In the final part of my year in review – and which counts as the last post of the year I’m going to look back on the blog.

I think it’s fair to say that this has been a massive year for the blog from pretty much any measure you look at (and plenty of things that can’t be measured). We’ve seen the number of people reading and interacting with the blog increase throughout the year. Here are some stats for the year:

  • We’ve published 794 posts (including this one) an average of just over 2 per day. That’s almost exactly 100 posts more than we published in 2012 (695)
  • We’ve had ~36,000 comments, about 14,000 more than 2012
  • We’ve had about 1.9 million page views, up from about 1.2 million in 2012. That’s an average of over 5,100 per day. The graph below shows the number of page views we’ve had each month

Blog 2013 page views

The thing that I personally have been most proud of this year has to have been the Congestion Free Network. We came up with the idea as we didn’t like the direction the official plans were heading and we wanted to show that it is possible to have a high quality and extensive core PT network made up of rail lines and bus ways. We carefully costed it out using information gathered from official reports or similar projects that have been built in the city so that we could comfortably say that wouldn’t cost the earth to build compared with what is currently planned. We also engaged with our friends at Generation Zero who helped to design the maps and other graphics for the CFN, they have also helped to push the idea far and wide. However I think the thing that has resonated most with people is not so much the details but that it actually creates a vision for Auckland that they can understand, relate to and get behind.

Since we launched it, Patrick or I have given numerous presentations about the CFN to a wide variety of audiences from government ministers down to industry conferences to local community groups. The one thing that has perhaps surprised me the most about it all has been the positive comments and support that we’ve had from most people about the idea, particularly those in the industry which has included numerous people in the even the construction and freight industries (including the agreement we need to cut back on road building). It was also heartening to see earlier in the month three separate councillors mention the CFN completely unprompted when the debate about the East-West link came to the councils Infrastructure Committee.

Over 2014 you can definitely expect to hear more about the CFN as we’ve been asked to present on it to the Auckland Transport Board in February as they get ready to go through the process of a new Integrated Transport Plan.

CFN 2030A

To everyone, thanks so much for reading (and interacting) with the blog. I hope you all have a happy and safe New Year and I look forward to 2014.

Note: tomorrow I’ll give a rundown of some of the big things we can expect from 2014.

I’d just like to add a big thanks and round of applause for Matt who has been shouldering the the bulk of the post writing and moderating work here. He has also proved himself to be a very insightful analyst and chartologist of urban and transport trends in this most interesting of times. I’m sure the rest of the team share this sentiment, well done Matt, you’re helping make Auckland a better place- cheers Patrick.

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15 comments

  1. Thank you Matt, Patrick and others who contribute to the very useful and insightful articles you bring us. Have really enjoyed following the blog this year. Bring on those electric trains! 😀

  2. What an impressive year for this blog! It is the first site I check each morning (on the bus) and the last I’ll check in the evening. I love the mix of analysis, opinion and vision; hope we will have a choice other than monotonous roads. Thank you Matt, Patrick and the team.

  3. Thanks for all the effort your team has put in, and thank you for standing up as an advocate for smart and efficient design in transport and urbanism. All the best for 2014!

  4. Transport Blog’s commentary has been one of the very few highs I’ve experienced while living in Auckland. It’s great to see well-researched, informed and intelligent analysis challenging the received ideas pursued by the city’s institutions and a salutary corrective to the opinions of embedded drongos like the egregious Riggles/S F Lauren/Richard! All the best for 2014.

  5. Matt, Patrick, John and the other guest posters and any admins not named.

    Thanks for all your hard work over the year just gone. Its been an interesting year of sorts with groundworks for several milestones having been achieved (CFN, UP, CRL, EMUs, integrated fares and the long anticipated bus and rail integration).

    I hope that 2014 will be even more productive for “on the ground” progress on transport issues than 2013 appears to have been at times, where its seemingly been about policy, reports, budgets and planning for “the future”.

    Regardless of 2013, its history, and it is now 2014, so its officially “election year”.

    I fully expect the latter half of the year will really ramp up the workload on you guys to write, post, analyse a gazillion topical issues as they arise from the current and wannabe politicians as they scramble to make their voices heard. As well as the politicians you can expect the usual crop of lies, half/mis-truths and out and out trolling by certain sections to ramp up too.

    My only regret is not the time I spend here, but that I have none of the hands on skills needed to really assist you guys with the hundreds of posts you do each year – other than reading your posts and offering my thoughts on the good, bad and down right idiotic stuff that goes on with Transport in NZ.

    Lastly if you can keep up the pressure on AT to commit to the CFN sooner than later. Then I’m sure you’ll also manage to pressure AT to deliver by the end of 2014 – a successful (even if only partially completed) EMU rollout, 100% integrated ticketing and (at least the sniff of whats coming with) integrated fares, oh and some more bus lanes too,

    And yes, if AT can manage to spend the minuscule cycling budget completely – on nothing but cycling – for once, then I think we’ll be on our way to turning the AT turkey around.

    So thanks again to you all. See you in 2014.

  6. Congestion free (aka bus free) network in 2030,in 16 years time? shoreline? d rd light rail? please do not freak me you lousy rail nutters,lol
    P.S where is the proposed rail line to waiheke island?

    1. Did you miss all of the busways proposed. You might also note that we have cut back on some of the rail lines that are currently on the plans including from the Airport to Manukau and Onehunga to Mt Roskill.

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