CBT open letter to Gerry Brownlee about the CRL
In December last year the council released the City Centre Future Access Study (CCFAS) which looked at various options for moving more people in and around the city centre. Crucially this project also involved staff from various government agencies including the Ministry of Transport and it came to the conclusion that the City Rail Link was the best option.…
37 Comments The cost of growth
If there is one thing that both supporters and opponents of the Unitary Plan agree on it is that the councils communication over the plan has been less than ideal. Personally I think one of the biggest failings has been that the council didn’t put any effort into showing people what plans existed currently so they could accurately judge what change was occurring.…
Gen Zero and the Unitary Plan
Edited with new link to an easier to use feedback form.
Our colleagues over at Generation Zero have been hard at work on ways to help people who want a better city be heard in the Unitary Plan debate. They have a whole lot of great stuff on their site including this on the Unitary Plan
And this fantastic quick and legible submission form: Obviously you can tick as many or as few boxes as desired.…
Radio NZ Insight into relationship between Council and Govt
For those interested in local body politics, there was a great piece from Radio NZ’s Insight programme looking at the relationship between the Auckland Council and the Government. It is a bit long but at 30 minutes but well worth a listen.…
Unitary Plan on TVNZ
With the submission period for the Unitary Plan drawing to a close, there seems to be one last push by opponents going on. Tomorrow we should have our submission guidelines up along with some easy things you can do to submit but before then I thought it would be worthwhile looking at a couple of the developments over the last few days.…
April patronage and HOP review
Auckland Transport have their board meeting this week and so have finally release the patronage results for April and there has been some significant changes to how they are doing it. Instead of just some monthly PT figures, AT staff are proposing adding in wider economic indicators which may have impacts on the transport network along with results on other parts of their business, like arterial road performance, I think this is a good move.…
36 hours in Auckland – May not be enough?
Every now and then I receive external confirmation of just how rapidly Auckland is transforming itself into a much better city. The latest and perhaps greatest – at least in terms of its global reach – reminder has come courtesy of the New York Times, which recently published this article titled “36 hours in Auckland“.…
Roads aren’t cheap to run
We have talked a bit about the costs of sprawl. This has primarily been about the land use implications and how much extra land we would need. I even put some maps together showing just how much land would be needed under various scenarios ranging from 70% of growth through intensification all the way down to if there was only 20% via intensification.…
National; we have a problem
In yesterday’s post Matt covered this recent article by Brian Rudman.
The crux of the issue is that the National Government – under the guise of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill – is proposing to remove Auckland Transport’s obligations to Auckland Council.…
SH16 causeway project starts
Yesterday marked the official start of the project to raise and massively widen the SH16 causeway. Here is the press release from the NZTA:
The Prime Minister, John Key, today turned the first spade of soil marking the official start of work on the NZ Transport Agency’s $220m upgrade of the Northwestern Motorway (State Highway 16) causeway in west Auckland.…
Processing...