Removing expensive bus/rail duplication
The weekend election results confirmed that money will be tight for public transport over the next three years. The proposed Government Policy Statement cuts PT infrastructure funding quite dramatically and while PT services (subsidies) funding increases, this will largely be eaten up by repayment for Auckland’s electric trains and the increased track access fee.…
21 Comments Transport in the next three years
With special votes seeming likely to result in the Green Party getting one more MP, at the cost of National, and the chances of Auckland Central and/or Waitakere swinging from National to Labour being relatively (but not impossibly) slim, we have a fairly good idea about the shape of the future government.…
Thoughts on the election result
Things went largely as expected last night with the election results, although a few of the results (particularly NZ First getting back in) were a bit of a surprise. Here are the preliminary party vote results – with another 220,000 odd special votes still to be counted: The 13 seats for the Greens Party (and they traditionally go up a seat on special votes) means that Julie-Anne Genter will get into parliament, which is pretty awesome as we’ll have a transport planner there to put the tough questions to Steven Joyce over the next three years.…
The Election
After a comparatively short campaign, thanks to the Rugby World Cup, the election is upon us tomorrow. I have previously written about the transport policies of National, Labour and the Greens in separate posts so I won’t go over those again.…
Wellington Street onramp to stay closed?
There was an interesting media release from NZTA today about the Wellington Street onramp, which has stayed closed since the opening of the Victoria Park Tunnel on Monday last week.
The NZ Transport Agency has deferred a decision on re-opening Auckland’s Wellington Street on-ramp until after the Victoria Park Tunnel Project is completed next year.…
Council makes important funding decisions
Councillors on the Auckland Council are having a pretty busy month at the moment. Not only are they wading through listening to many hundreds (possibly thousands) of submitters on the Auckland Spatial Plan, but they’re also making really critical funding decisions about the 10 year Long Term Plan.…
Shedding light on Auckland’s population density
Last night’s post about Eric Thompson’s silly NZ Herald article highlighted one unresolved matter – the question of “what is Auckland’s population density?” I noted that according to Wikipedia, the urban density of Auckland is around 1250 people per square kilometre whereas Demographia states a density of around 2,200.…
Where to start?
I’m not quite sure how to approach this particular opinion piece in the NZ Herald today by Eric Thompson. There are just so many plain errors in the piece, so perhaps it’s worthwhile starting with a factual examination of some of the assertions:
Taking money from the $1.7 billion highway between Puhoi and Wellsford and ploughing it into Auckland so that Magda can shop in Newmarket and then pop across to Britomart smacks of pandering to city dwellers when most New Zealanders don’t live in cities and need to drive to get anywhere.…
October PT Patronage – more records broken
Much like September, the Rugby World Cup helped to boost October public transport patronage to some pretty impressive levels, especially for the rail network which had over 1.2 million trips, a new record. The monthly PT patronage report has all the details, and here’s a summary:It’s pretty impressive to see that we’re closing in on 70 million trips as our 12 month rolling total.…
The proposed “middle rung”
A presentation by National Road Carriers Inc (who seem to be a trucking lobby group, although not quite so rabid as the Road Transport Forum) to the Auckland Council Transport Committee last week highlighted a roading project which has gathered quite a bit of support in recent times.…
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