Budget Day 2026
It’s budget day and while we wait to find out what the government may or may not fund, we were asked by The Post for some policy ideas we’d like to see or not see in the budget in less than 200 words.…
25 Comments Build this Brilliant Bridge
This is a guest post by Nicolas Reid, Technical Director – Public Transport and Rapid Transit at MRCagney and author of Transit By Design, outlining a proposal for the next Waitematā Harbour crossing. It is shared by kind permission (via LinkedIn), with some very tasty bonus images.…
Top 10 politicians who made City Rail Link happen
This year will see the opening of the City Rail Link project.
A transformational change to Auckland.
CRL will double the potential capacity of trains that can run across the network, provide new stations in the city centre (Te Waihorotiu, and Karanga-a-Hape), upgrade the Maungawhau station at Mt Eden, and connect to Britomart.…
When transparency might stop a bad project
Six months ago I lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman, appealing a refusal by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and the Ministry of Transport (MoT) to release information related to the Warkworth to Te Hana Road of National Significance project.…
The Road Toll of the RoNS
How many people have been killed or seriously injured because of a myopic focus on over-scoped highways?
This isn’t a rhetorical question.
The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) – the name of which is a political slogan – are a number of State Highway projects first proposed in 2009, by then National Party Minister of Transport Steven Joyce.…
Throwback Thursday: Holiday Highway Benefits Disputed (by Northland)
Over the last 15+ years, Greater Auckland (and formerly as Transport Blog) have been scrutinising the Roads of National Significance, and specifically the ‘Holiday Highway’ between Puhoi and Wellsford.
We’ve long been proponents of better, cheaper, and quicker-to-deliver solutions (than the proposed Road of National Significance mega-project), importantly for the safety issues on the stretch of State Highway 1 between Puhoi and Wellsford, but also across the wider Northland Region.…
The nation’s most expensive road (so far)?
If built, it will be the most expensive road ever constructed in New Zealand.
$3,500,000,000 to $4,000,000,000.
Over twice the cost per km as Transmission Gully.
And it is not a good project, by any measure.
And it’s currently being rushed towards construction, with a Public-Private Partnership contact set to be signed by July, locking in a generation of New Zealanders who’ll be paying the bill over the next few decades.…
Will 2026 be the year of the gondola in Queenstown?
This is a guest post by Darren Davis. It originally appeared on his excellent blog, Adventures in Transitland, which we encourage you to check out. It is shared by kind permission. Introduction
Tāhuna/ Queenstown is a year round visitor destination in Aotearoa’s lower South Island, known for its winter skiing and year-round adventure tourism activities.…
The elephant on our roads: let’s lighten the load
Yesterday, with the fuel crisis as a rationale, the government announced an intention to allow heavier vehicles on New Zealand’s roads. This includes letting freight trucks carry heavier loads, and giving them more access to more of our road network, more of the time.…
For the Avoidance of Diesel, and Doubt
Yet another (not unexpected) fossil-fuel supply crunch is here. It will continue to affect everything in our economy. And be painful. But it should also, at last, shift discussion and action much more strongly towards reducing our structural dependency on fossil fuels where we can.…
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