Dwelling on dwell-times — Estimating the economic benefits of speeding up Auckland’s trains

Introduction If you’ve been reading TransportBlog for a while, then you may have noticed that the term “dwell-times” crops up relatively frequently. The term describes the average time that trains are stopped at stations. In several previous posts, we’ve discussed how average dwell-times on Auckland’s new electric trains are approximately 50-60 seconds per stop.…
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Quay St: Oh Yeah

Off-road cycle routes are great, but I love on-street ones even more, as they are real city changers. Both of course are required and required to be interconnected, but for today, here’s a celebration of the Quay St on-street cycle lanes, an important step towards a network: Looking forward to this route being connected to the Nelson St on-street cyclelanes, the SkyPath, and Tamaki Drive.…
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Council expectations of Auckland Transport

New Mayor Phil Goff is looking to stamp his authority over the Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) in new Letters of Expectation (LOE) to be agreed by the Council’s Finance and Performance Committee on Tuesday. The item to the committee saying that with council now into its third term there is “a need to re-set some of the expectations on the CCOs about their participation and commitment to a whole-of-group approach“.…
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Why we do this

Here is a great 15 minute look back at the work of Streetsblog and Streetsfilms from New York, that articulates the motivation behind what we do here at Transportblog. However modestly compared to their output. This is a worldwide movement; the profound improvement of lives, one street at a time.…
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Odd Compromise for AT Board?

A couple of weeks back new mayor Phil Goff announced that he was considering not appointing councillors to the board of Auckland Transport. Under the legislation that established Auckland Council (and Auckland Transport), up to two councillors can be appointed to the Board, although there is no requirement for this appointment to be made.…
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New Auckland Councillor Maiden Speeches

Yesterday the new Auckland Councillors gave their maiden speeches. The ones delivered by Efeso Collins from the Manukau Ward and Richard Hills from the North Shore ward were particularly good. Watch them here Here’s Daniel Newman from the Manurewa-Papakura ward and Greg Sayers from the Rodney ward And finally Desley Simpson from the Orakei Ward.…
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The Victoria St Linear Park: Why it is vital, but not really a park.

This is one of a series of posts I intend to do about about the city streetscape we ought to be able to expect as a result of the CRL rebuild. This one will describe the Council’s plans for inner western Victoria St, around the CRL portals, because it seems they are not well understood, especially by some at Auckland Transport, based on the recent release of a proposed design from the CRL team that appears to completely ignore the agreed streets level outcomes.…
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