We are past the shortest day of the year, and hope everyone’s Matariki celebrations were good. To cap off the last full week of June, here’s some interesting news!
This Week in Greater Auckland
- Saturday saw us release a video asking ‘When will Auckland’s City Rail Link Open?’.
- On Monday Matt looked at the governments proposed changes to transport rules.
- On Tuesday Matt examined AT’s June board meeting.
- On Wednesday we ran a guest post by Brendon Harre on Christchurch’s transport situation.
- On Thursday Matt went through the new density rules for the Inner West train stations.
This post, like all our work, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack!
Winter Rail Upgrade
School Holidays are here and with it comes another round of rail disruption, though not a full closure for most of the network.
Significant upgrades across the Auckland rail network will occur over the Saturday 28 June to Sunday 13 July school holidays as part of the final push to prepare for the more frequent trains the City Rail Link (CRL) will bring to Aucklanders.
CRL will enable more train services across Auckland – not just the city centre – and shorter journey times. Upgrades and renewals will happen at priority areas across the rail network to get it ready for this change in 2026. KiwiRail will progress its ongoing Rail Network Rebuild (RNR) programme, which replaces old foundations under tracks and upgrades drainage, during the 16-day partial closure.
This work has been planned during the two-week school and university holiday period when public transport demand is lower.
During the partial closure, no trains will run between Puhinui and Pukekohe stations on the Southern Line, and there will be reduced frequencies on all other lines except for the Onehunga Line. The pedestrian crossing at Takaanini Station will also be closed to pedestrians.
Rail replacement buses, including an express service will serve closed parts of the Southern Line. Passengers are encouraged to check the AT Mobile app or visit the Auckland Transport (AT) website to plan their travel.
“We are only closing the Southern Line during the bulk of this upgrade period, as that’s the part of the Auckland network where we’ve got the most to do to ensure the network is ready for CRL,” said Dave Gordon, KiwiRail Chief Metro and Capital Programme Officer.
“However, we will run a reduced service on the Western Line until the last weekend of the holidays, when trains will only run as far as New Lynn. KiwiRail and our partners are always looking for ways we can keep at least some train services operating even while we have intensive works underway.
There’s more detail about exactly what the impacts are on AT’s website.
Councillor Down
We’re sad to hear that Councillor (and reader of the blog) Julie Fairey was hit by a car while cycling on Wednesday.
Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa Councillor Julie Fairey was knocked off her bike by a driver on her Wednesday morning commute along Dominion Road, resulting in a broken leg.
“I was knocked off my bike by a driver who made a mistake while dropping their kid to school. They didn’t see me, stationary and waiting to turn, and cut the corner.”
The collision occurred at the corner of Dominion Road Extension and Glass Road.
“I had amazing help from people nearby, who controlled the scene, routed traffic around me and called the police and ambulance who arrived promptly.”
“Multiple people stopped to check, the driver was in shock but wanted to help too, and of course the professionals are outstanding. Huge gratitude to everyone who gave and offered help, and to the police, ambulance and now Auckland City Hospital crew who are looking after me.”
Fairey is determined to continue to advocate for safer speeds across Auckland.
“This was a relatively low speed crash and that’s why the trauma, physical and mental, will be relatively low. A faster car would have made a much bigger mess, for everyone.”
“Our road environment needs to be more forgiving of mistakes. This driver didn’t want to hit me and wasn’t trying to break the law, but nonetheless broke my bone. I may need an operation and will need weeks of recovery time.”
“The cost of this accident goes beyond the medical too – it held up two bus routes at peak, numerous other road users, and involved police. I keep banging on to AT about how accidents reduce network productivity and throughput, to put it in their language. A safer road system, including shifting folks to modes that have fewer crashes and are lower impact when they do happen, is good economics too!”
We wish Julie a speedy recovery.
Go Wellington
On the topic of safe cycling, another case of if you make safe, lots more people will do it.
The number of cyclists on a main Wellington cycle route has more than doubled in two years, says a cycling advocate.
Wellington City Council’s monitoring camera at the Basin Reserve clocked 13,038 cyclists in April 2025, a 146% increase from 5286 in April 2023.
The camera is near the end of the city’s first fully connected bike route, from Island Bay to the city centre.
Cycling Action Network’s Patrick Morgan said the swell of cyclists coming through the Basin Reserve was due to the Cambridge Tce cycleway, which opened in July 2023.
However, numbers on nearby streets favoured by cyclists before that cycleway opened had remained steady, with a counter at nearby Tasman St showing numbers had dropped by only 1000 over the two years. This showed that overall, there were more cyclists on the road, Morgan said.
The advocate said the healthy numbers were due to the “network effect”.
“Single bike lane will give you some increase, but once they connect, people make more journeys.”
The Evans Bay cycleway was a good example of this, Morgan said.
Despite constant roadworks, the picturesque route used by commuters from the city’s southern and eastern suburbs had seen a 51% increase in use over two years: 10,300 cyclists in April, compared to 6800 in the same month in 2023.
Homes on Puketutu
Hot on the heels of the government’s housing announcement, this seems like a great way to provoke a discussion about our housing shortage and for a typology of housing. And as the Mayor says, would be great around some train stations.
Architect Michael O’Sullivan says the state of New Zealand’s housing crisis was brought home to him last year by something happening in his own street in Māngere Bridge, Auckland.
“For several months I watched a woman live between two cars two doors up. She was storing her clothes in one and sleeping in the other and occasionally a kid would turn up. I thought, how have we got to this, where that’s normal? It’s not good.
“The housing shortage, especially in Auckland and Christchurch is significant, and it’s dire. People are looking for housing, and it’s not just across Auckland, it’s across everywhere.”
“It’s that shortage that has prompted the architect to look at an overseas housing model he has experienced personally in Hong Kong – a vertical village that could accommodate up to 75,000 people. And he and colleague Sean Flanagan have created models to show exactly what it could look like.
…..
O’Sullivan is aiming to get a discussion going about what the city could be offering in 30 years’ time. His concept, which he admits is a “utopian vision”, provides 37 towers of around 33 storeys (130m), with 500 units per tower (around 2000 people) and up to 75,000 people altogether.
On Thursday, June 25, O’Sullivan presented his concept to Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, who told Stuff “the building itself is a great concept”. He says he could imagine a cluster of five of them around the Auckland rail link.
“I think one of the buildings would be particularly suitable for that big, bare bit of ground at Mangawhau, the new rail station at Mt Eden. I took a video and sent it off to Bishop [Chris, Minister of Transport] and said this is the type of building we should be talking about. But not necessarily for Puketutu, which would be fraught with difficulties. But the [building] design itself has got a place.”
More Homes
Council are celebrating that 100,000 new homes have been completed since the Unitary Plan was took effect.
A new paper from Auckland Council’s Chief Economist Unit reveals visible gains in homes being built since the city’s planning rulebook – the Auckland Unitary Plan – took effect in late 2016 with almost 100,000 new homes completed in seven years.
More Homes Are Being Completed
Auckland Council’s Chief Economist Gary Blick says this shift hasn’t happened by chance, with home completions up significantly.
“The number of homes constructed has climbed from 10,200 in 2018 to a record 18,100 in 2023, with 17,200 more in 2024. As of December 2024, there were still 20,200 new homes in Auckland’s housing pipeline – 13,800 under construction and 6,400 consented but not yet started.
“This is a substantial increase from pre-Unitary Plan levels, highlighting how more flexible planning rules have made a real difference in delivering more homes.
No Surprise There
Treasury have always had a bizarre and very ideological anti-rail stance so this came as no surprise.
Treasury advised the government not to buy rail enabled Cook Strait ferries three weeks before it announced it would.
On March 31 the government announced it would buy two new Interislander ferries to be delivered by 2029 to replace the current aging fleet.
It came in wake of Finance Minister Nicola Willis having pulled the plug on the previous government’s Cook Strait mega ferry plan named iReX in 2023.
The ships announced in March would be 200 meters long and rail enabled, which meant rail freight could be rolled on and off them.
New documents revealed under the Official Information Act show just 20 days earlier on March 10, Treasury recommended the government buy non-rail enabled ships.
The agency said the option would be cheaper while achieving the aim of the project.
“There are operational advantages from rail-enablement, but these do not fully offset the increased capital cost.”
…..
Peters said he did not agree with the advice Treasury provided.
“Their advice was so blinkered that it consistently presented its recommended solution as “cheaper” even when their own analysis showed the option we selected had the lowest overall cost and the highest economic value.”
Every time
Opponents of congestion pricing always claim it will lead to disaster and that somehow their city is different from every other place that has tried it yet every time the opposite happens.
New York City’s congestion pricing toll has cut Manhattan traffic delays by 25% and reduced gridlock in nearby New Jersey counties by as much as 14%, a new report says.
The Regional Plan Association report undercuts fears the policy would worsen traffic outside the city.
…..
Critics warned that the toll would clog roads outside the zone as drivers rerouted to avoid the fee.
But the report from the RPA, which advocates for the economic development and quality of life in the tri-state area, found the opposite.
Time lost due to congestion dropped 14% in New Jersey’s Bergen County and nearly 13% in neighbouring Hudson County over the programme’s first four months.
“Contrary to pessimistic expectations, the congestion pricing programme is not causing traffic to be diverted outside the congestion relief zone,” said Rachel Weinberger, RPA’s vice-president of research strategy.
“As more people choose transit, trips to Manhattan by car are averted, resulting in less, not more traffic in the Bronx, Bergen County and all around the region.”
Lights and the city
Great write up in the Spinoff about how lighting makes cities feel safe.
As a lighting designer, Tim Hunt has gone on dozens of night walks with clients across New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. Every time, he says, he learns something new. “I was walking with 30 women through an alleyway – it looked dingy and a bit suspect,” he says. He asked them what could improve the space, and they suggested lighting the doorways, so it was easier to tell what kind of space was around them. “As a lighting designer, I couldn’t have thought of that,” he says now. What’s more, lighting doorways isn’t called for in the guidelines consulted by city councils and corporate developers.
UK and illegal e-bikes
New report out from the UK on the dangers of ‘fake’ e-bikes.
Unsafe e-bike products linked to fires and gig economy exploitation prompt calls for online marketplace regulation, scrappage schemes, and stronger protections for riders.
A new report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling & Walking (APPGCW) warns of a growing public safety and fire risk caused by the widespread use of unsafe, illegally modified e-bikes, referred to as “fake e-bikes”, purchased through online marketplaces and frequently used in the gig economy.
The cross-party report follows a detailed inquiry that took both written and oral evidence from fire services, police, industry bodies, gig economy workers, academics, and regulators. It finds that the UK’s lack of regulation and enforcement around e-bike safety is putting lives at risk, particularly among delivery riders operating in low-paid, high-pressure environments.
And an excellent analysis by Laura Laker on the problem and solutions.
A month ago I sat in on an evidence session in Portcullis House, part of the Houses of Parliament, to hear about the rise of what we now term ‘fake e-bikes’ – illegally fast, high-powered bicycle conversions with throttles that are, in fact, legally motorbikes. This was part of an inquiry into the rise in e-bike fires and illegal e-bikes on the streets of Britain. These unsafe, unregulated products are not only risking lives through house fires but harming the cycling industry’s reputation and anyone who uses a legal electric bike, in particular their ability to travel with and insure it at home and at work.
Strong Town’s Chuck Marohn in NZ
RNZ Interview with Marohn, check it out.
Chuck Marohn calls himself “a recovering engineer.”
The Minnesotan civil engineer and urban planner founded the organisation Strong Towns to promote changes in the way cities are built.
Critical of the post-war development pattern, which is based around the car and requires a lot of infrastructure to be built and maintained by the city, Marohn says there is a way to build financially sustainable cities and towns that are safe and liveable.
Stats on EV’s
BloombergNEF has some outlook stats for EV uptake. It’s some interesting stuff, but unfortunately nothing on NZ, so we have to look at Turner’s annual report has some stats:
The growing demand for sustainable vehicles presents a key opportunity for Turners. We saw a 46% increase in our sales of lower emission electric and hybrid vehicles over the course of the 2025 financial year. This has driven the segment to 12% of our total light vehicle sales mix, a significant step up from 8% in the previous financial year.
Check out the video we made asking when CRL will open!
Have a great weekend.
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Is the Puketutu Is image to get support for intensification or to create an angry response to it?
Same thought here. I don’t think that the Hong Kong “Cities in the Sky” style skyscraper forests are as dystopian as people make them out to be. But we’re barely 5 years out from (are we out?) from Councillors and MPs scaremongering about 3-storey intensification.
The discussion is better served by people sending around images from Paris, or examples from developers like Ockham and Simplicty, rather than this kind of “how much could we squeeze in” stuff.
I thought they were inspired by Judge Dredd rather than Hong Kong. But if you want people to have an allergic reaction to intensification then show them this.
Its for a architect to show how visionary they are so someone with deep pockets will hire them on other jobs.
Having lived at the top of a 21 storey London tower, what counts most is including ways for neighbours to connect with each other and have access to open space – interior design and surrounding land/streetscape.
I see at saying a few things at once (good on Michael O’Sullivan for taking the wider public’s intelligence seriously).
On the one hand, the pitfalls of pursuing density without considering amenity, the consequences of failing to consider the wider landscape when designing new buildings (e.g. the wider discussion around Auckland’s many view shafts) and the dehumanising effect of imposing inappropriate scale on people / communities.
On the other hand, look how many people you can bang together on a comparatively small piece of land. Auckland sprawls (and is sprawling) over highly valuable, beautiful and productive land. This show how avoidable it is.
If the proposal were serious and to be taken at face value only then I think it is a terrible idea. However its plainly not and therefore I think it’s a great one.
I was in Singapore last year and visited the Singapore City Gallery. It was fascinating to see how they modelled the impact of new buildings on the surrounding area and the people that lived there. I wish we did something similar, rather than random, adhoc developments that in many cases are poorly designed and built. If we did density better then I think people would be less anti it. Link to Singapore approach: https://www.ura.gov.sg/Corporate/Planning/Our-Planning-Process/Smart-Planning
Hopefully big projects like at Carrington will start to show people how greater density can be achieved well at scale.
Was cycling around there last weekend, that many people with one road to the mainland? It’s also being refilled with ‘biosolids’ from the sewage treament to reform the peaks that were mined, before transformation to a park mid-century, think I prefer that future.
Nice views though: https://flic.kr/p/2rcjjk9
The Wellington bureaucracy seems to have a lot of anti rail cranks. The useless Ministry of Transport, where you might expect better, is just as blinkered as the Treasury.
And I wonder how many of them, after writing cranky anti-rail reports, then hop on a Wellington Metro train to get home. LOL
The so called “Infrastructure Commission” has the same problem.
I was constantly surprised by how many anti-rail people worked at MoT. It was frequently talked about as a trivial or even farcical mode. Often by supposedly pragmatic and evidence focussed advisors. If you argued for rail you were often treated as a delusional advocate. The same attitude was never directed towards the autonomous vehicle fanatics at the ministry who spent years on preparing us for something that was always just on the horizon (and still is).
This is your periodic reminder we are in a climate emergency, global temperatures have been over 1.5 degrees for over 18 months and we are at 1.5 in effect decades ahead of projections. 2 degrees now almost certainly locked and this will be here by 2035-2040 or earlier- See Dr James Hansens various papers to this effect.
What does this have to do wit hthe weekly roundup – plenty if we took it seriously. Hows about we build high rise and houses out of wood, not concrete and steel then we can lock up carbon, even be carbon negative. E.g. Puketutu island and turn into an ecovillage with various other initiaitives
Use nd encourage ebikes and get out of cars and use PT – support cycleways but not dangerous ebikes. Vote this ridiculous government out at then next election with their idiotic transport policies – really really really important we get these neoliberal and very likely neofascists out of power and put adults in charge not children. Yes congestion charging, yes more rail and rail enabled ferries and demand the resignation of “incompetent Nicola” who has probably cost NZ the thick end of $1B by cancelling the rail ferries by text, yes better urban planning. Etc etc
Thank you for listening to this public service announcement…I can post the Dr Hansen actual climate science by a climate scientist papers if anyone interested. This is not a drill.
RNZ reports the number of household gas connections increased by 18,000 since 2019. That’s nearly 7% more connections, to be hooked up to machines that could be burning gas for another 20yrs if the stuff lasts that long. The simplest way to reduce carbon emissions is to stop burning stuff. We’ve known this as a priority for 25years so why are people still spending money on new connections and new machines that perpetrates the crime? Who is providing the poor advice that convinces a new home builder/owner that gas is a good idea?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/thedetail/565260/the-double-whammy-bill-natural-gas-users-have-to-pay.
It’s the new townhouses. They invariably have a gas califont on the outside, saves space inside and cheaper than external electric water heaters.
Even our stove in a pretty new build (2020) uses gas… Great for cooking but induction would clearly have been the better long-term choice.
Well a better short term use. Our first induction top lasted about 8 years.
Whilst I understand the need to close rail lines for upgrades etc. WHY do dedicated parents have to shoulder the burden?
Why are office dogs who cannot live in the city because the city has built useless carparks instead of useful apartments for decades not burdened with this also?
Why are we, dedicated in every respect to mass transit, public transport, and teaching our tamariki that it is a superior method of travel, always forced to explain why we have to catch the bus in this school holidays, but on a Twilight Tuesday during the term we can catch a train to Parnell and walk up a treacherous muddy trail to spend an hour in the museum at night?
bah humbug
Actually Matiu if you turn left out of the station and go through the new subway to the city-bound platform you’ll see there’s a nice new paved path up to the museum 🙂
Awesome to see that the rail closure has stopped Te Huia services running for the entire school holidays again.
Awesome to see the amount of track formation rebuilding at Homai, Te Mahia, etc. That track was littered with huge bumps.
Zippo – The School holiday’s generate good ridership on Te Huia, so there is another two weeks of no income and reduced overall ridership figures, cosidering Te Huia’s 5 year trial finish 26 April 2026.
The work has got to happen unfortunately, but it is vitally important that this is taken into account when assessing the future of Te Huia.
Even in non-holiday months, I’ve no doubt these closures are impacting on people’s willingness to use the service regularly.
Julie has been leading the way riding a bike for transport (juggling life as a busy mum and hard-working councillor). It is sad and disgusting how many people in the Herald comments view a driver crashing into Julie as funny or her fault. It is really concerning to think of the drivers out there with no empathy for people on bikes.
The last thing Aucklanders need is for roads to be made more dangerous and less productive. AT’s actions in going ahead with unnecessarily wide- spread reversals of safe speeds is disgraceful and unethical.
As Julie commented here last week “AT just were not interested in moving on this, despite being given plenty of opportunities and excuses they could use. Sadly I think we won’t have a full realisation of the liability question until someone is hurt or killed. The advocacy efforts on this have been amazing, huge amounts of research and effort put in, all voluntary, and the stonewalling at senior levels of AT has been heartbreaking. I find it particularly cruel that many of the staff who have had to roll this out were those who understand the evidence, championed and implemented safer speeds.”
Really sad to learn of Julie’s injury. In that case, a safe road crossing would have been the best protection – that work still carries on. But it is right that the 30 km/h limits (not 40) are the safe option for streets where people on foot or bike have to mix with people in cars.
Speed limit or not, AT insists on 30 km/h by design for local streets (not arterials or collectors). This should come to Waikowhai – if the government allows redevelopment funding to continue there.
It’s gross that they even open an article like that for comment. They ought to be careful, hosting defamatory material can attract just as much legal liability at actually producing it.
“wasn’t trying to break the law” annoys me.
The driver cut the corner.
The driver was on the wrong side of the road.
The driver was not driving to the conditions, i.e. they were speeding, else they would have slowed more to not cut the corner.
The driver was driving with an unclean windscreen or without their glasses or they allowed themselves to be distracted and drove in a careless manner.
I have had exactly the same thing happen but I jumped clear enough to not get run over. RIP my bike.
Small traffic islands at intersections are all that is needed to stop corner cutting.
Julie, wishing you a good recovery and hope to see you back on a bike.
Re the development on Puketutu Island. I am with Edward Ashby, CEO Te Kawerau Iwi Tiaki Trust on this (from his Linkedin post):
Colonialism live and well. This guy and his students think it’s ok to design intensive development on Puketutu Island, take that to the Mayor, and launch a media campaign for public support, all without even talking to the Māori landowners (they own the Island not lease it – this is Māori land). Gross.
Plenty of other sites that they could have chosen for the design exercise. I wonder, did any students refuse to put their designs on Puketutu?
Does Edward Ashley seriously think that the Puketutu proposal is anything but as a means to provoke a discussion about density?
It doesn’t exactly reflect well on his capabilities as a CEO if he took the design at face value.
*Edward Ashby
So you’d be totally fine to see a radical proposal for your family island [insert any kind of private land] as a legitimate means to “provoke a discussion”.
Thanks
Yes absolutely.
I’ve never seen anyone talking about the success of the NYC congestion charge talk about the main problem with the idea – which the late Efeso Collins was very insistent on – that the downside is that rich motorists can pay the tax while poor motorists just get another hit to their quality of life. I understand that NYC is different from Auckland because the rich drive father than the working class (it’s the opposite here), but the idea that it’s just another regressive tax, working people in Ōtara or Henderson paying to solve society’s problems, isthe big hurdle getting broad buy-in on the idea.
I wonder if there could be targeted exemptions (e.g. discounts for CSC holders) that would allow the broader goals of behavioural change to succeed while reducing the worst impacts.
Don’t poor people benefit from faster buses and less traffic?
I have often wondered what the benefits of money spent on PT, Bus and Cycle Lanes have on Roads.
Surely the “Not on my Roads” group benefit in some way from this.
Anyone who has to pay to get a tradesperson in or uses public transport benefits from congestion charging.
Well I think this is an oversimplification, the idea that de congestion charging is regressive requires us to insist that lower income people are time rich. Happier stuck in traffic. Which is not even slightly credible for many holding down 2 or more jobs, or juggling work and caregiving. Spending a small sum to get to work on time to keep that job is likely to be a choice that will be chosen sometimes even by minimum wage earners.
Also assuming the charge is a new source of funding for improving transit systems or even just subsidising fares, is another way that people at every income point can benefit from road pricing.
Then there is the ‘South Auckland office cleaner’ that is often imagined, though mostly by others. All plans we’ve seen have no charges in off peak times, when these people are most likely to be driving to their city locations. Anyway, if they are driving at peak for work, see above, they’ll get their quicker, and it’ll be a business expense for them, if self employed, or their employer…
Remember time stuck in traffic, and wasted in underdeveloped transit services, is a cost for poorer people too.
If none of these benefits materialise somehow, then there’s always the opportunity to exempt certain socioeconomic groups.
Then there is also the option of making
If we would have had the option of making we would have trams on Dominion Road right now.
Cars are expensive which seems suboptimal for poor people (or for people in general, really). Bicycles are cheap and South Auckland is flat as a pancake so that should in theory already help. An easier to obtain license for light scooters would also help, it is a bit daft that you need to eat up the cost of a full car driver license to ride 45km/h on a scooter.
That said having a car in New Zealand is really cheap compared to many other places.
But also I thought the congestion charging would start around the city centre, and aren’t people in South Auckland commuting mainly to Manukau and surroundings?
With the Census being dropped we may never know where people are heading in the way we can see now- the Commuter Waka map has surely been very useful for AT and the likes in planning delivery ( element of sarcasm in that!)
More punishment for Te Huia. The School holiday’s generate good ridership for Te Huia, so there is another two weeks of no income and reduced overall ridership figures, considering Te Huia’s 5 year trial finish 26 April 2026.
Ok I want to see AT ambassador or security staff standing on the bus and train platforms at Puhinui directing passenger transfer between the trains and the rail buses and the airport link during this partial shutdown. Also how about a passenger shelter at the rail bus stop. After all it is the middle of winter for Trump sake.