Young people really are driving less
Another article on changing travel patterns – this time looking at the driving habits of younger Americans:
An April study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group found that between 2001 and 2009 the average annual vehicle miles traveled by Americans ages 16 to 34 fell by close to a quarter, from 10,300 to 7,900 per capita (four times greater than the drop among all adults), and from 12,800 to 10,700 among those with jobs.…
11 Comments New North Road bus changes (or why I hate St Lukes)
Auckland Transport have proposed some changes to New North Road bus services – which is a good thing as the current buses are an absolute mess. Here are the details:
What are the proposed changes?
It is proposed to simplify all services running along New North Road to improve frequency and reliability and to reduce overcrowding.…
HOT Lanes
No. Not anything about the temperature, spicyness or physical attractiveness. High Occupancy Toll Lanes are a fairly recent phenomenon becoming increasingly widespread throughout the USA. A recent Atlantic Cities article covers the introduction of a pretty large scheme, implemented by way of a public private partnership (PPP) in Washington DC:
The expanded roadway – two lanes in each direction, from the I-95 interchange to Tysons Corner – will be made of High-Occupancy Tolls, or HOT lanes.…
Another Australian PPP fails – will we learn from it?
Some interesting news coming out of Australia today, with yet another transport public-private-partnership (PPP) on the brink of collapse, due to over-optimistic traffic forecasts. This time it’s the Airport Link toll road in Brisbane:
THE operators of Brisbane’s Airport Link have gone into a trading halt, amid increasing speculation about the company’s financial future following much lower than expected traffic volumes…
…It comes as the operator struggles to achieve even 50 per cent of its forecast traffic volumes of 135,000 vehicles a day.…
The Steady Transformation of Travel to the CBD
Despite the critics, Auckland’s city centre is probably in better shape than it has been for decades. Foot traffic is high, new streetscape improvements continue, Queen Street is clearly still extremely “hot property” and the place just feels vibrant. Looking into this steady, almost sneaky, transformation of downtown over the last ten years or so, I went searching for what seemed to possibly be the cause.…
Tauranga Eastern Link – another white elephant motorway?
NZTA were pleased to announce on Wednesday that they are making good progress on the “Tauranga Eastern Link” road, a Road of National Significance that we haven’t paid much attention to in the past. Given our general disdain of the justification for projects given this title (Victoria Park Tunnel and Waterview Connection excepted) I thought I’d look in a bit more detail around what the Tauranga Eastern Link road actually is – and whether it falls into the category of pointless and stupid RoNS (like Puhoi-Wellsford, parts of the Waikato Expressway and most of the Wellington Northern Corridor project) or more reasonable RoNS (like the aforementioned Auckland projects and perhaps part of the Christchurch projects though I’m not too familiar with them).…
Turn roads into houses?
A really interesting article in yesterday’s Herald, analysing an idea put forward by a Parnell community group looking into ways of increasing the number of houses by taking back a few of the more pointless roads in the area.
The Auckland Council is being urged to use roads for housing as a way of solving the city’s accommodation crisis.…
Traffic’s declining in Sydney too – so why don’t we get it?
Auckland is certainly not alone in experiencing a pretty dramatic drop in traffic growth in the past few years – calling into question massive roading projects relying on massive traffic growth projections for their justification. We have pointed out similar trends in the USA, Canada, the UK, Europe and now – Sydney:
Gavin Gatenby, the convenor of lobby group Ecotransit, said the NSW government’s support of the WestConnex motorway was “about supporting private vested interests that have sunk billions into building motorways”.…
Empty San Francisco
Ever wondered what a large city would look like completely empty? Thanks to some clever use of Photoshop, we get an idea in the video below of San Francisco: How eerie the video looks I think is testament to the fact that cities really are about people and the sign of success for a part of the city is when there are a lot of people in it.…
Submit on the LTMA Amendment Bill
There have been a few posts on this blog over the past year or so on the Land Transport Management Act Amendment Bill. Looking through the “LTMA tag” I come across the following: Steven Joyce’s revenge? Big changes proposed to LTMA
Should NZTA be allowed to borrow for the RoNS?…
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