Will driverless cars make our streets much safer?
One of the great promises of driverless cars is a huge reduction in the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. This is because these vehicles will be able to stick to the road rules and react much faster than people can, avoiding the human error that is generally the cause of crashes and their resulting injuries or fatalities:
Superhuman driving skills
Once a computer model is created, then it’s loaded into the car’s brain and hooked up to the rest of the car’s sensors to create real-world model of the car’s environment.…
74 Comments Is it time to move past “travel time savings”?
In a recent post, Harriet questioned whether our business cases are being founded on a lie. That lie relates to the issue of travel time savings, which form the heart of the “cost benefit analysis process” that guides NZTA’s transport funding decisions.…
Help let businesses help with PT costs
With petrol prices on the rise, it is once again raising suggestions that the government should cut fuel taxes to ease the burden on the public. The National Party in particular are pushing this line, although they don’t say how the government could then afford to pay for current transport plans.…
Rates, regional fuel taxes and fairness
In a couple of weeks Auckland Council will make probably its biggest decision since adopting the Unitary Plan, by either voting for or against adopting the Regional Fuel Tax that was recently consulted on (twice).
In some respects the choice is simple.…
Auckland’s appalling road safety reasons laid out
Auckland is in the midst of a road safety crisis with deaths and serious injuries in the region increasing by more than 70% in the three years since 2014. That’s more than five times the rate of travel and three times the rate of increase for the rest of the country.…
Our Submission on the 2018 draft Regional Land Transport Plan
The council and Auckland Transport are currently consulting on the proposed Regional Fuel Tax (RFT) and the draft Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP). The RLTP is the 10-year transport programme for Auckland. The draft RLTP represents a significant improvement from the version that emerged in February and now is more reflective of council and government policy, as well as ATAP.…
Are our Business Cases Founded on a Lie?
Last year Matt wrote a post about NZTA’s Post-implementation reviews. These reviews are undertaken a few years after a project is completed and perform three functions: To see how the outcomes compare what was expected before the project was built
To explain any variation in those measures
To identify lessons that can be learned to improve other projects.…
Funded Auckland
Yesterday I took a look at what isn’t (currently) being funded over the next decade in Auckland Transport’s Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP). In this post, I’m taking a look at some of what is being funded, and there’s a lot.…
Unfunded Auckland
Death and taxes are said to be the only certainties of life but when it comes to cities, especially growing ones, perhaps it’s that they’re never finished. There’s always more that could be done to improve our transport networks. If by magic our 30-year list of transport projects were suddenly completed tomorrow, we’d come up with another 30-years’ worth of projects by the following day.…
Greater Auckland’s Submission on the 2018 draft Government Policy Statement
Last month the government released their draft policy statement (GPS) for transport. It represents a significant change from GPS’ of the previous government and is a positive step forward, not just in its funding bands but in its language too. Consultation on the GPS closes today at 5pm.…
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