Development update: September 2017
Despite it being winter, and almost an election, and house prices in Auckland having backed off a bit this year, there have still been a number of apartments ‘launched to the market’ in the last couple of months.
Interestingly, the eastern suburbs are finally getting some love.…
Rail reaches 20 million trips
Auckland has reached another significant milestone in its public transport renaissance and in doing so has smashed the government’s old CRL targets. We’ve now reached 20 million trips on the rail network within a year, almost double what it was just four years ago.…
Road safety in headlines
Last week the Herald ran an article about the worsening safety of our roads.
The number of pedestrians killed on New Zealand roads has increased by a whopping 75 per cent this year, as the total road toll also soars.
Ministry of Transport road toll data released this morning showed 244 people have died in 220 fatal crashes so far this year.…
Guest Post: A Visit to Perth, Western Australia
This is a guest post from reader and friend of the blog, Warren Sanderson
If you are interested in the design of cities and transport, for those of us in Auckland this is indeed a very interesting time. With the adoption of the Greater Auckland’s Congestion Free Network 2 (more or less) by the Labour Party we seem as citizens, to be reaching some consensus that Auckland has to well and truly ease off on further motorway development and play catch-up with public transport.…
Legalising perimeter block housing
One of the paradoxes of planning reform that legalises the development of more housing in established urban areas is that it typically makes it easy to build like this: While still making it difficult to build like traditional perimeter block housing like this: Even from the Google Maps view, you can see that there are some important differences between the first built form, which is in Royal Oak, Auckland, and the second, which in Prague.…
Some More De-Electrification Questions
Last year KiwiRail made the decision to replace the 16 current 30-year-old EF class electric freight trains currently in use on the North Island Main Trunk with the procurement of more DL Class Diesel Trains. These EF Class trains use the 25kvAC electrification between Te Rapa and Palmerston North that was built during the Think Big years. …
World-class, liveable or nothing at all – the upcoming Council budget
After nearly a year in the job, Mayor Phil Goff has finally got around to formally outlining his vision for Auckland, which unsurprisingly has a lot of similarities to his election campaign. This vision will become a key part of the updated Auckland Plan and sets the direction for the next version of the Long-term Plan (the Council’s 10-year budget).…
Sunday reading 27 August 2017
Welcome back to Sunday reading. This week: Land taxes.
In Newsroom, Zbigniew Dumieński and Nicholas Smith put forward the case for a major shakeup of New Zealand’s tax system. Sounds like it could be a very good idea:
Unlike any other products of labour (including houses), land is not produced and, therefore, won’t disappear when we tax it.…
Trains to the Planes
Auckland Airport Public Transport access is a geometric problem with a two sided solution. There are two immediate sets of catchments, East and North, plus a city-wide overlay then a region-wide one. The Airport is a natural terminus (excuse the pun), because short of looping around there are no destinations beyond the airport.…
Learning from Melbourne – Myki Lessons for HOP & More
Recently I was in Melbourne as I had meetings at my companies office there. While in Melbourne during my free time in the evenings I went exploring checking out the City Loop, Flinders Station and of course the Tram Network including the newer Class E Trams which were covered well in Patrick’s fantastic article Democratic Tin: Observations from Bourke St.…
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