Do public golf courses “crowd out” public housing?
Last month, I took a look at the costs and benefits of publicly owned golf courses (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). A few key findings from that analysis: Golf courses are different from public parks, as they can only be used by a small number of paying customers
The benefit of redeveloping golf courses to offer a mix of new neighbourhoods and public parks could be as much as nine times higher than the benefit of the status quo to golfers
Publicly owned golf courses don’t pay their fair share of rates, meaning that the rest of us have to pay higher taxes.…
84 Comments Millwater Intersection Safety
This is a guest post from reader Bryce P
The safety of children walking and riding to school has been in the news this week with another crash resulting in severe injury while a child was walking to school.
Back in April, local Hibiscus Coast media wrote a story about red light running near some local schools.…
Impact of last weeks bus changes
Last week saw two big changes to buses in Auckland. In the city bus routes changed avoid the area where the first of the CRL enabling works will happen and on the Hibiscus Coast the new network was launched. At the end of last week Auckland Transport provided some information on the changes.…
Minimum parking requirements in Parliament
Minimum parking requirements have been getting some long-overdue attention at central government level after the release of the Productivity Commission’s report recommending their removal from district plans. Finance Minister Bill English has also expressed his support for binning minimums. So last week Green Party transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter – a longtime advocate of removing MPRs – asked Housing Minister Nick Smith whether the government had any plans to legislate to remove them from district plans: Smith’s responses were a bit evasive but there were still a few interesting points raised in the back-and-forth: Smith said that it would be complex to legislate to remove MPRs as they are in district plans rather than the RMA.…
The economics of heritage buildings
Last week, I took a quick look at the relationship between gentrification and the preservation of historic buildings. People often argue that preserving old buildings as they are is a good way of preserving the culture and community of an area.…
East-West and Gloucester Park Interchange
We’ve known for some time the East-West Link Connections is shaping up to be one of those projects that tries to crack a nut by using a sledgehammer. The thin lines that AT/NZTA draw on the maps make the project look small, but in reality, if built this project is going to be massive. …
“Is the Auckland super city out of control?” Computer says “no”.
Many journalists and central government politicians (mainly the ones who sleep in blue or yellow pajamas) have recently promulgated the view that local government rates in Auckland are “out of control”. In the video below, Paul Henry gives you a flavour for the fervour emanating from these corners.…
Sunday reading 25 October 2015
Welcome back to Sunday reading. This week, we’re starting with a look at the law of unintended consequences. At Vox, Brad Plumer describes how “Europe’s love affair with diesel cars has been a disaster“:
Europe’s diesel push seemed like a perfectly sensible idea at the time.…
Northern Gateway Tolls to rise
The NZTA have announced that the toll on the Northern Gateway toll road are set to increase by 10c at the end of November.
The NZ Transport Agency says tolls on the Northern Gateway Toll Road (NGTR) on State Highway 1 north of Auckland will increase on November 29 2015.…
AT October Board Meeting
The AT board meet next week and here are what I think are the highlights from the reports.
As always the items in the closed session. This time there isn’t too much interesting on the agenda with only the following items (non bold are my comments) LRT – Approval to appoint technical advisor – Hopefully this means we’re going to start seeing some more progress on this project soon
CRL update – not cutting any more station entrances I hope
Deep Dive – Major BT Infrastructure – This is just an item for noting to do with Business Technology.…
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