Another roundup to cap off your week, can you believe its already the end of January?
This week in Greater Auckland
- On Tuesday we ran Scott’s op-ed from Coalition for More Homes about what PC120 will bring.
- On Wednesday Jolisa took a deep look into some of the headlines about climate resilience and the recent tragedies.
- On Thursday we had a guest post from Threesixtysix’s Kasey McDonnell, on the Trams that build Wellington.
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.
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Stack the Station event
The lovely folks at The Future is Rail are holding an event to celebrate Te Huia this Sunday, February 1st 2:00-2:45pm, at Frankton Station. They also have a petition to the government in support providing continued funding for the service if you want to sign. Here’s the message they asked us to share:
On Sunday 1st February, we’re coming together to Stack the Station at Frankton to celebrate Te Huia, launch our petition, and show decision-makers just how much support there is for growing passenger rail in the Golden Triangle. Last time we held a public event, over 200 of you showed up!
Come along — and bring people with you
The most powerful thing you can do is show up — and bring your friends, whānau, neighbours, colleagues, kids, flatmates. The more people there are, the stronger the message. Please also:
- Share the Facebook event
- Personally invite a few people you think might care
- Encourage them to come along, even just for 30 minutes
Bike to the Beach?
Keen to bike to the beach? Bike Pt Chev is offering free secure bike valet parking at Pt Chev Beach, both sides of the best high tides on summer weekends.
The Saturday 31 January, bike valet will be available from 4pm- 8pm at Harbour View Reserve on Harbour View Road.
High tide’s at 7pm, perfect timing for dinner and a swim!
Full details and upcoming schedule here: www.readytoride.nz/biketothebeach
Event page here https://facebook.com/events/s/bike-to-the-beach/1196581235937427/
Congestion Charging Study
Congestion charging is slowly moving forward and a lecturer at University of Auckland has taken an independent look at the potential impacts.
Quantitative geographer expert and University of Auckland lecturer Dr Hyesop Shin believed if done well, congestion charges could encourage more people to take public transport, scooter or walk to work.
Shin, who was conducting an independent study on the potential impacts of different charging schemes, said the new legislation had the potential to reduce vehicle use, traffic jams, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.
“However, congestion charges could increase emissions, if people take detours and end up driving longer distances to avoid toll points,” he said.
“To avoid this, better public transport and active transport pathways need to be available, so people have realistic alternatives to driving.”
And where is the congestion coming from
The study found travel to the Auckland city centre took 50 percent longer at peak times on Tuesday to Thursday mornings and evenings, with Monday and Friday’s showing fewer cars on roads.
More vehicles were hitting the roads on rainy winter days, adding to traffic jams.
Most morning peak traffic came from suburbs immediately surrounding the city centre, like Grey Lynn, Mount Eden and Remuera.
Shin said residents in these neighbourhoods travel a fairly short distance into the city centre, but create severe traffic jams some mornings.
The Greater Gt North Rd
Our friends over at Bike Auckland have a review of the almost finished Gt North Rd improvements and note how it’s a role model for other arterials.
Great North Road is indeed a triumph. Even while not quiiite finished, the experience is a delight. I see many trying out the cycleway with wide smiles on their faces. I hope the businesses here take note of the full cycle parking outside shops and cafes. Great North Road is a more lovely place to be, and especially so if you’re on a bike, cruising along its wide planes.
It shows what Auckland can be, and it’s a case study for better.
Great North Road shows that multi-modal arterials are smart, logical, and civilised. It also demonstrates that they are relatively easy, fast and affordable to deliver. There’s really no excuse not to bring the same level of service to other key routes around the city.
Kicking off the bad vibes
A fascinating piece on The Spinoff about life in and around K Rd.
Life in Sarah Daniell’s new urban neighbourhood is characterised by dust, noise and chaos, as disembodied voices deliver messages to no one, machinery grinds and hydraulics hiss. But, she writes, there’s a weird kind of beauty to it, too.
…..
This is my new neighbourhood. A lot’s been going on.
“We have activated the alarm. Please evacuate the station.”
A fire alarm sounds. Disembodied voices delivering messages but no one’s there. They are AI-calm and anodyne in the style of the “others” in the dystopian series Pluribus. But these are real people delivering test messages in real time, says Auckland Transport.
I’m at No.7 cafe in Beresford Square, having a long black and watching the workers who are behind construction cages and forbidden to comment to an inquisitive observer. Everyone’s on script. At No. 7 they’re playing ‘No Sudden Changes’ by Billie Marten. “I’m the tugging at your sleeve … I am begging to believe.” Same.
First, the karanga in te reo, then English.
“This is a six-carriage train.”
“Testing, testing one, two, three.”
Testing times. If Auckland public transport is a desert, the CRL is a mirage.
Waitemata Station Neighbourhood
Auckland Council say the they’ve completed the first of three station neighbourhoods tied to the City Rail Link stations.
The Waitematā Station Plaza and eastern glasshouse entrance to the station are open, completing the City Rail Link’s first station neighbourhood in the city centre.
This is the first of three above ground renewal programmes being delivered around CRL stations by the Auckland Council group and City Rail Link Limited, in the city centre.
Chair of the Policy, Planning and Development Committee, Councillor Richard Hills, is excited to see another public space open to Aucklanders and visitors to our city.
“After the recent cleaning and refresh of the eastern glasshouse entrance, it’s fantastic that we have now met another important milestone – the completion and opening of the works above ground in this station neighbourhood.”
“This area is functional and stunning, in equal proportion. I’m proud to see it finished, ahead of the historic moment later in the year when CRL is up and running,” he says.
Testing assumptions about the bridge?
Business desk reports that NZTA are testing their assumptions with the market about another harbour crossing. Presumably this is only testing their assumptions about costs and construction processes and not whether they’ve answering the right questions or have proposed the right solutions.
Transport officials are seeking early advice on the second Auckland harbour crossing from contractors, as they test their assumptions about either a new bridge or a tunnel. NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) issued a notice on Thursday seeking advice on the megaproject it calls Waitematā Harbour Connections, asking for up to four major contractors or consortia to participate in an 11-week process.
A Review of the Mainlander
Our friend Darren Davis took a trip on the new Mainlander service between Christchurch and Invercargill and shared his review.
Apart from a few very minor glitches, the inaugural journey went very well and I was particularly chuffed to add Dunedin to Invercargill to journeys that I have made by rail and to actually use Invercargill Railway Station as a passenger.
Mainlander train. Photo credit: Glen Antony for the Mainlander.
The experience is a good mid-market product, positioned between Intercity buses and the premium experience of the Great Journeys of New Zealand trains.
But it was particularly striking that the customer demographic was definitely very much on the older side with lots of people with fond memories of the days when the Southerner connected the Lower South Island to Christchurch.
While further journeys of the Mainlander have been promised, as of the time of writing, no new dates have been announced. And of course, occasional one-offs train journeys are no substitute for regular long-distance trains priced as public transport, not as premium experiences largely only affordable to international visitors. The Future is Rail has a specific campaign in support of a revived Southerner train. You can find out more about their Southerner campaign here.
And if you’re keen to do this journey, I suggest bookmarking the Mainlander website where you can sign up to be notified of future journeys.
Some videos to check out
From the socials
Normalize putting up signs commemorating the date you made your street good.
— John Amdor (@johnamdor.bsky.social) 2026-01-26T16:49:36.771Z
lol i did not realize there is an NZ version of the famous nyc 'lunch atop a skyscraper' photo (this is from the 1950s construction of auckland's harbour bridge)
That’s it for us this week, enjoy your weekend!
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dumb question for the train watchers: with our only rail ferry currently on the way to the shipbreakers in India, are those old British Rail Mk2 capital connection carriages being used on the mainlander effectively stuck in the South Island now?
And does having a bunch of “spare” passenger carriages stuck in the South Island increase the chance of more non-luxury-tourist passenger trains?
You can still put them on a ship, you just can’t roll them off directly into the rail network.
Does anybody know if proposed congestion charges are likely to be direction agnostic?
For example, the NW motorway going Eastbound is pretty congested in the mornings.
Would a congestion charge on this route (and at this time) also be levied on the less congested Westbound traffic?
Hopefully, haven’t seen anything to say differently – as they’re using it as a cordon I thought? Especially the Southern, but also the Northern, congestion is often both ways. Similar in the afternoon peak the NWern city bound is often congested due to queues on SH1 (both directions).
Ah well, I hope the money raised is actually spent on public transport improvements.
The people who drive from Mt Eden to city do so for a reason. It’s 37 minutes by PT from Balmoral (Dominion road) to Britimart in the morning. It’s 10 minutes quicker from Albany FFS.
I live reasonably centrally and do use the bus to get to work in the central city. But when I lived elsewhere in the same suburb I had to do a mix of drive and public transport as the bus service was so bad – the bus could take an hour and I lived about 4km from Britomart (they changed the route about 10 years ago and it made it much worse). And it wasn’t very frequent either. Some streets not far from me now only have a bus every half hour at peak and once an hour offpeak.
Yeah they’ve completely ignored the central suburbs, the easiest bit to fix. The fact that almost all buses terminate at midtown where no one wants to go, and they all go via Symonds Street which is a big detour for many routes, and there are bus stops every few metres, overall your probably better off walking.
so… more bus lanes and less cars?
There are already bus lanes, that’s not really the issue.
My bus is the 25 on Dominion. You get to View Road in reasonable time, you can see the Sky Tower tantalisingly close. Then it turns off into a residential side street in the completely wrong direction with 30kmh speed limit and speed bumps, and after way too long it terminates at the Civic Centre ghost town 15 minutes walk from downtown.
Just to bang my drum some more – the 252 “express” takes 16 mins from balmoral to civic centre with no bus lanes. The 25 bus takes 25 minutes with bus lanes the whole way. The 252 would be even quicker with bus lanes.
Why route one of your main bus routes on a 10 minute plus detour for no reason? Just to improve the light rail business case? Or because they don’t give a toss?
Jimbo, the original reason is they relocated the trolley bus wires to View Road when building the Dominion Road flyover, and never moved them back.
Then the bus stayed on the route when the wires came down… and through the new network they did effectively the same thing, left the bus where it was. Part of that is not wanting to upset the people who catch it on view road, and part is the concern for accessing the university directly.
I think they should do it the other way, run the regular 25 straight down Ian McKinnon and Queen Street to Britomart, and run the special 252 and 253 on the deviation to the university.
The Eastern suburbs, Epsom and Devonport are likely to have heritage protection from a congestion charge. Charging will probably only apply to lower income areas because better-off areas have poorer public transport and a single-housing museum-suburb exemption.
Question. Do you have a ‘Backyard’ to say ‘Yes’ in respect of?
I think that ‘YIYBY’ would be the more appropriate nom de plume in your case.
I live in a 4-storey block of flats and cycle to work. I often end up watering my flatmate’s pot plants as he finds them too much work. Most of the people in my block of flats don’t own a car, and use their garage for other purposes.
In the suburb where my parents live in-fill housing has helped revitalise the local shopping centre, resulted in a frequent bus service, and helped make housing more affordable.
I once wrote a submission at work opposing high-density lockers in the basement on the grounds that world heritage protection was pending, having a locker had never been easy, and that more lockers would lower the tone of the basement area.
If Auckland had done what Paris had done over those 20 years, we’d be meeting our climate commitments already.
In other words, what the TERP proposes is entirely reasonable and feasible. It’s just that we’ve fucked up in the meantime.
‘Free PT fares for kids (5-12) scheme’ needs to make a comeback and increasing the age to 15/16 will make a tremendous positive outcome for youths. And we need to increase the MACR for youth from 10 to 14 (without exceptions), been long overdue. MACR at 10 is creating negative outcomes for youths in vulnerable backgrounds from ethnicity & race which creates stigmatisation/trauma for youths at really young age and hits low income youths the hardest. Theres a real need for both ‘Free PT fares for kids (5-12) scheme’ and increase of MACR current age to 14 (without exceptions) prevents crimes and its time brining legislative change! Or increase of MACR current age to 14 (without exceptions) as main priority. Reduces cost on low income households to afford in their children using public transport and reduces youth engaging in crimes which is very positive and beneficial for society overall. Most low income families currently can’t afford to buy their youths for indoor & outdoor entertainment due to high cost of purchasing Xbox or Playstation console and buying games in general. Also outside/inside school curricular activities like sports, arts/theatre or academic activities cost money to commute to & from venue location, in-which PT fares in Auckland are high for one single youth for a low income family in Auckland is unaffordable. ‘Free PT fares for kids’ definitely need to return if curbing the ‘Cost of living crisis’. Results in youth resorting ‘ram-raiding’ since youths 10-14 years old get bored and needing entertainment in their lives.
There’s a real need for more rapid transits(Busways & Heavy Rail) across Central Auckland area due to congestion and clogged up roads during peak which affects the buses running on-time and affects commutes.
There’s a real need to be ‘taxing more’ to startup rapid transit projects for Auckland. It’s not going to be possible to fund rapid transit projects with only Capital Gains Tax isn’t going to be enough to bring change and bring down ‘Cost of living’, Which is why there a real need for more taxes introduced in-order to raise ‘Revenue’. There’s a need to increase the Corporate Tax rate back to 30% or raise up to 35% or introduction of Pillar Two Global 15% Minimum Tax to fund a Dominion RD tunnelled Heavy Rail for example. Simply, creating more business tax-deductibles isn’t possible due to already placing deductibles on businesses assets and work related supples. Taking out regulatory requirements/standards will do very little impact or next to no impact. Only way to fund more Rapid Transit projects is to raise Corporate Tax rate back to 30% or raise up to 35% or introduction of Pillar Two Global 15% Minimum Tax.
We shouldn’t be placing any sort of criminal punishments on youth’s under 0-16 years and giving them criminal record! That’s way too young and taking away their fundamental rights in participating in employment later in life and being stripped of learn up-to compulsory education age of 16 learning secondary education, which requires use of public transport to participate! For far too long MACR hasn’t increased ever since 1961, it’s outdated and not fit in with modern times. The age increase is needed and needs to be increased from 10 years to 14/16 years old without exceptions! It takes away compromised right to a fair trial cause lack the cognitive capacity to understand complex legal proceedings especially if moved to high court (Adults court) for adult sentences, removes children from crucial support systems, takes away their rights from being able to participate in ‘compulsory education’ until age of 16 years old, later in life having basic numeracy & literacy education to gain experience/knowledge into ’employment’ and not be employed cause of criminal checks and lastly be able to fully understand the impact of their actions 10-16 years age.
If ‘NO’ to ‘Free PT fares for kids (5-12) scheme’ comeback, we should absolutely be making making MACR to 14 years old’s(without exceptions) to protect 14 years old’s from gaining criminal record at a early age. With it, establish a therapeutic care and rehabilitate help centre likes of ‘Childs Hearing’ in Scotland or ACT Australia ‘Therapeutic Support Panel’ not to escape accountability or responsibility but to learn from mistake and learn in more child-centered approach since youths 10-14 years old aren’t able to full understand responsibility exactly way of adult. Early intervention isn’t going to prevents crime due to education vs welfare, punitive “Shock” Tactics/”scared straight” schemes, early custody effects net-widening stigmatisation/systemic stigmatisation, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), inter-generational family trauma and poverty. ‘Early intervention’ has been proven to be ineffective in preventing crime being committed in Scotland & ACT state AU. Which is why they both increased the MACR age to 14. Which is why NZ need to follow suit and increase MACR to 14 (without exceptions). Look up on Google AI and you’ll find sources ‘early intervention’ is ineffective!
https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-03/ESYTC%20Report%20%28March%202022%29%20-%20Acc.pdf
thinks generative AI is a reliable source of information. Hahaha. That tracks for someone who thinks blasting a busway with a 80+kph speed limit is somehow more viable than street running, grass-tracked, traffic light prioritised 50kph light rail.
If NZ political parties was to re-introduce ‘Free PT fares for kids (5-12) scheme’, with increasing the age to 15/16 and increase the MACR for youth from 10 to 14 (without exceptions), it’ll be taking NZ in positive correction course, which is badly needed for youths currently! Far too many youths are being punished for being low income family income household, or youths ethnicity or, race. It affects how youths participate in society cause of the current MACR age, current status quo is out of order in-which needs to be increase MACR to 14 (without exceptions). Youths currently need to be given a fair opportunity, equal chance without fear of heavy punitive punishment in being able to participate curricular activities, compulsory education & later in life employment, right now youths aren’t being given fair opportunity in participation. Instead being resorted to being ‘bored’ and committing crime as a consequence, current law restricts youths participation means negative punishment. NZ needs to be increasing MACR from 10 to 14 (without exceptions) a priority!