Guest post: carbon taxes and the NZ economy
We don’t talk about climate change on TransportBlog that often, although we should – transport is a big contributor to emissions, and the most obvious opportunity for NZ to reduce its emissions.
But most economists would agree that the best starting point for tackling emissions is to price them properly, so people and businesses are incentivised to change their behaviour.…
56 Comments Are New Zealand cities financially sustainable?
I’ve been thinking about an interesting and provocative article by engineer and Strong Towns advocate Charles Marohn. “Interesting” because it provides a novel way of thinking about the financial trade-offs inherent in urban development, including the allocation of costs between private property owners and the public in general, and between current residents and future ones.…
Where’s the Shelter
Yesterday my train to town had door problems at Avondale station, ultimately resulting in the service being cancelled and all passengers forced to disembark and wait for the next train. Along with all the other issues and frustration that usually go along with faults on the rail network, this episode had the added bonus of it pouring with rain as hundreds of people were kicked off.…
Earthquake recovery
The impact of Sunday’s earthquake and its aftershocks have been astonishing to see, especially the damage caused by slips along State Highway 1 and the rail line around Kaikoura. They are numerous and many are absolutely massive. I suspect the impacts of this quake will be felt for some time, and not just to the areas physically impacted.…
How should we pursue good urban design?
I’m not an urban designer or an architect – economists are famously bad at that sort of thing – but I do pay attention to the way places are built. Some places work well for people, and some places don’t. That matters.…
The end of auto top-up blacklisting
Auckland Transport have finally fixed what was perhaps the biggest issue with HOP, the blacklisting of cards when an auto top-up fails. Below is the email they sent to users of auto top-up on Friday
Great News: We’ve made some changes to improve the Auto Top Up service.…
Voting for Transit
While much of the world is in a state of disbelief over the result of the US election, there was some positive news to come out of it too. In many areas a range of transit projects/initiatives were also ballot. In total, there were 48 local or statewide measures and 33 (69%) passed, even though many required increases in taxes to pay for them and some required 2/3rds of voter support.…
Sunday Reading 13 November 2016
Welcome back to Sunday reading. This week, the US elections are over. So is the US, probably. If there’s one thing that history teaches us, it’s that countries taken over by authoritarian strongmen who are willing to subvert democratic norms and destroy public institutions to maintain power frequently don’t recover from it.…
State Houses and Social Housing (part 2)
State housing, or “social housing” more generally, is often in the news for one reason or another. Governments over the years have all had their own policies. In this post series, I won’t really be looking at the pros and cons (at least not much) – I’ll mainly be looking at some of the numbers.…
Speed Limit Changes
Our road toll is too high and over the last 12 months 330 people died on our roads. While absolutely that number is an improvement compared to decades ago, it is an increase on recent years with three years ago it reaching a low of 249.…
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