Removing expensive bus/rail duplication
The weekend election results confirmed that money will be tight for public transport over the next three years. The proposed Government Policy Statement cuts PT infrastructure funding quite dramatically and while PT services (subsidies) funding increases, this will largely be eaten up by repayment for Auckland’s electric trains and the increased track access fee.…
21 Comments 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.…
Council makes important funding decisions
Councillors on the Auckland Council are having a pretty busy month at the moment. Not only are they wading through listening to many hundreds (possibly thousands) of submitters on the Auckland Spatial Plan, but they’re also making really critical funding decisions about the 10 year Long Term Plan.…
Strong support for better public transport
It’s no real mystery that providing better public transport has a lot of support among the general public. Firstly we saw Len Brown’s mayoral victory last year, with much of his support due to his push for making a “transformational shift” to Auckland’s rail system in particular.…
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.…
National releases Auckland transport policy
Somewhat surprisingly, National have decided to bury the release of their transport policy for Auckland to a Saturday afternoon – with almost no fanfare. There are few surprises in the policy, with pretty much nothing mentioned that we haven’t heard before – a lot of focus on current projects and very little on what will happen after that.…
How to pay for the City Rail Link
A presentation by Mayor Len Brown today gave us some clues about how the Council hopes to fund the City Rail Link project over the next decade, with a target date for opening being 2021. Here’s a couple of key images from his presentation, with further detail in this document and also within these spreadsheets.…
My Auckland Plan submission
Submissions on the Auckland Spatial Plan close on October 31st. I cannot stress how important this plan is in guiding Auckland’s future – as I outlined in more detail here. Auckland Council has put together quite a pretty video outlining the broad goals of the plan: My submission is outlined below.…
What makes for good transport policy?
With the world cup now out of the way, all eyes will begin to turn towards the general election – which is only a month away as of tomorrow. Obviously the lead up to the election will be of particular interest to the readers of this blog, and I hope that each party’s transport policy may play some part in helping decide who you end up voting for (even if I admit that’s relatively unlikely).…
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