Why is our rail punctuality so hopeless?
A report going to the Board of Auckland Transport on Monday about the hopeless on-time performance of Eastern Line trains reminded me of a pet annoyance of our rail system – and that is how utterly pathetic its performance statistics are.…
45 Comments Petrol tax to increase
As expected, today the government announced that petrol taxes and road user charges will increase (by 2c a litre and 4.1% respectively), as of August 1st.
Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee has today confirmed increases in petrol excise duty of two cents a litre and an equivalent increase in road user charges of an average of 4.1 per cent.…
Freight and Driverless Rapid Transit
There was some good feedback on my earlier post suggesting a pretty radical change to the future of rail in Auckland, through the introduction of driverless rapid transit (or “Light Metro”) – much like the Skytrain in Vancouver, the JFK Airtrain in New York and systems in Copenhagen, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, among many other cities.…
The future role for driverless light-metro
Perhaps more than any other post on this blog, the one which really got me fascinated by Auckland’s transport future and convinced me I “wanted in” was a post by Nick R about how driverless trains – the kind used by Vancouver’s Skytrain system that I’m so fond of – could have a role in making rail to the North Shore far more affordable and feasible than perhaps we have ever thought before.…
What needs fixing?
Matt’s post the other day on the state of Britomart’s escalator and a piece of broken glass that had gone weeks without being fixed seemed to finally spur Auckland Transport into some action – with word filtering through that both things have now been fixed.…
Test your bus lane knowledge
Auckland Transport have been looking into ways to make it a bit easier to work out if you’re abiding by bus and T2/T3 lane rules – and they have a nifty a bit daft little game to help test your knowledge of the lanes.…
Paying a premium for walkability
Another really interesting article from The Atlantic Cities, this time looking at the price premium people are increasingly willing to pay to locate in a walkable neighbourhood:
Instinct probably tells you that you’ll pay a lot more to live in a downtown apartment, above a grocery store, next to a bar strip and within walking distance of your work place than you will to settle into a comparable home in a bedroom community outside of the city.…
Getting over our obsession with congestion – a necessary paradigm shift
A really thought-provoking article in the Atlantic Cities looks at whether we need to fundamentally change our approach to congestion:
With a few notable exceptions, transportation planning practice in the United States is focused on managing or eliminating traffic congestion. Regardless of whether planners are advocating for highway infrastructure to improve level-of-service, or transit projects intended to “get cars off the road,” the underlying assumption is that congestion relief is an unmitigated good.…
The Upcoming NLTP: trying and failing to put lipstick on a pig
There will be a lot of discussion over the coming weeks and months about transport funding – how much is going to be spent on what types of transport projects over the next three years. This is because NZTA’s “National Land Transport Programme” (NLTP) is in the final phases of being put together, and it is the NLTP which guides how NZTA spends your petrol tax and road user charges over the next three years.…
$59 million error in Wellington Transport Plan?
Well this is an interesting media release from Generation Zero, an advocacy group looking to raise awareness about climate change:
A mistake to the tune of $59 million was revealed today in youth organisation Generation Zero’s submission at the hearings on the Wellington Regional Land Transport Programme (RLTP).…
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