City centre employment keeps growing

Hottish off the press: there are now more than 120,000 people working in Auckland’s city centre,* making it the biggest hub for employment in New Zealand. Almost 3,000 jobs were added in the last year. That’s based on a fairly typical definition of the city centre, stretching from Wynyard Quarter to the eastern end of the ports, and inside the motorway noose (plus the western end of K Road).…
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Wellesley Bus Boulevard – Learning from King St

A few days ago I discussed the budget blowout for Auckland Transport’s Midtown Bus Solution, the root cause of which was a stupid compromise made by Auckland Transport to the unreasonable demands of the University a few years ago which prevents the obvious solution of linking buses from Wellesley Street to Symonds Street via a useful little slip lane that is hardly used.…
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Western Victoria Quarter Part 2: Cook Street and Motorway Severance

This is a Guest Post by David R, and the second of a series about the need to improve the Western Victoria Quarter. Part 1 can be found here. Victoria Quarter suffers for the Southern Motorway, and this alignment exists to serve the ego of Mayor John Allum: This lack of foresight and common sense was compounded by Auckland city fathers led by former Mayor Sir John Allum, chairman of the bridge authority.…
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Working towards a car-free city centre

An emerging trend in cities is to increasingly go car-free, primarily in city centres. This is primarily related to being able to provide more space for pedestrians, cyclists and transit while also reducing emissions and improving the health of residents. In some cases it’s limited to certain vehicle types, in others certain streets and one of the most ambitious is in Oslo where they plan to ban all cars from the city centre in 2019.…
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