East West Link Decision
The Board of Inquiry for the $1.8bn East West Link project announced its draft decision yesterday, confirming the Notices of Requirement and granting the necessary resource consents for the project to proceed.
I had thought that it would be a 50-50 decision. …
64 Comments Economics of the East West Link Part 2
The East West Link Board of Inquiry is now in its eleventh week. While the Hearing is scheduled to wind up on 15th September, we won’t see a decision until the 22nd December this year.
A post back in June covered the economic evidence so far for the East West Link Board of Inquiry.…
Making Pedestrian Level Crossings Safer
A couple of months ago Auckland Transport posted a video of a near miss near Mt Eden station. It seems fairly easy to conclude from the video that the primary responsibility for this near fatal accident lies with the pedestrian. AT emphasised this in the accompanying press release:
The near miss happened when the woman stepped out at a crossing despite the warning bells and lights operating…
“We’ve checked the footage of this morning’s incident and we can see the woman checked to her right before crossing but not to her left and that’s where the train was coming from.…
The Economics of the East West Link
The East West Link Board of Inquiry is well under way, with the expert witness conferencing sessions winding up last week, and the hearing itself set to begin shortly. Expert witness conferencing is where experts representing the applicant (the NZTA) and submitters come together to try and find common ground and identify remaining areas of disagreement.…
Guest Post: EMUs Not Much Faster Than Steam
This is a guest post by Robert Finley, a qualified Civil Engineer with a lifelong interest in trains and their operation in both New Zealand and overseas. He has photographed steam trains on most of New Zealand’s rail network in his travels.…
Rethinking Airport Rail
At the Auckland Transport Board meeting earlier this week, I did a presentation on behalf of the Campaign for Better Transport on airport rail, making the following points in a “one-pager” to the Board.
1. In our view the Jacobs “SMART Indicative Business Case | PDF” report underestimates the potential catchment of heavy rail, we assume because of the arbitrary requirement for a single seat journey to the airport.…
Rail to the Shore Meeting Tonight
In case you missed it, the North Shore Rail campaign is holding a meeting tonight to draw out support from the public and Auckland Council candidates.
As the media release says, the campaign is really pushing for North Shore residents to turn up and demonstrate their support for a high capacity electric rail connection across the Waitemata, otherwise it might not happen at all. …
Additional Harbour Crossing – Is NZTA Following The Law?
Back in May in this post, Matt highlighted the NZTA’s strategy of designating only for road tunnels across the Waitemata Harbour, leaving any rail designation up to Auckland Transport. The NZTA have a total budget of $27m for the designation work, $14m million of which is an additional appropriation, approved under the delegated authority of the Chief Executive, to cover enlarged works at Esmonde Road and Victoria Park. …
Costs, benefits, and East-West Connections
How transport projects are evaluated has always been of interest to me. I believe that although the standard cost benefit analysis approach that lies behind the NZTA economic evaluation manual has its flaws, the resulting BCR is still an important factor in determining whether a project, or a particular project option, should proceed.…
Timeframe for Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing Announced
The NZTA have recently published information on the Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing on their website, including all of their technical reports, which are mostly from around 2010. These reports have been available elsewhere, however most people wouldn’t know they existed so it is good that NZTA have pulled them all together on the main NZTA site.…
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