Yesterday Simon Bridges delivered a fairly major speech, outlining the National Party’s intentions ahead of next year’s election. Of particular relevance was him reaffirming that, if elected, National would cancel the Auckland regional fuel tax: If National is elected in 2020 we will:☑️ Repeal the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax☑️ Ensure no increase in petrol taxes during our first term☑️ Have no new taxes in our first term☑️ Repeal a Capital Gains Tax
— Simon Bridges (@simonjbridges) January 30, 2019 One term governments are pretty rare in New Zealand, with the last one happening in the early 1970s, but it’s worth having a think about what would happen if an incoming government got rid of the Regional Fuel Tax.…
This is a Guest Post by Stu Donovan
Imagine you are a policy-maker in a city, such as Auckland, which faces growing travel demands and persistent socioeconomic inequality: How might you apply your transport budget to tackle both problems at once?…
Friday saw Auckland’s entire rail network melt down following a major signal fault at Britomart and causing massive disruption. Mayor Phil Goff later confirmed the fault impacted both primary and back-up systems. Signal system failure. Both and primary and back up.…
On Saturday the herald reported the cost of the City Rail Link might have increased.
The cost of Auckland’s City Rail Link – New Zealand’s largest ever transport project – has blown out by $500 million, according to sources.
A senior council officer told the Weekend Heraldthat revised estimates for the $3.4 billion project have increased by $500m and “there are fears it is going to be over $1 billion” by the time the main contracts are awarded this year.…
Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Patrick was originally published in May 2016.
We are increasingly concerned that Auckland is in the middle of very poor process where by far the nation’s biggest ever infrastructure project is being forced along and at ill-considered speed without anything like the level of public participation nor detailed analysis that it should have.…
Good news yesterday with Auckland Transport signing a $100 million contract to build the Eastern busway between Panmure and Pakuranga. The busway is long overdue and will be a critical part of finally helping to serve the urban area of Auckland with the lowest levels of public transport use.…
“They’re trying to force us out of our cars and on to buses and bikes”, “why are we spending money on cycleways when no-one uses them”. These statements and many more like them are a near weekly occurrence from some of our politicians, media commentators and general public.…
On Monday Auckland Transport announced they were raising fares for public transport to help cover some of the increasing costs of running the system.
By law Auckland Transport reviews fares each year to ensure they keep pace with operating costs and so that the correct portion of costs is recovered from passenger fares.…
The fear associated with even temporary reductions in road capacity in Auckland is often so extreme that this report from Joe Cortright in City Observatory, Why Carmaggedon never comes (Seattle edition), is worth drawing to everyone’s attention. It takes the example of the closure for demolition of the Alaskan Way, a 3.5km, double stacked, 6-lane, fugly as, harbour-severing, 1940s fly-over in Seattle, to illustrate a well observed feature of city traffic.…
Last week I wrote about free fares and as expected, it generated plenty of discussion. The issue of fares is one that comes up quite often and while I think there are more important things we need to address, such as improving frequencies (especially on trains), it’s useful to look from time to time at how other cities set their fares.…
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