Establishing a Carbon Neutral Government Programme

Featured image: ÖBB Nightjet, image from Lucas via Wikipedia (Creative Commons) This is a guest post by Paul Callister. In March 2021 the government released the cabinet paper Leading the way: Establishing a Carbon Neutral Government Programme. The paper states that the government “must show leadership to reduce its own emissions, in order to demonstrate what is possible to other sectors in the New Zealand economy.”…
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DIY Safety

Tactical urbanism is in the air at the moment. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, tactical urbanism is a design strategy that involves testing changes to spaces temporarily before permanent solutions are built. It’s a cost-effective way of trying things out without many expensive hours of design, planning and construction.…
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Is Driving the new smoking?

Last week I reported on the Ministry of Transport’s ‘green paper’ which outlines some potential policies and pathways to a net zero emissions from transport by 2050. Of the four potential pathways it suggests, only one, Pathway 4, meets the targets set out by the Climate Change Commission.…
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Weekly Roundup – 21-May-21

Here’s our weekly Roundup. On display this week were two stark examples of cause and effect: The vacuum of political leadership, and its consequence. Queen St Saga Last week the council launched a surprise and very quiet consultation which proposed changing the design of improvements to give in to the group pushing for it to be more focused on cars.…
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The Challenges of Working in the Road Corridor

This is a guest post by Jack Thompson. Jack is an engineer who has worked on civil construction sites in Canterbury, Waikato and Auckland. He writes in a personal capacity. Why are the roadworks taking so long? A previous guest post on Greater Auckland did an excellent job of breaking down why Temporary Traffic Management (TTM) is the way it is and the effort that goes into planning it.…
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A shuttle for the Onehunga Branch Line?

This post was first published by Nicolas Reid on his Linked In page. The Onehunga branch was Auckland’s first railway line, running from the port of Onehunga on the Manukau harbour to the port of Auckland on the Waitemata. Despite being primarily a freight link for steamers coming up the west coast and the Waikato river, it had a long history of carrying people until the last passenger service ran in 1973.…
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