Weekly Roundup 12-December-2025

We’re now less than two weeks until Christmas Day, can you believe it? Our second-to-last roundup of the year, featuring stories that caught our eye this week.

Today’s header image is Canada St, courtesy of Jolisa.

This Week in Greater Auckland

• On Monday, Matt looked at topics for Council’s inaugural meeting of the Transport and Infrastructure Delivery Committee, including higher public transport fares
• On Tuesday, Patrick explored a specific example of how local control of local streets could be good, actually
• On Wednesday, Connor broke the news that AT is looking to re-open Queen St to all-comers overnight (and launched a quick campaign to restore sanity)
• And on Thursday, Tim asked if the current state of Lightpath is a metaphor for the state of Auckland in general. Spoiler: yes. It’s also a recipe for how we get out of the current funk.

This roundup, like all our work, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans.

We’re now a registered charity, so your donations are tax-deductible. If you’d like to support our work – and, what better time of year to make a gift for a better world? – you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack.

Better and better bike networks

Auckland Transport is proposing improvements on Green Lane West, which include slightly widening the on-road bike lanes, and introducing some sections of shared path.

Bike Auckland makes the strong case these must include physical protection of the bike lanes. This is a no-brainer: it’s a key route and there’s definitely space. And yes, the bike lanes should be extended west to St Andrew’s Ave.

Check out the feedback guide here, and add your voice before consultation closes next Friday 19 December.

Over in Ōrakei, things are cracking along on the final section of Te Ara Ki Uta Ki Tai, the great Glen Innes to Tamaki Drive Path. As captured in these photos by Patrick Reynolds, this is significant work and major investment in connecting people in the east right into the central city, by bike, scooter, and foot.

Out south in Māngere and Māngere Bridge, excellent vibes at last weekend’s Party on the Path inaugurating the new cycleways, which establish some sweet new connections around the area and beyond. (Photos by Connor and friends.)

In the central city, cycleways are taking shape around the Karanga-a-hape station precinct – fulfilling the promise of Project K. Down East St and up Canada St, and connecting to Mercury Lane, Karangahape Road, and Upper Queen Street. It’s all coming together. (Photos by Jolisa)

And on the other side of the Karangahape ridge, the Pitt St cycleway and the Vincent St cycleway link you through to Aotea Square. Our fave bit: this little bit of gorgeous greenway from Mayoral to Vincent, making use of a former turning lane. (To quote ourselves from five years ago: Slip lane, be gone!)

Plus, great progress on Great North Road: AT says work will be substantially finished by Christmas, with just a few finishing touches in the New Year. (Photo by Patrick).

We are still on track to complete the road resurfacing (asphalting) and most of the line marking by the end of next week (21 December) … Weather permitting, the road should be fully resurfaced and line marking completed over four to five nights (Sunday to Thursday).

Some of the cycle lane separators will go down at the same time. Night crews will install the rubber separators across driveways. Next year a crew will return to apply the green bus lane and cycle lane markings.

A reader has contacted us about the shared path alongside O Mahurangi Penlink, which appeared as a sealed path in all the early renders and flyovers.

So our correspondent was startled to discover that “the majority of the proposed shared-use path on the O Mahurangi – Penlink project will be delivered as a gravelled unsealed path (the section from Stillwater to the motorway).”

He’s just received this update from the project team, which sounds suboptimal. Imagine treating a road this way?

The shared path was not part of the original consented design, but was added later in the planning process. In 2024, the agreed design specified a chip seal surface from Whangaparāoa to Stillwater, transitioning to a granular surface from the Stillwater/Duck Creek Road connection through to East Coast Road. As this section is initially a much lower usage area, this approach reduces construction costs and allows for the granular section to be chip sealed in the future as the area grows.

Welly wheels on!

Two good cycling stories from Wellington: first, a report from Wellington City Council on the growth of ridership across the growing network:

Since 2022, the Council’s Bike Network Programme has delivered 32 kilometres of new bike routes across the capital. The result? A meaningful shift in access; 53% of Wellingtonians now live within 500 metres of a cycleway, compared with just 12% in 2021.

Cycling volumes are climbing too. Daily counts are up across most routes, with increases of 11–87% on new routes, contributing to an 18% citywide increase in cycling since 2020. And Wellingtonians say they feel safer on upgraded streets. Satisfaction reaches 75% in suburbs and 65% in the CBD where bike lanes exist but drops to 28% where they don’t.

And secondly, a strong proposal from advocates Paihikara ki Pōneke/ Cycle Wellington, for a safer route along the New Old Hutt Road:

Cycle Wellington is calling on Wellington City Council, Waka Kotahi and KiwiRail to improve the shared path on Old Hutt Road. People who will be using the soon to open Te Ara Tupua coastal path need a safe and attractive continuation of this soon to be iconic seaside path. This section needs to complement the quality and vision of the Great Harbour Way linear park around our beautiful harbour environment.

In the city, under the mountain

Two intriguing stories of exploration from The Spinoff. First, Hayden Donnell reports on how people are gravitating to the new, groovy and specifically car-free parts of town:

On Facebook, people will often post photos of Queen St from the 1960s, when the footpaths were packed with pedestrians, and the comments will fill with people saying we need to restore its four car lanes.

Te Komititanga’s popularity shows, if anything, the opposite is true. Pedestrians haven’t ditched Queen St and midtown because they’re yearning for the sweet scent of exhaust. They’ve migrated to the parts of the city centre where there are no cars at all. They’re hanging out on the benches at Te Komititanga eating a sandwich and watching an elaborately dressed man roll around inside a hula hoop. They’re having a beer at Wynyard Quarter, doing a manu into Browny’s pool or taking a Lime scooter down Quay St to one of Britomart’s restaurants.

And a corker of a yarn from Joel MacManus, about a long-lost slab of pounamu, that may or may not be buried somewhere on the western slopes of Maungawhau (or indeed, another maunga).

Down a long garden path, behind some suburban houses, there is a hole in the ground. Go down the hole and you’ll find yourself in a muddy pit, surrounded by jagged rocks. Crawl along a low passageway, then cling to a rope as you lower yourself down a perilous drop. There, you’ll find something special: an expansive, airy chamber, with bioluminescent bacteria sparkling on the walls and pōhutukawa roots dangling from the surface like delicate stalactites.

This is Stewart’s Cave in Mt Eden. Underneath Auckland’s streets there are hundreds of caves like this formed by ancient lava flows from the city’s volcanic cones. In one of them, some say, there is buried treasure.

Karangahape Road Buzz

Is Karangahape Road doing okay, asks Emma Gleason in The Spinoff, covering a lot of angles and talking to all sorts of businesses along the strip. We liked this from Jamey Holloway, general manager of the K’Road Business Association, on the power of closing the road to traffic and opening it to people:

“I think what The Others Way showed is that with the right creative approach you can do things that you wouldn’t have thought were possible.” Like close down a major arterial for an event. Holloway thinks Karangahape Road should close six to eight times a year for a wide variety of events. “That’s the vision.”

In a sign of confidence, Crushes is moving into the corner shop on Pitt St, which used to be O’Malley’s Menswear:

It is an end and beginning for Crushes, which has stocked vintage and second-hand clothing alongside NZ-made homewares, art and slow fashion since its beginnings in 2011 (Hope opened the first location with Sarah Firmston in 2013).

The new space, which Hope estimates is six times bigger than their last, will more closely resemble that of a department store.

And just down the road, the company that owns retailers such as Farmers, Whitcoulls and Pascoes are buying up the former Beca building.

A company owned by billionaire retailers Anne and David Norman is buying Auckland’s ex-Beca headquarters, with David Norman citing the benefits of being near the new $5.5 billion underground City Rail Link as one of the reasons for the purchase.

The building at 21 Pitt St has been empty for months after Beca left for Precinct Properties’ new Wynyard Quarter building.

Norman cited buses and trains as a reason why the business would buy.

We believe that the City Rail Link will be a game-changer with the Karanga-a-Hape station only metres away from the building. This will encourage the use of public transport,” David Norman said today.

Likewise, being on major bus routes, particularly from the west, was a big advantage, he said.

Safety and Productivity

Auckland University’s Tim Welch has another great piece, this time on the cost of disruption from crashes.

Crashes on major roads hit more than just the people involved. Thousands of other drivers get caught in the delays that spread across the network.

Traffic engineering consultancy Flow Transportation Specialists recently worked out these network delay costs for Auckland Transport for the first time.

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A multi-vehicle crash on Auckland’s motorway network generates between $1.4 million and $3.5 million in network delay costs. Even a serious crash on an arterial road can cost $26,000 to $37,000 in lost time across all affected road users.

When applied across Auckland’s crash data, network delays add roughly $195 million to the region’s crash costs, a 2.2% increase over conventional estimates.

These costs matter to the debate over the current government’s rollback of its predecessor’s speed reductions. The claim is that moving traffic faster will boost productivity and grow the economy.

But there’s a problem with this logic. It counts time saved from higher speeds as pure economic gain, while ignoring the time lost when those higher speeds increase crash frequency and severity.

Bucking the speed reversal trend is SH25 north of Thames.

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) is pumping the brakes and reducing speed limits on several sections of a popular holiday route in time for Christmas.

Four sections of State Highway 25 will drop to 50km/h from 80 or 70km/h.

Waka Kotahi said there were 982 submissions on the speed review in the Coromandel region, and the majority saw benefits in lowering the speed limits.

It said the new speed limits will kick in ahead of the summer holiday peak.

A look at how well Helsinki has done at lowering road deaths.

This past summer, Helsinki made an astonishing announcement: as of August, the Finnish capital went an entire year without any traffic deaths. Not a single pedestrian, cyclist or driver died on the city’s roads. Not. One.

And this wasn’t an outlier year. Helsinki’s traffic deaths have been steadily declining for decades.

Lower speed limits and income-based speeding fines helped the city get to this point. Maybe others should give this a try.

A study from Cornell University reveals another benefit of (de)congestion pricing in New York Cty: air quality improved, not just in the tolled area, but beyond. Smoother commutes, fewer crashes, revenue for the city, less honking, cleaner air everywhere… what’s not to like?

Since New York City introduced congestion pricing in January 2025, the state has heralded significant reductions in traffic and rush hour delays, fewer crashes and noise complaints, and toll revenue projected to hit $500 million by the end of the year.

Now, Cornell researchers have tallied the environmental benefits. In the first six months of the program, air pollution – in the form of particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller – dropped by 22% in the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ), which encompasses all local streets and avenues at or below 60th Street in Manhattan. The team also reported declines across the city’s five boroughs and surrounding suburbs.

The real costs of More RoNS

Former Wellington Councillor Iona Pannett has written about the proposed Wellingtion SH1 improvements including a second Mt Victoria tunnel.

It is the country’s single most expensive Road of National Significance (RoNS), with the lowest benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) at 0.6-1.2. In other words, there are likely to be more costs than benefits.

The Government has also acknowledged that it doesn’t have enough money to pay for all the roads it wants, currently costed at up to $56b, so hard choices will have to be made between projects and regions.

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Experience with other highway projects shows that the costs of this highway are highly likely to rise significantly once design work is completed, to the tune of many millions if not a billion or two. For example, the cost of Transmission Gully blew out by well over 47%. It is thus likely that all the tools being looked at will need to be used to pay for this highway – a potentially unpleasant surprise for residents and businesses.

And Wellington group A City for People has put out a great piece on why Cities need infrastructure to grow, but Roads of National Significance ain’t it:

Wellington needs more homes, in the right places. Our city is growing and we want to welcome new neighbours. City for People welcomes investment in high-quality infrastructure, so that we can build more homes. Wellington needs a transport network that serves life in the city rather than undermining it. It needs frequent and reliable buses, it needs cycle paths, and it needs footpaths. Better public and active transport options means more people can live in the heart of the city without needing a car.

But instead of investing in the infrastructure we need, the government wants to expand the state highway that cuts through the city with two new tunnels and a flyover into Hataitai. We think this is a bad idea. Some friends of the City for People campaign have put together information to help you take action, which we’re sharing with you because this matters for the future of our city.

New ticketing system off to a flying start

The new National Ticketing System was launched just over a month ago and The Press reports:

More than 100,000 contactless payments have been made by bus and ferry users in Greater Christchurch in the first month since the new contactless ticketing system was introduced.

Launched on November 10, Motu Move is a new national payment system that will eventually be used on public transport all across the country. Canterbury is the first region to use Motu Move and the system is being rolled out in stages.

More than 20,000 bus and ferry users have used the new system, with over 27% of adults who pay a non-concession adult fare choosing to use contactless payments.

What to do with all our poo

The Post reports:

For a decade, Watercare has been telling the public that it is “rehabilitating” and “restoring” the once-quarried Puketutu Island in Auckland’s Manukau Harbour. What made that PR narrative so attractive was that they were doing it with a waste product – human faeces.

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It turns out that, hidden behind several layers of gates and fences, and atop the island’s maunga is what appears to be a full-scale landfill, with scores of diggers and trucks burying what is a “seriously” toxic material.

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Metropolitan Auckland produces 400 tonnes of “biosolids” a day, and the big hole on Puketutu we’ve been dumping it into is getting full, Williams told the Sunday Star-Times.

Within the next 10 years, the city is going to need to find a new repository, and any solution is going to require at least that long to get built. It means a conversation “urgently” needs to be held with Aucklanders, said Williams.

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At this stage, she said, there are two realistic options. Either another landfill is built in a new location, or the city builds an incineration plant, which would be the first of its kind in New Zealand.

Seasonal gift corner

A great guide from Bike Auckland for the bike-lovers in your life.

Emily Writes’ gift guide is full of interesting locally made goodies.

The Spinoff has a guide to gifts made by Māori and Pasifika artists

And we’re now a registered charity, if your thoughts turn towards donations to a good cause.

That’s us for the week – enjoy your Friday and have a great weekend!

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