The Pros and Cons of past CRL proposals
Late last year I wrote about the lessons we can apply to light rail from the 100-year history of trying to build the City Rail Link. In that post, as I’ve done before, I looked at a history of the various proposals for a rail tunnel through the Auckland’s city centre.…
54 Comments Weekly Roundup 25-February-2022
Kia ora – hope everyone’s safe and well this week! Header image courtesy of twitter user @bobbythekiwi. The week in Greater Auckland Monday’s post looked at the proposed Carrington development on the old Unitec land, asking if the plans are fit for purpose, especially when it comes to transport emissions
On Tuesday, Heidi looked at recent coverage of Waka Kotahi’s cycling plans and investment, and asked whether Aotearoa could do with an Active Travel Commission like the UK has recently set up.…
A Ferry Impractical Idea
Waka Kotahi’s latest current hair-brained idea to enable bikes to be able to get across the harbour shows the organisation is still wedded to a car-first mentality and is still not fit for managing our transport system in the 21st century.…
February-22 AT Board Meeting
Tomorrow the Auckland Transport board have their first public board meeting for the year and here are the highlights from their board reports. You can also watch the open session of the meeting live between 9am to 10:15am via this Microsoft Teams link.…
A New Commissioner for Active Travel
Waka Kotahi’s leadership have been defending the need for investment in cycling. Good on them.
At the Waka Kotahi Annual Review, MPs asked about the high per km cost that Auckland Transport uses for cycling infrastructure. In reply, General Manager Transport Services, Brett Gliddon, gave an excellent explanation of the difference in cost between reallocation of road space and building new infrastructure:
cycleways are delivered in two key strategic ways.…
Making the Unitec Development Fit for the Future
Back in March 2018, the government announced it was buying 29 hectares of land from Unitec for a huge housing development, with potentially as many as 2,500-4,000 new homes. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website clarifies that the Crown holds 26.5 hectares and is in negotiations to acquire a further 9.3 hectares.…
Weekly Roundup 18-February-2022
Kia ora. Here’s our roundup of transport news and interesting stories for the week ending mid-February. The cover photo shows Auckland Harbour Bridge closed last weekend when Cyclone Dovi rolled through, Image by David White, from Stuff. Thanks to Jolisa for co-writing this post!…
Is Hydrogen New Zealand’s Next Big Thing?
Image Credit: Matti Blume [@CC-BY-SA 4.0 Matti Blume] via Euractiv
This is a guest post by David K. David worked in the oil industry for many years in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and New Zealand.
Will hydrogen technology be a useful part of New Zealand’s climate response?…
Next steps for light rail
It’s taken a while to fully digest the light rail announcement from a couple of weeks ago. As I said at the time, and in quite a few interviews since, I have mixed emotions about it all. On the one hand it’s amazing to see the government willing to invest so much in Auckland’s rapid transit network – but on the other hand I worry the ‘tunnelled light-rail’ option has taken the worst parts of the two modes they looked at: the high cost of metro and the lower capacity of light-rail.…
Tinkering with rather than Transforming of our City Arterials
A tweet yesterday by Waitemata Local Board member Graeme Gunthorp highlighted one of the (many) problems right now with Auckland Transport, their lack of understanding of the wider vision and designing narrowly scoped projects.
https://twitter.com/GraemeGun/status/1492982290364116992
He went on to say
I am so angry.…
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