CRL Designation Notified
A pretty important day in the process of seeing the City Rail Link through to reality today as the notice of requirement (the application for route protection effectively) has been notified for submissions. The process of securing the designation for the project’s construction, maintenance and operation is pretty similar to the process for gaining resource consent for a proposal – so is a critical hurdle for the project to pass through.…
46 Comments What makes people give up using PT?
Each year public transport patronage peaks in March – university students are back, school is not yet on holiday, there are typically no public holidays (except if Easter is particularly early) and it’s a 31 day month. However, the same is largely true for May and August yet patronage in March is much higher than those two other months – how come?…
Does Auckland really have a land supply shortage?
The annual Demographia Housing Affordability report is out – this time with its forward written by Bill English – and just like every other Demographia study it suggests that more land needs to be opened up for urban sprawl in order to bring down housing prices.…
Are the fares too damn high?
For most of the last year we have found ourselves somewhat puzzled by the stalling and even declines experienced by rail patronage in particular – but more recently general public transport patronage. This can be seen in the dip in 12 month rolling patronage totals up to November last year:
Auckland Transport have provided a multitude of excuses for the patronage dip over the past few months – some more plausible than others (they blamed the World Cup for some of the declines in August and November, even though the World Cup was only in September & October 2011).…
Auckland’s future growth
There’s a lot of regular discussion about how much Auckland is projected to grow by over the next 30 or so years – “another million people” being the common catch-phrase. The “response to Minister’s questions” included as part of the documents released with the City Centre Future Access Study includes quite a lot of interesting information about Auckland’s future growth and how realistic the projections are.…
Analysing station rankings
The railway station boarding data finally released by Auckland Transport the other day allows some interesting analysis of which stations have experienced the most growth over time. I’ve put all the data together into one place, building on an earlier spreadsheet:
In terms of sheer numerical growth, Britomart is by far the winner – with Newmarket, Papatoetoe, New Lynn and Glen Innes other stations which have at least 1,000 more daily boardings now than they did back in 2003.…
2011 & 2012 Station Boarding Stats
Back in June 2011 Auckland Transport released station boarding data for each railway station between 2003 and 2010. The results obviously show significant growth throughout the entire network, but particularly at some stations (like Panmure and Pukekohe) and less so in other areas (like Waitakere and Te Mahia).…
Bus real-time system getting worse?
Is it just me or has the bus real time information system got a whole heap worse since its supposed ‘upgrade’ over the past few months?
The bus real time system has always promised more than it has delivered. When it has worked, it is incredibly useful as you don’t have to always keep an eye out for the bus coming along, you have some sense of comfort that the bus really is actually coming and – if the bus is far enough away and there’s something nearby – you can pop into a dairy or a bookshop or wherever in the meanwhile.…
Intensification and the Rail Network
Included with the City Centre Future Access Study documentation released late last year were the answers to a number of questions that the previous Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, had asked in mid 2011. As well as requesting the preparation of what turned into the CCFAS, Joyce requested the following: “Finalisation of the spatial plan and master plan including establishing achievable growth projections for the CBD
Demonstration of a commitment to resolving current CBD issues, for example by improving bus operations and addressing capacity issues
Evidence of rail patronage increases, particularly in the morning peak, residential intensification and CBD regeneration as a result of current investment
Beginning implementation of large scale residential developments along the rail corridors
Implementation of additional park and ride sites, and changes to bus feeder services” There’s a lot of really interesting information in Auckland Council and Auckland Transport’s response to these questions, but for this post I’m going to look at an element of the third question: evidence of residential intensification as a result of current investment.…
Parking Minimums: a fear of Ponsonby/Grey Lynn?
In yesterday’s post about minimum parking requirements I noted that the only situation when these regulations have any effect is when the market wants to provide a lower level of parking than the minimum. In that case either the landowner relents and provides more parking than they’d otherwise want to; or they apply for a consent (usually at the cost of quite a few thousand dollars) and ‘try their luck’ at getting a dispensation. …
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