Funding Aucklands future transport
Despite the rhetoric, one of the biggest disappointments about the Auckland plan was in the area of Transport. Seemingly unwilling to say no to anyone, the Council included in it almost every single transport project ever conceived, effectively creating a massive, and expensive wish list.…
60 Comments Unitary Plan Youth Video Competition Finalists
A month ago the council launched a youth video competition asking for ideas from people under 25 on the future of Auckland. They have narrowed the list down to 5 instead of the 3 like they initially suggested. The goal was to respond to one of the following three questions.…
CRL Submissions Close Tomorrow
Submissions on the notice of requirement for the City Rail Link close tomorrow at 5pm. Even though on this blog we all support the project, we think it’s still worth making a submission – for a few reasons: Inevitably the NZ Herald will at some point run a “how many submissions were for or against the project” even though submissions are never an accurate gauge of public support for something.…
FBT WTF: Suspiciously vocal opposition?
In this recent post Matt L considered the Government’s proposal to extend fringe benefit tax (FBT) to employer-provided parking in Auckland and Wellington’s CBDs.
The Government is keen to extend FBT to employer-provided parking because the parking being provided has a fairly high (market) value.…
Unitary Plan – first thoughts
So yesterday saw the launch of the Draft Unitary Plan, which is now open to feedback between now and the end of May. Mayor Len Brown kicked off the launch with a fairly rousing speech, fighting back against many of the crazy things Central Government has been going on about in recent times:
We could continue to do things the way they were always done from the 1950s on.…
Te Atatu Bus Interchange
The new bus network as proposed in the draft Regional Public Transport Plan received a large amount of support from the general public so it is a good bet that it will become a reality. The biggest changes it makes is that it relies on more people transferring to get to destinations but in return a much larger number of high frequency routes are able to be provided.…
Piece of Cake #1, Barnes Dance Repair
This is a follow up to our recent Piece of Cake posts and general discussions around walkability in Auckland. Over the next several weeks we will be posting summary sheets that compile many of the issues identified in the posts. Ultimately, we will organise the sheets and comments into a document to submit to them to people that care (hello?).…
Draft Unitary Plan released Today
The council has released first official draft of the Unitary Plan today. The Unitary Plan is effectively the rule book that will govern how Auckland develops. The video below helps to explain it a bit more. I am attending the launch today so will update this post with more info later on.…
HOP and events
Last weekend I had a bit of a moan about the services that get put on for events. This weekend there is expected to be another large event in the form of the NRL match with the Warriors playing the Sydney Roosters at Eden Park.…
Housing affordability – it’s not about detached houses
The government’s report on land supply and housing affordability released on Wednesday is actually a really good document – I like how it’s structured as a very visual document (almost like an extended powerpoint presentation) rather than dense text. The document also contains quite a lot of very interesting information about how much greenfield land there is at various stages of the ‘ready to go’ process as well as some of the discussion about housing affordability and what’s happened in the past decade in terms of housing supply.…
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