At a crossroads: How a new Auckland Council will traverse transport policy
Connor stood on the City Vision ticket in the latest local elections, in a personal capacity.
This ran in The Post on October 21 2025. Despite the lowest ever local election turnout, this was perhaps Auckland’s most consequential election so far.…
36 Comments What this local election means for transport in Auckland
Connor Sharp is running for the Waitematā Local Board in this year’s election. On Saturday (pending any close-run races), we’ll learn who will govern our city for the next three years.
While the mayoral race feels like a foregone conclusion – to the point there’s barely even any media coverage of it – who else will be sitting around the council table, and who will sit on the various local boards, will have a big impact on the city’s future.…
How to fill Council’s climate leadership vacuum
This is a guest post by Heidi O’Callahan, about one way to improve the sorry state of climate leadership in Auckland.
For a frank and fair assessment of where Auckland is at, have a read of the Committee for Auckland’s recent report The State of the City, as covered by Patrick here.…
How will Auckland Council address the cycling budget shortfall?
This is a very timely post from Bike Auckland, re-published here with kind permission. See also yesterday’s post by Patrick on the abundantly clear case for funding cycling as the powerful “stealth mode” for easy access to and around our city.…
The Government Declares Total War on Localism
In a recent conversation, the person I was talking to outlined the purpose of central and local government in the most simple and clear way I have yet heard:
Central government is for nation-building. Local government is for city-building.
This was in the context of Auckland, so I would expand the local government definition to community-building, to cover those councils and authorities that are a little less urban.…
Of Boundaries and Balance: Redrawing Auckland Council Wards
Auckland Council is proposing some changes to local ward boundaries. Consultation closes this Thursday August 8th at 4pm.
There are a number of fairly minor tweaks proposed – below, I’ll note a few points of interest.
To learn more and have your say, head to this page.…
Completing the RTN
As I state in this recent article at The Spinoff I see Auckland as around half way through a roughly 30 year long programme to retro-fit a complete Rapid Transit Network to itself.
Cities are of course never finished, and nor are their transport systems, but at the end of this period Auckland will have something new and powerful in its very structure: A complete city-wide top tier integrated Strategic Transit Network fed and supported by the Frequent Network below it: A complementary mirror to the city’s motorway and arterial road networks.…
Scoot Math
Lime have been operating in Auckland since October last year. Six months. I know, is that all? It feels like they’ve been around a lot longer; e-scooters just seem part of the city now. So as they are seeking to renew their licence to operate I asked them if we could run some data.…
Copenhagen: Confirmation of the future sensual city
In August this year Greater Auckland reproduced a chapter I wrote for a book speculating on our future world, The Big Questions, in three posts; here, here, and here. Included was the section below describing the city centre. In bold is a short description of what I imagine the sensual experience of these future streets will be like:
The whole Queen Street valley will be car-free, plied only by emergency and delivery and service vehicles, the latter at set times.…
The advice Auckland has ignored for 50 years but must now heed
Engineer planner Lt Col Sir Colin Buchanan is rightly famous for his 1963 report Traffic in Towns and 1964 book of the same name. The report looks ahead to wall of traffic heading to British streets in the post war period and sets out principles and plans to ameliorate the negative effects as much as possible.…
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