Should we charge for parking at Long Bay?
This article in the NZHerald highlights growing demand for parking at Long Bay during summer months, which is causing delays of up to 1-2 hours for vehicles looking to enter the park.
Before tackling this topic let me quickly describe a recent experience: On my recent holiday up North I snuck in a visit to Elliot’s Bay.…
61 Comments Tales of the Wandering Jew
As flagged in this earlier post, summer holiday travels always present an exciting challenge for car-free households, such as myself. I have just spent the last week travelling from Oakura Bay (Northland) to Castle Hill (Canterbury) and back again and wanted to share some specific experiences (good and bad) I have encountered along the way, as well as some general thoughts on travelling in New Zealand.…
An ode to demand-based transport pricing
As you read this I’ll probably be sitting on a flight from Brisbane to Auckland that cost me $750. Sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but I’m happy nonetheless.
Why? Well, at late notice I had the opportunity of working for 2 months in Brisbane.…
Postcard from Brisbane
As some of you will know, my first forays into blogging here on the ATB came by way of several “postcards” from afar, in which I ranted about my travels in Amsterdam, Norway, and Greece. It was the appreciative and insightful tone of your responses to these postcards that got me enthused about blogging in the first instance.…
“It’s the economy stupid #3” – Is there an optimal city size?
Previous posts here and here have discussed how the growth of cities can be attributed to some underlying economic advantages, namely shorter travel distances and economies of scale in the presence of fixed costs.
In this post I want to flesh out these economic factors in more detail.…
Alten and Symonds Street – Destined for a smackdown?
A few weeks ago I wrote this post on red light running.
In my experience the intersection of Symonds and Alten Street suffers from this fairly regularly, especially in the PM peak when vehicles heading east onto Alten queue back across the intersection.…
“It’s the economy stupid” #2 – Economies of scale in NZ
Why are cities growing? We explored some of the answers to this question in last week’s post. The main suggestion was that the growth of cities has hitherto been driven largely by our desire to minimise transport costs and mitigate the effects of fixed costs.…
Powering public transport in New Zealand
I recently authored a report for EECA titled “Powering public transport in New Zealand.” In this report we considered a range of emerging public transport technologies and whether they might be suited to small to medium sized cities in New Zealand.…
“It’s the economy stupid” – Taking New Zealand’s Cities Seriously
Most people who read this blog do so because they are interested in transport. But sometimes I do wonder if we lose sight of the fact that transport is (usually) a means to an end, rather than an end in itself (putting aside purely recreational travel).…
Auckland’s red light district – is Central Government the problem?
The title of the post says it all really. Nonetheless it’s worth elaborating on a few interesting angles to this debate.
First some personal context. As a car-less household, I spend a lot of time walking around Auckland’s City Centre. When I do I’m constantly amazed by the number of drivers that run red lights. …
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