Transport in 2011: some steps forward, some steps backwards
Trying to get my head around whether 2011 was a good year or not such a good year for advocates of a more balanced transport system like myself, is a bit of a challenge. There were a number of good things which happened, but at the same time there were also a number of steps backward.…
21 Comments Transport in the next parliament
I discussed yesterday that early signs are not looking particularly great for public transport, as the government continues to plough ahead with its road-centric transport policies. Something else which is quite interesting is to start thinking about which MPs will be playing the crucial roles on transport matters in parliament.…
Fallout for rail from the election result
The election result on the weekend was obviously not particularly conducive to achieving where I think the country’s transport policy should be heading, but I wasn’t quite expecting things to go bad quite so quickly. First, here’s new North Shore MP Maggie Barry talking about the City Rail Link and a duplicate harbour crossing (road based, one assumes):
Maggie Barry hit the ground running as the North Shore electorate’s first woman MP.…
Auckland bucks the trend?
The interactive maps of the election results hosted on Scoop are a highly addictive tool to play around with. A map that I found particularly interesting runs a comparison of how Labour & Greens did in 2008 and 2011, with how National & Act did in the last two elections.…
Transport in the next three years
With special votes seeming likely to result in the Green Party getting one more MP, at the cost of National, and the chances of Auckland Central and/or Waitakere swinging from National to Labour being relatively (but not impossibly) slim, we have a fairly good idea about the shape of the future government.…
Thoughts on the election result
Things went largely as expected last night with the election results, although a few of the results (particularly NZ First getting back in) were a bit of a surprise. Here are the preliminary party vote results – with another 220,000 odd special votes still to be counted: The 13 seats for the Greens Party (and they traditionally go up a seat on special votes) means that Julie-Anne Genter will get into parliament, which is pretty awesome as we’ll have a transport planner there to put the tough questions to Steven Joyce over the next three years.…
The Election
After a comparatively short campaign, thanks to the Rugby World Cup, the election is upon us tomorrow. I have previously written about the transport policies of National, Labour and the Greens in separate posts so I won’t go over those again.…
National proposing more RoNS
National released their transport policy yesterday, with the headline proposal being to add in more “Roads of National Significance”. Here’s what the accompanying media release stated:
National has re-committed to its major $9 billion investment unblocking key roading arteries around the country, and will develop the strategy further by examining new routes that need upgrading to improve our economic growth and productivity, says National’s Transport spokesman Steven Joyce.…
Greens release transport policy
The Green Party has just released its transport policy for Auckland – unsurprisingly the policy is excellent and a model for the kind of transport policy that Auckland desperately needs a supportive central government to provide. Here are some highlights: With Labour committing $1.2 billion to constructing the City Rail Link and the Greens committing $1.4 billion, we now have two of the three biggest parties in parliament having come up with some serious cash for this project.…
Notes on the CBT transport meeting
Last night the Campaign for Better Transport ran a meeting of transport spokespeople from five different parties, asking them two key questions: How they think the government’s $3 billion a year contribution to transport should generally be split across the different modes.…
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