History of the London Underground
The largest transit system in the world began with but a single line, something to keep in mind when thinking about Auckland’s PT future: Note: The videos have not been uploaded very well and you may need to jump forward and back a bit…
6 Comments Peak Oil, a boost to Auckland’s economy?
I’m posting a link to a video of right wing economist Jeff Rubin, a Canadian who has an excellent record of predicting economic trends and author of the book: Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller.
Here he is giving a speech about how he believes in many respects the economies and environments of first world nations could be enhanced by Peak Oil.…
Cycling and John Banks
Auckland Cycle Chic has done a post on her blog about John Bank’s recent speech to the Go By The Bike Breakfast.
During which he implied the reasons cyclists are getting hit on our roads is that it is basically their own damn fault.…
New York Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
New York is finalising plans to create the first, of half a dozen BRT lines in the city, on First and Second avenues. The lines are not “true” BRT as they will not be fully grade separated or prioritised such as the lines in the first city with BRT, Curitiba, Brazil (or Auckland’s own Northern Busway) but rather similar to our green bus lanes only with stations to speed up loading.…
Puhoi to Wellsford: BCR of 0.8
Yes, the benefit to cost ratio has come back with a negative return as demonstrated in page 8 of the NZTA project summary statement http://nzta.govt.nz/network/rons/docs/puhoi-wellsford-project-summary-statement.pdf (hat tip: LucyJH): A BCR of 0.8 meaning at a cost of $2 billion dollars it will return $1.6 billion to the NZ economy.…
Beware the God of time savings
Here is a look at part of the Wellington Urban Motorway: So why am I showing a relatively boring part of the Wellington Urban Motorway? Well where this section of motorway is used to be 3,700 graves. They were dug up in the 1960s to make way because the time savings were too great to pass up.…
A look at NZ electrification
Late last year Kiwirail released some sneak peaks at what electrification might look like in Auckland. Here are some images of NZ’s existing electrification infrastructure from National Park on the North Island Main Trunk; Kiwirail has stated most of the electrification will be on a mast type system rather than a bar type system as in the norm in Wellington, it may look similar to this: This image shows the difference between a mast system and a bar system: Finally for those wonder how the train draws power from the wires, it is via a pantograph as seen here, this class of locomotives was recommended to be used in Auckland as part of the working group’s report last year:…
Good ideas from around NZ
Here are a couple of good ideas that add to urban livability and sustainability that I saw during my recent travels that I haven’t seen in Auckland and cannot see why we don’t have them.
Firstly Bicycle Cops: Come on, even the yanks have these.…
Auckland: NZ’s least walkable city
The title I’m sure is not a suprise to regular readers but after my New Year travels I think we can make it official. Here are some images from around NZ showing how far behind Auckland is, we really should be ashamed.…
Is NZ falling behind the US? Part 3
In the third installment, I’ll compare the development of “bicycle culture” in NZ and the US.
Many may be thinking with the National Cycleway we may have the leg up on the Americans in this category but as we’ll see many cities in the US are at the beginning of their own bicycling booms.…
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