Arguing for sprawl with “strategic misrepresentations”

A number of recent posts have taken a look at some of the “strategic misrepresentations” that people have used to argue for a sprawled-out, roads-focused Auckland. We’ve taken aim at some of the common fallacies, including: Auckland isn’t dense enough for good public transport – in fact, it’s a medium-density city that is misrepresented by Demographia’s flawed statistics A car-based transport system will be cheap – in fact, all of the initial cost estimates were wildly undercooked and the costs to build motorways have never stopped increasing Auckland is too congested to function – in fact, average commute times are a cruisy 25 minutes, well below many overseas cities.…
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Regional Land Transport Plan throws up a few surprises

Today the Auckland Transport board are meeting, I’ve already covered the board report and in this post I’ll look at the draft Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP). As a brief description the RLTP Sets out the strategic direction for transport in Auckland including how AT proposes to give effect to the transport components of the Auckland Plan and AT’s strategic themes within the fiscal constraints of the funding provided in the LTP.…
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An ode to oil

Crude oil is a fantastically useful energy source, and has become enmeshed in our daily lives. It’s used to make petrol, plastics, and asphalt. Oil products are used in almost all motor vehicles today, but that wasn’t always the case: The electric motor predates the internal combustion engine, and many early motor vehicles ran on electricity rather than gasoline.…
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Auckland Transport December Board Meeting

The Auckland Transport Board meet tomorrow and while it might be earlier in the month than usual due to Christmas, there’s no shortage of information. As usual here are the things that caught my attention. The closed session is once again packed with reports, some are listed as being due to commercial sensitivity and others to allow free and frank discussion with the information released later.…
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Default to Chaos

One of the factors behind the stunning 18% increase in rail patronage over the last year is bound to be the improved reliability that we’ve been seeing. With greater reliability people can trust services more and are much more likely to use them.…
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November 14 Patronage

The number of people travelling on buses and trains has continued to surge in November resulting in more than 75 million trips over the previous 12 months, the first time that’s happened in over 50 years. That means the number of trips taken in the last year is up by 5.7 million (8%).…
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New PT Brand on the way

Auckland Transport is to launch new bus livery next week that will eventually roll out across all buses in the region. Once complete there will no longer be the multi coloured mess we have now with every operator having their own competing brand.…
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