Gas Station watch
Gas Stations sit the very intersection of transport, land use, and the energy transition, so are interesting to watch. Especially in the city core. The three buildings shown here are all on the sites of former gas stations in central Auckland.…
127 Comments Photo of the Day: GNR
This post marks the return of an old format: Photo of the Day.
Recently I was in an apartment in one of those new buildings on Great North Road Grey Lynn at rush hour. Perfect day, the view was stunning, so naturally I whipped out my phone:
Turns out I caught a fascinating moment; compare these two details: a lone traveller heading west on GNR, and, in the distance: State Highway 16 doing its afternoon rush thing.…
Success City
Patrick Reynolds is deputy chair of the Council’s City Centre Advisory Panel. On the back of the latest Infometrics data release, the Council through its economist Gary Blick has been publishing a whole lot of great numbers:
For the second year in a row, Auckland’s high-achieving city centre has outpaced New Zealand in both GDP and employment growth.…
Solving traffic congestion with Richard Prebble
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy of reckons himself: Richard Prebble CBE.…
A Market Model for Intercity Rail
The North Island Main Trunk rail line between Auckland and Wellington is 680km long, mostly electrified, and low speed for intercity rail (80-100kph). It’s a major public asset, but woefully underutilised.
How can we work this asset harder, to deliver way more benefits for our country and our people?…
Mā te wā
As of today, I am resigning from all roles at Greater Auckland.
I am delighted, and humbled, to advise that my application for a directorship on the NZTA board has been accepted. I am looking forward to working with my fellow board members and all the staff at the agency and its partners, to help deliver this important work for the whole nation.…
Staging the Northwestern
As described here, Auckland is in the middle of a multi-decade process of retro-fitting a Strategic Rapid Transit Network (RTN) to the city.
The process used to date for this is best described as incremental. All of our current RTN began very much below the ideal standard but have been more-or less constantly improved since.…
Completing the RTN
As I state in this recent article at The Spinoff I see Auckland as around half way through a roughly 30 year long programme to retro-fit a complete Rapid Transit Network to itself.
Cities are of course never finished, and nor are their transport systems, but at the end of this period Auckland will have something new and powerful in its very structure: A complete city-wide top tier integrated Strategic Transit Network fed and supported by the Frequent Network below it: A complementary mirror to the city’s motorway and arterial road networks.…
Quiet Revolution
This post originally appeared on TheSpinoff, reproduced here with permission. There’s a quiet revolution underway in Auckland. Slowly but relentlessly transforming the city. It began early in the century, a big change of direction taken in small steps, and has been continued by every council and government since.…
Implication and Opportunity: NorthPort and the AKL rail network.
With the Upper North Island Supply Chain Study (UNISCS) starting to show results, I thought it would be a good time to examine some of the possible implications; constraints and opportunities, for the Auckland rail network, of an increased freight task to and from Northland.…
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