Get off the Berm
A disturbing trend in many elections these days seems to be just how commonly the media will latch on to and push trivial issues at the expense of providing insight and analysis into the vision and policies of the candidates.
In the lead up to the last Auckland Council elections the key issue pushed by the herald seemed to be about how unfair it was that good honest car driving, herald readers were being fined for driving illegally in bus lanes.…
37 Comments EMUs – the future sounds silent
Six weeks ago Auckland’s first electric train arrived in the country, just over 3 weeks ago it was officially unveiled and yesterday marked a new milestone as testing reached the point where it was able to exit the Wiri depot under its own power for the first time.…
Give A Little – Thanks Again
A quick but heartfelt thank you to everyone that donated to our Congestion Free Network Give A Little cause. $2,120 was raised to help fund the extensive promotion of the plan, which is being led by Generation Zero with the support of the Auckland Transport Blog and the Campaign for Better Transport.…
Reaching Peak Sprawl?
An interesting recent article in Atlantic Cities asked the question of whether we’ve reached “Peak Sprawl”?
Metropolitan Atlanta, long a symbol of car-dependent American sprawl, has recently passed a threshold where a majority of its new construction spending is now focused in high-density, “walkable” parts of town.…
Political and investment implications of the Unitary Plan
We have been very disappointed with the result of the outcome of the unitary plan after it was thrown under the bus by the short-sighted local board members who got scared of a couple of old ladies with a tint of blue in their hair.…
More new apartment developments appearing
We’ve talked before about how we seem to be seeing a resurgence of higher density developments being proposed as developers and their financiers start to come out of hibernation following the GFC. As a reminder, here are some of the ones we have previously talked about (some are already under construction):
City Fringe: Urba – Apartment building replacing a low rise office
New Lynn: Merchant Quarter Condominiums – 10 levels of apartments above a new car parking building and medical clinic development right next to the train station.…
What’s happening with rail to the airport?
While the City Rail Link is the most important transport project for Auckland – after those currently under construction have been completed – the surveys tell us that the most publicly popular project is a rail link to the airport. As a side note I suspect a large part of the reason why it’s seen as more popular is that it is much clearer that it is an extension to the network and many people simply don’t understand the importance of the CRL in providing the capacity needed for an airport link to be feasible.…
Parking in Ponsonby
In the Ponsonby Rd Masterplan, here and here, there are proposals for much improved cycling and walking amenity along this important road as well as small tweaks that should lift the performance and appeal of the buses serving the area. The better of these proposals do reduce the number of onstreet parks by a few spaces so I thought it would be useful to look at other changes to the availability of parking on the strip.…
What happened to the Auckland Plan?
Last year the Auckland Plan was released with much fanfare. Here, finally, we had a 30 year strategic document guiding the whole of Auckland – particularly in terms of guiding our approach to where, when and how Auckland should grow. Of course the Auckland Plan wasn’t perfect and had a heap of internal contradictions: supposedly being a transformational shift to public transport while proposing to spend most of the future transport budget on roads, supposedly proposing a quality compact city while actually enabling a massive amount of sprawl.…
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