Weekly Roundup 30-August-2024
Our regular Friday sweep of recent news on transport, urbanism, and what makes cities great. In our sights this week: stunning station architecture, mysterious ministerial messaging and musical chairs, the lowdown on low-traffic neighbourhoods, and bikes are the business.
49 Comments Throwback Thursday: The Great Auckland Transport Debate
Ten years ago this week in August 2014, with an election on the horizon, Greater Auckland (then known as Transportblog) co-hosted a transport-themed debate with the Campaign for Better Transport and Generation Zero – inviting speakers from the political parties to share their transport visions for our city.…
The Policy and Memory Vortex
When you start doing research into transport and urban topics and policies, one thing you realise is how messy and chaotic many government websites are. Given that these are (in theory) the most accessible version of the official archive, that’s a challenge.…
Northwest Busway Next Steps
Auckland has a long history of transport mistakes, and one of the major recent ones (as outlined by Darren Davis here) was to not build a Northwest busway at the same time as rebuilding most of the Northwestern motorway a decade ago.…
Neurodiversity in urbanism
This is a guest post by Shaun Baker. It originally appeared on his blog Multimodal Adventures and is shared here by kind permission. A necessary component of creating an inclusive and equitable city is accessibility. Designing our cities with accessibility in mind is important so everyone, particularly our disabled communities, can access and thrive in our built environments without experiencing any barriers.…
Weekly Roundup 23-August-2024
Greetings and welcome to another Friday wrap-up, featuring all the stories that caught our eye this week in transport, housing, and things that make cities great. Today’s header image shows the Mercury Lane facade of Karanga-ā-Hape station.
As always, huge thanks to our supporters.…
The Government Declares Total War on Localism
In a recent conversation, the person I was talking to outlined the purpose of central and local government in the most simple and clear way I have yet heard:
Central government is for nation-building. Local government is for city-building.
This was in the context of Auckland, so I would expand the local government definition to community-building, to cover those councils and authorities that are a little less urban.…
Speak up on the Emission Reduction Plan – by Sunday 25 August
The government wants to know what you think about its Emissions Reduction Plan for the years 2026-2030, the critical second half of this critical decade for climate action.
The second emissions reduction plan (ERP2) will outline the actions that we intend to take to reduce emissions in New Zealand during the second emissions budget period (2026 – 2030).…
In praise of crosstown buses: refreshing the OuterLink
Waiting for an orange OuterLink bus can feel like the old saying: you wait ages for a bus, and then three come along at once. The solution, which will be implemented as part of Auckland’s newest Regional Public Transport Plan (RPTP), is to unknot the loop in order to give the route a reliable beginning and an endpoint.
Road Policing Reduction
Enforcement is a critical aspect towards achieving and ultimately improving road safety. Yesterday Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government’s new Road Policing Investment Programme. While some parts of it are positive, others are puzzling and ultimately will see a reduction in funding for road policing.…
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