Selling Tolling Rights
The idea that our existing transport taxes will fully cover the cost of maintaining and expanding our transport system has long been false. Governments of all stripes have pumped billions of additional spending in to fund major transport projects like motorway extensions.…
15 Comments What really needs fixing at Auckland Transport?
This guest post by Tim Adriaansen, a Strategic Transport Advisor and advocate for accessibility and sustainable transport Auckland Transport is about to experience its next big shakeup, with items recently presented to the AT board and the Governing Body of Auckland Council covering how strategy and policy functions will start to move back to Council prior to any legislative changes.…
NZTA’s self-contradictory changes to SH16 Brigham Creek to Waimauku
A couple of months ago, NZTA reversed its plans to install a median wire barrier on SH16 for stage 1 of the SH16 Brigham Creek to Waimauku project.
The project, which officially aims “to improve safety”, was – and still is – midway through construction, and the decision to delete the median barriers from the design appeared to have no real justification.…
June-25 AT Board Meeting
Today the AT board meets again, and I’ve taken a look through the papers to find the most interesting items.
For those wanting to attend or watch online: Auckland Transport, 20 Viaduct Harbour Avenue, Auckland (Meeting Room 1.04)
Microsoft Teams link for the Board meeting on 24 June 2025
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 455 861 336 967
Passcode: fa3rG6p6 Closed Agenda
AT has been pushing a lot of items into the open agenda, but there are quite a few decisions up for approval in the closed session of the board meeting today.…
Revealed: 2021 draft Cabinet paper shows Labour’s last minute light rail switch
Over the last year, I’ve been writing a book on the story of light rail in Auckland between 2014-2024. A lot happened – much of it public, and quite a lot not – and the history of the project goes to the heart of our struggle to build things in New Zealand.…
Gondola Fever Strikes 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. Like the Otago Gold Rush of the 19th Century, its 21st Century counterpart, the gondola rush, has come to town in Queenstown.…
The (illegible) fine print: speed reversals hit train, bus, bike networks
The situation: Auckland Transport is in a lonely race to raise speeds on hundreds of local streets (over 1500, in fact) under the new Speed Rule. This is evidently by choice – other cities are taking a more considered and rational approach.…
As AT races to raise speed limits, strange cracks appear
Last week was Road Safety Week, which Auckland Transport marked by sharing a happy little video about safety at the school gate, while quietly beginning the reversal of safe speeds on 1500+ streets, mostly around schools. Strange times.
There was no media release about the speed reversals, but perhaps strangest of all was the missed opportunity to celebrate the last-minute rescue of (parts of) two neighbourhoods from speed reversals.…
AT directors at risk from speed reversals?
Patrick Reynolds is deputy chair of the City Centre Advisory Panel
With Auckland Transport racing towards risky speed increases at the behest of the previous Minister of Transport’s Speed Rule, all eyes are on the consequences. These include an increase in risk for everyone on Auckland’s transport network, and a legal risk for those implementing the changes.…
Pop the Hood: Are Speed Limit Reversals Taking Us in the Wrong Direction?
This is a guest post by Vinetta Plummer, Policy and Government Lead for Healthy Families Waitākere, West Auckland mum of two, community advocate, and school board member.
Written for Road Safety Week 2025, the post reflects on the government’s reversal of safer speed limits through a local, lived lens and explores how these changes undermine years of community-informed planning, raise serious equity concerns, and signal a broader pattern of rolling back evidence-based policy in favour of short-term economics.…
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