Freyberg Place to become a pedestrian mall
Some good news yesterday with Auckland Transport announcing that Freyberg Square will be changed to a pedestrian mall following their consultation a few months ago. It’s a simple but important change that will see the retractable bollards defaulted to being raised and to only lowered be lowered for emergencies or for a special exception.…
42 Comments Putney Way impression vs reality
This is a quick post highlighting a recent example of how the finished product for a project can often be quite different to what was promised in the artist’s impressions and press releases.
Back in February, Auckland Transport on behalf of Panuku Development Auckland started an upgrade to Putney Way in Manukau which runs alongside the new bus station.…
Cycleway costs and safety comms
Thisis a few follow-up’s to some recent posts we’ve published.
Earlier in the week I commented on how cycling projects are now often much more than just bike lanes and the budget should perhaps instead be called the “safety-and-streetscape-upgrade-and-stormwater-fix-and-traffic-calming-and-pedestrian-improvements-and-retaining-parking-and-cycling budget“. Yesterday Auckland Transport got in touch and provided the below information on cycleway costs.…
Auckland needs Healthy Streets
A couple of weeks ago there was an excellent ‘Auckland Conversations‘ talk by Lucy Saunders, who heads up the Healthy Streets initiative in London. Here are the videos of the event: Healthy streets is an excellent concept, tying together many of the different strands that we have pushed for over the years into a single concept of making our streets healthier places to be.…
Transport Growth Networks – North and Warkworth
Most of the focus in all of the transport plans and policies released over recent months have understandably been on transport projects within the existing urban area. But over the coming three decades, billions will also be spent by the council and government to open up farmland in the North, Northwest and South for new homes and businesses.…
August-18 AT Board Meeting
Tomorrow is the next Auckland Transport board meeting. As usual I’ve been scouring through the papers to see what interesting items the reports contain. There’s a bumper crop of information in month, not all of which can fit in this post.…
Safety finally on the agenda
Safety has been a hot topic this year, and for good reason, with the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads soaring. Turning the trend around has been a stated goal for both the government and Auckland. The Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) committed $900 million towards safety improvements, which was expected to see a 60% drop in deaths and serious injuries from 813 in 2017 to 325 in 2027.…
Making progress in the face of complexity
Transport planning must be pretty complicated at times. Different projects interact with each other, you don’t want to unnecessarily dig a road up when you might need to dig it up again in the near future, you need to try to align service changes with infrastructure improvements and so on.…
Build a PT bridge and get over it
We believe the harbour crossing should be public transport and active only bridge. Here are a few key reasons why.
Why another road crossing is dumb idea
This is something we’ve talked about a number of times before. The most recent plan for another harbour crossing comes from 2011 and in a nutshell, the new crossing would be for traffic travelling past the city centre and the existing Harbour Bridge would become a glorified off-ramp.…
Why we can’t have nice things: a look inside the black box of traffic engineering decision making
A new research paper has helped shed some light on why we continually seem to see substandard and delayed street outcomes from Auckland Transport that completely ignore Auckland’s agreed political and policy goals. It reveals a complex and dysfunctional decision making process that might be representative more generally of the institutional inertia that exists at AT.…
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