An Auckland that could have been: the 1972 Auckland Rapid Rail Transit Plan
I had a few moments spare in the city library yesterday and thought I’d have a peek up at the Auckland Research Centre. This section of the library is great for finding old plans and proposal on anything related to transport or urban planning (by the way, just about every report, plan or meeting minutes from any council in Auckland is held on desk copy in the archives in the library basement.…
19 Comments Thinking long-term for our rail system
The Auckland Plan (submissions close October 31st) takes a fairly long-term viewpoint of Auckland’s future, looking to 2041 when the population may well be as high as 2.5 million. Here are the projected population numbers for Auckland over the next 30 years, and how they compare with cities throughout the rest of New Zealand: A population of 2-2.5 million in 2041, if the medium or high projections are what turns out to happen, would put us in a situation similar to that of Greater Vancouver (current population 2.2 million).…
ART Light Metro: An affordable solution for new rapid transit in Auckland?
The transport section of the recently released Draft Auckland Plan makes for very encouraging reading, with the main priority being the development of Auckland’s transport infrastructure into a single cohesive network integrated with land use and development. The main ‘principle’ for achieving this (apart from a much needed look at revised and new transport funding mechanisms) is the development of Auckland’s railways into a true rapid transit system.…
Airport rail advances
It has been a while since we heard anything about progress on another of Auckland Council’s key rail projects: a rail link to Auckland Airport from Manukau and Onehunga. The agenda documents for Wednesday’s board meeting of Auckland Transport highlight that quite a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes over the past few months – analysing at a broad brush level which transport solutions are needed in this corner of Auckland in the short, medium and longer terms.…
AA Survey on Auckland Transport Issues
Other than the City Rail link, there was another interesting presentation at the transport committee on Tuesday, the results of a survey conducted by the AA. The survey was conducted in the middle of may and sent out to a selection of their Auckland members, they had 6030 responses and the results have a margin of error of +1.3%.…
How can we improve Mangere buses?
My post a few days ago on feeder buses highlighted a really interesting issue – how terribly slow buses are from Onehunga to the city centre, and therefore what a massive difference the Onehunga railway line has made to the trip times of people within walking distance of Onehunga and Te Papapa stations.…
Falling into your own trap: the problem with fixating over technology
It’s impossible to be in transport circles for too long before the good old arguments of ‘buses versus trains’ or ‘BRT versus LRT’ and so forth come along. I suppose that it’s inevitable to end up in such technological debates – as while each technology tends to be best suited for a particular type of job, there’s an enormous level of crossover.…
How to “unleash” Auckland’s transport system?
A few weeks back there was a very high profile launch of the Auckland Spatial Plan discussion document, known as “Auckland Unleashed”. The launch was accompanied by a great video of Mayor Len Brown outlining his vision for rail’s role in shaping his vision for Auckland over the next 20-30 years.…
Video: the role of rail in Auckland
It took a bit of searching, but I have found the video played today at the launch of the spatial plan: on the role of rail in Auckland’s future. It is pretty awesome.…
Why can’t we just called it “airport rail”?
Auckland Transport announced today that progress is being made on what’s weirdly been called the “South-Western corridor multi-modal transport study” – or something along those lines. This is certainly good news, as we need to ensure the route for rail to Auckland Airport is secured as quickly as possible – and it would seem this study is a key step in achieving that.…
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