Well I have found myself a new job, which is pretty exciting. I still need to work out the details of how to ensure what I say on here isn’t in conflict with anything to do with my new job, but as it is not related to transport I don’t think that would be much of a problem.
One pretty cool part of the new job is that I will be in the city full-time, starting next Monday. This means that I won’t have to be reliant upon my car at all to get me to or from work. I will be a daily bus user for the first time in many years. This is good in that I can “walk the walk” a bit more in terms of encouraging the uptake of public transport.
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Congrats on your new job. Hope it works out well. I hope the job is being head of Auckland transport planning!
Sorry Jon, not transport related. On the bright side, that means I can keep blogging!
not anything in the heritage field is it? Great that you can keep up the good work tho. I wonder if you have anything to say about public transport in the provincial centres?
The situation in Whangarei is typical I am sure – we have lovely new designline buses that no one except the elderley and some school kids ride on…I have yet to see a bus with more than 10 people in it in years. In my own case, I can drive to work in ten minutes at almost any time of day for ~$2 (excluding those externalities, I know), and park for free all day if I dont mind an ~8 minute walk each way to my office. Or I can catch the bus at the stop 100m from my door at 7.35am and arrive at the central bus station 35 minutes later (which is a two minute walk to the office) for $3 each way. Its ridiculous that it is cheaper and faster for me to drive!
Yeah it is in the heritage field 🙂 I’m to be the Planner in the Auckland office of the Historic Places Trust. So making submissions, attending hearings and the like to help better protect Auckland’s heritage.
Regarding provincial centres – public transport really is unlikely to play a much greater role than a welfare service for the young and the elderly, for the very reasons you outline. The biggest steps towards encouraging more sustainable transport in smaller centres I think is to focus on making it easier for people to walk or cycle to work. In a place like Whangarei I imagine most of the city is probably within a cycle commute – so focusing on developing a network of cycle lanes is likely to have significant benefits.
Unfortunately whangarei, while having a visible and serious hard core of cyclists, has a lack of safe cycle options, in part due to topography (hills, valleys and coastline meaning there isnt much space), terrible driving attitudes, and no political will. I am surprised though that there arent express buses between the satellite centres during rush hour (part of the problem with my own route is the torturous detour through narrow, winding suburban streets that are all no more than a five minute walk to the main road, that adds 20 minutes to what should be a 15 minute trip), a free or subsidised city loop which includes the CBD, the bix box centres, hospital and polytech (there is a cheap shuttle between the CBD and main big box centre), or the use of smaller minibusses.