The Transportation Group of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) publish a quarterly newsletter on issues related to transport in New Zealand. Despite not being an engineer, this quarter I was invited to submit an article on the Congestion Free Network. The issue has now been published and can be read here. It’s also based around the same theme we used for our presentation to the Auckland Transport board. Here’s the first few paragraphs
Auckland can be one of the best cities in the world. We have some of the best ingredients that any city could hope for with a stunning natural environment and a decent climate. While our natural environment is superb, the one area that’s let us down has been our urban environment, the way that people interact with the city and its many suburbs.
In recent years we’ve started to see a change to this and recent projects as well as some underway will help to vastly improve the city. We’ve built some world class public spaces like North Wharf and the shared spaces that have become destinations in their own right. By drawing in people they’ve also been successful economically driving increased retail spending, for example hospitality spending in Fort St increased a massive 400% following the shared space upgrade.
On top of that we’re also overhauling our public transport systems with electrification, integrated ticketing/fares and we’re going to be getting a vastly improved bus network that provides frequent routes all across the city. It’s these kinds of public realm and transport projects that are helping to make Auckland a more liveable city.
Even if you’re not an engineer you can join to be a member of the IPENZ Transport Group and they’ve certainly had some interesting events over the last year or so that readers may be interested in or even attended).
Join up and get Roundabout and all the other member benefits (like invites to branch events on topical transport issues in your area).
Membership is open to anyone with an interest in transportation – you don’t need to be an engineer!
Go to www.ipenz.org.nz/ipenztg/members to fill it in online.
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Matt and co: I’ve been meaning to mention the colours on your CFN map are not friendly to those of us with colour blindness. Red/green/brown are the most common colours for us defective types to get confused. Changing the green in your diagram to a different shade (e.g. lime green) or a different colour altogether would be helpful. Some of us also have difficulties with blue/purple, but apparently that is less common.
Agreed (as a colour blind person); I think it affects around 8.5% of the population.
+1
Nice work Matt. If you can convince the crusty road engineers that the CFN has merit, you can convince anyone!
Auckland’s IPENZ Transportation Group’s Committee has an average age of ~40 or less, and is chock-full of radicals like myself who support walking, cycling, public transport etc… – we even submitted in favour of relaxing parking minimums further than in the draft Unitary Plan, and submitting in full favour of things like CRL barely merits discussion.
While I cannot say that all transport engineers in the IPENZ group agree with us, most of us have been voted back in for several years running, so the profession may be less “crusty” than you imagine.
I’d agree. It’s also important to appreciate that only about half of the membership of the Transportation Group are members of IPENZ (the professional engineering body). Mainly that is because so many people in the transport sector don’t have engineering degrees; instead they come in with qualifications in planning, psychology, commerce/logistics, mathematics, etc. I can think of some people who have played prominent roles in the Group over the years have even included initial qualifications in nuclear physics and English teaching. A similar pattern shows up in the students that I am teaching in our postgraduate transportation programme; I don’t get surprised these days by the backgrounds people come from.
That’s fantastic to know Max – and, shall we say, a pleasant surprise.
I wonder what more can be done by that profession to highlight that they’re not fully of old crustys anymore.
Gives us more money for walking, cycling and PT, and we will built more walking, cycling and PT.