Northern Expressway Boondoggle
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has been soaring high with his hubris of getting on and building motorways, but some uncomfortable realities are starting to creep in.
Back in July he announced that the government was pushing on with a Northland Expressway using an “accelerated delivery strategy”:
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.…
83 Comments Could outdoor dining revitalise Queen Street?
This is a guest post by Ben van Bruggen of The Urban Room,.An earlier version of this post appeared on LinkedIn. All images are by Ben. Have you noticed that there’s almost nowhere on Queen Street that invites you to stop, sit outside and enjoy a coffee, let alone a meal?…
Satisfying the Minister’s Speed Obsession
The Minister of Transport’s speed obsession has this week resulted in two new consultations for 110km/h speed limits, one in Auckland and one in Christchurch. There has also been final approval for the Kapiti Expressway to move to 110km/h following an earlier consultation.…
What if we freed up our streets, again?
This guest post is by Tommy de Silva, a local rangatahi and freelance writer who is passionate about making the urban fabric of Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland more people-focused and sustainable. New Zealand’s March-April 2020 Level 4 Covid response (aka “lockdown”) was somehow both the best and worst six weeks of my life.…
Container trucks on local streets: why take the risk?
This is a guest post by Charmaine Vaughan, who came to transport advocacy via her local Residents Association and a comms role at Bike Auckland. Her enthusiasm to make local streets safer for all is shared by her son Dylan Vaughan, a budding “urban nerd” who provided much of the research for this post.…
Road Policing Reduction
Enforcement is a critical aspect towards achieving and ultimately improving road safety. Yesterday Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government’s new Road Policing Investment Programme. While some parts of it are positive, others are puzzling and ultimately will see a reduction in funding for road policing.…
Congestion Pricing to move forward
Yesterday, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced some progress on congestion pricing and it’s a mix of good, bad and ugly.
The Government will introduce legislation this year to enable time of use schemes to be developed to reduce travel times on our busiest roads and boost economic growth, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.…
Road deaths are falling – let’s keep doing that
There’s plenty wrong with this government’s approach to road safety, and nowhere is that more exemplified than their push to ignore evidence by imposing blanket speed limits (mostly raises), thus undoing work all around the country by councils and Waka Kotahi to improve road safety.…
Parking up in the RLTP
Last week, the Council endorsed the Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP) following it being signed off by the Regional Transport Committee – essentially just the Auckland Transport board with a different hat on – this, despite the RLTP not aligning with the Council’s own climate action plan.…
Throwback Thursday – Thinking about Expressways
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects.…
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