into a mature city-wide network of connected, reliable and frequent services is a key proposal of the Auckland Regional Public Transport Plan (RPTP).…
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