Trains to the Planes

Auckland Airport Public Transport access is a geometric problem with a two sided solution. There are two immediate sets of catchments, East and North, plus a city-wide overlay then a region-wide one. The Airport is a natural terminus (excuse the pun), because short of looping around there are no destinations beyond the airport.…
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Further thoughts on the CRL accessibility issue

Following on from my post the other day about The Spinoff’s interview with the City Rail Link team and some of their concerning comments, I thought I’d take a look at a few issues from a slightly different angle. In particular I thought I’d look at the issue of the Mercury Lane entrance and the access from there to Karangahape Rd, where most people will be going.…
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More questions raised over CRL future-proofing

On Saturday, The Spinoff published a fantastic and concerning piece by Simon Wilson on the City Rail Link. It comes following an interview with the CRL project director Chris Meale, whose answers to a few questions ought to have the new board of City Rail Link Limited, along with their stakeholders in Council and the Government asking some serious questions.…
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Flashback Saturday: “The Case for the Eastern Link”

This post originally appeared in June 2012. Looking back now, it’s a huge relief that Auckland Transport did end up including the Eastern Link in the CRL project, as excluding it would have undermined the functionality of the CRL enormously. The other day I covered part of the case against having an Eastern link, with this post I thought I would look at the case for building it and also whether we could live with things if it was not possible to grade separate the junction with the western link.…
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CRL Capacity and the CFN

The City Rail Link is a crucial piece of infrastructure for Auckland but it’s not a magic bullet and doesn’t have unlimited capacity. We’ve been seeing a lot of comments recently, both on the blog and elsewhere, questioning why the City Rail Link (CRL) isn’t being used more, why we’ve suggested a second, complementary network of light rail for some routes. …
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AT’s Albert St preliminary design

On Friday, Auckland Transport released some new images and a jerky video of their preliminary design for Albert St after the City Rail Link is completed. Improving Albert Street for pedestrians and public transport reliability are the top considerations in a newly-released concept plan for the busy central Auckland route.…
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Sunday Reading 12 February 2017

Welcome back to Sunday reading. From the Devonport Ferry. If your commute has tourists taking selfies on it then I’d say it’s probably pretty good: Here is a clipping from yesterday’s Herald Commercial Property section. It neatly encapsulates the value of sorting out planning restrictions [Unitary Plan] and making high quality Transit investments [City Rail Link], naturally, given the context, through a property value lens: I wouldn’t get too hung up on the salesman’s boosterism in the second paragraph, as the main point is that the only way for tatty low value (in the broadest sense) parts of the city, like the current low rise commercial city fringe, to attract investment and therefore improvement is through value uplift.…
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