Where and how will Auckland sprawl?
Back in August I commented on plans being developed to decide where and how Auckland’s urban area should expand. The Auckland spatial plan required that up to 40% of growth in the next 30 years be provided for outside the 2010 urban limits, which translates to quite a lot of sprawl as Auckland’s population may grow by a million people during the time.…
38 Comments What’s rotten about transport – the politics or the profession?
Over the last week or two we’ve highlighted that there’s something really rotten going on about transport planning and policy in New Zealand. Here are the highlights: NZTA deliberately fudge the numbers in a report looking at justifying a $5 billion transport project, by far the most expensive transport project ever proposed in New Zealand.…
Time running out to submit on the RPTP
A timely reminder from Auckland Transport that submissions on the draft Regional Public Transport Plan close on November 5th: next Monday.
Time is running out to have your say on the future of public transport services in Auckland.
Transforming Auckland’s current complex mix of public transport services into a mature city-wide network of connected, reliable and frequent services is a key proposal of the Auckland Regional Public Transport Plan (RPTP).…
Will something constructive actually be done about housing affordability?
I get pissed off at housing affordability debates a lot of the time. There’s just something slightly nauseating about right-wing commentators who usually couldn’t give a stuff about poor people suddenly caring a great deal about housing affordability because they think it’s a way to do away with pesky planning controls like urban limits and make an absolute killing out of that speculative land they bought on the urban periphery a while back.…
Confusion over the AT HOP card
One day I’d really love to write a post about the Hop Card which wasn’t dominated by the utter incompetence of those involved in its introduction. Unfortunately, today is not one of those days.
On Monday sales of the new AT HOP card went live (apparently) and from October 27th (this coming Saturday) you will be able to start using your AT HOP card on the rail system.…
Progress on the City Centre Future Access Study
I was taking a look through the very useful Franklin Live website this evening, which has video recordings of pretty much every Council meeting (though I wish the videos were on Youtube for easier searching!) and came across a presentation at the October Transport Committee meeting on the City Centre Future Access Study.…
Fairer fare zones
One of the most discussed parts of the draft Regional Public Transport Plan seems to have turned out to be the proposed fare zone map. My fellow bloggers Mr Anderson and Stu Donovan discussed the zones in previous posts, while today’s NZ Herald also quotes Labour MP Phil Twyford’s criticism of the proposed boundaries.…
The “North Harbour Strategic Study”
Another giant document that Matt L got in an OIA request to NZTA and passed onto me is all about what’s called the “North Harbour Strategic Study”. Basically it just seems like NZTA trying to find a way to justify spending a huge chunk of money on building more motorways, but before we get onto that let’s take a look more broadly.…
Northwest Busway Plans
Last week there was a report and presentation to the Council’s transport committee about the Northwest Busway, asking that a ‘staged approach’ to implementing busway be supported. The minutes confirm that the Committee did support this approach. It seems the main driver of the recent support for this project is the realisation that the northwest is planned to grow significantly over the next 30 years – with this fact being well illustrated in the graph below: The numbers are pretty massive, but that’s not too surprising when you look at the area in question and the changes proposed for it by the Auckland Plan’s development strategy:
One agency that seems somewhat far from impressed with the relatively recent surge of support for this project is NZTA.…
A welcome clampdown on ‘parking perks’
We spend quite a lot of time on this blog criticising the transport policies of Central Government, so it’s really great to finally have something to praise. Yesterday’s announcement that fringe benefit taxes will generally be applied to all parking perks is a great step in the right direction of levelling the playing field between transport modes:
The Government is targeting employer-provided carparks as it moves to tighten the tax rules on perks used as trade-offs for salary.…
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