Stuart’s 100 #4: Aotea Arts District
Stuart’s 100 continues:
4: Aotea Arts District What if Aotea felt like an Arts District?
The area around Aotea Square is home to a surprising number of performing arts venues. I say surprising because it’s not often that you feel you are in an arts or theatre district walking around the square or that stretch of Queen Street between The Civic Theatre and Town Hall.…
16 Comments Traffic still at 2007 levels
Gerry Brownlee’s media release yesterday trumpeted up traffic levels in 2013 surpassing those in 2012 – apparently this is a sign of New Zealand’s economic recovery that we’re driving a bit more. Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee says increases in vehicle travel and vehicle registrations reflect New Zealand’s economic recovery and growing population.…
Development opportunities after CRL: Will Newton become a second Newmarket?
A couple of weeks ago Auckland Council quietly released a new version of its Capacity for Growth Study. The CFG study is an important and interesting document – it models the potential for future residential and business development under current or proposed planning rules.…
Stuart’s 100 #3: Plane Tree Avenues
Stuart Houghton’s 100 ideas for Auckland continues
3: Plane Tree Avenues Franklin Road, with its historic plane trees, is one of the most loved streets in Auckland. What if plane tree avenues defined all the major city fringe streets?
This could be interpreted more broadly, that a programme of street tree planting could be part of a wider programme of works to enhance these streets that play a key role for walking and cycling between the city centre and city fringe.…
Submit on the Draft Parking Discussion Document
Auckland Transport have had their Draft Parking Discussion Document (2mb file) out for consultation over the last couple of months, but this closes at midnight on Thursday. This covers the full range of parking issues around the city, including on-street, off-street and park and ride.…
Guide to economic evaluation part 3: What is agglomeration?
Debates over major transport investments often get caught up in arguments over benefit-cost ratios, or BCRs. In recent years, projects such as the Transmission Gully and Puhoi to Warkworth motorways and the City Rail Link have been criticised for their low BCRs.…
$212 million in spending on roads with few benefits
A couple of days ago I received a bunch of documents from an OIA request to the NZTA on the $212 million in regional road spending announced recently. I haven’t been able to look at them yet seeing as I’m away however it looks like I’m not going to have to go through them immediately as Rob Salmond is already on the case following a similar (but not exactly the same) request to the Ministers office.…
Stuart’s 100: #2 Whitcoulls Queen Street
Urban designer Stuart Houghton has set himself a personal project of coming up with 100 ideas for improving Auckland at the rate of one a day. He is Tweeting them here: @HoughtonSd
Discussing this project with Stuart he said that “I see the city is getting better and better and growing up fast, but everywhere I look as I move about the city I am struck by ideas big and small for how Auckland could be improved.…
July 14 AT Board Meeting
The Auckland Transport Board is meeting today and as usual I’ve had a look through the papers to see if there is anything interesting. Below is the collection of items or comments that caught my eye.
The rest of this year is going to see a lot of debate about long term plans emerge
Auckland Transport’s 30-year Integrated Transport Programme, the 10-year Regional Land Transport Plan and the Transport content of Auckland Council’s 10-year Long Term Plan, must all be adopted (as draft for public consultation) by December 2014.…
Environmental effects of an Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing
The additional Waitemata Harbour crossing is a crazy project for a variety of reasons. The blog has noted before that the project is both completely unaffordable and totally unnecessary because of the lack of the actual benefits when you look at the detail.…
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