November patronage statistics
The November 2011 PT patronage statistics report has been (finally) released by Auckland Transport. This is the first post-Rugby World Cup report so should give us a bit more of a ‘realistic’ look at patronage across the network than the September and October reports.…
5 Comments 020 Changes finalised
Auckland Transport has confirmed that the proposed changes to the 020 route, including shifting its terminus back to Westmere shops, will occur on February 7th. Here’s what the 020 route will be: The proposed 020X route has also been finalised – to operate as every second run during peak times.…
The future of transport blogging
I was sad to read, back in late December, that Jon C, who runs the AKT blog, is moving to Australia and won’t be able to continue posting on the blog in the future. This blog and AKT have always been quite complementary to each other – predominantly because I don’t have a hope in hell posting as frequently and getting out to take as many photos of developments around the Auckland rail network as Jon managed.…
Edge City: not the future after all?
My Amazon book purchases with Christmas money have all arrived in the past few days, leaving me with an exciting – but somewhat daunting – reading list over the next few weeks: When Oil Peaked by Kenneth S. Deffeyes
Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson
Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil by Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl
Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives by Jarrett Walker
Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities by Michael Southworth and Eran Ben-Joseph
Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau Typically, I’ve started somewhat madly by reading through the first few pages of each book.…
Shared spaces: traffic volumes matter
As regular readers will know, I’m a huge fan of the shared spaces we’ve seen rolled out around Auckland’s city centre (and in New Lynn) over the past year or so. It’s fantastic to see pedestrian freely milling around streets that were once the sole property of vehicles, but also to see a regular “eyes on the street” value that traffic can provide, if you compare shared streets to pedestrian malls.…
“Locking in” Vic Park Tunnel’s benefits
The additional southbound lanes over the Victoria Park Viaduct, made possible through the construction of the Victoria Park Tunnel, open to vehicles today. John Roughan’s NZ Herald editorial can barely contain his excitement at this prospect, largely because (he hopes) it will get rid of queue jumpers holding up traffic through St Mary’s Bay.…
What to do about parking?
An interesting New York Times article delves into what I’ve often thought of as the “elephant in the room” when it comes to urban and transport planning: parking. The article begins by highlighting the extremely high number of parking spaces available in many US cities – the fact that we give over so much of our city to the storage of cars (generally for “free”):
There are said to be at least 105 million and maybe as many as 2 billion parking spaces in the United States.…
Victoria Park viaduct – southbound changes from Monday
Changes to the lane layout of the Victoria Park viaduct will be happening on Monday – finally enabling the use of the entire viaduct for southbound traffic. This has the potential to provide the biggest increase in capacity from the whole project, adding two southbound lanes and (hopefully) putting an end to the significant delays experienced by southbound traffic in the morning peak most particularly.…
Embracing the transfer
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald highlights a key step that public transport system both in Australia and New Zealand need to take in order to both improve their usefulness and the cost-effectiveness of their operation: by encouraging (rather than discouraging) transfers, connections or interchanges (whatever terminology you want to use) between services.…
Solving the “Warkworth Problem”
One of the amusing things about me and the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” is that my family actually owns a beach-house at Mangawhai Heads and our trips to and from that house would very much benefit from this highway being put through.…
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