We can (and must) afford both CRL & new network infrastructure
Former ARC Councillor Joel Cayford has recently criticised the City Rail Link as being unaffordable in the near future – largely it seems because of the need to invest in a number of pieces of bus infrastructure to support the new PT network that’s being rolled out over the next few years.…
10 Comments CFN and budget transport announcements
In the May budget the Government announced they would fastrack yet another $800 million of motorway projects, partially financed by a $375 million loan. These were projects that had been identified in the Prime Minister’s Auckland speech in 2013. There were 3 main projects as outlined below.…
AA’s Auckland infrastructure issues newsletter
In May the AA created the first issue of a newsletter highlighting infrastructure issues in Auckland (5.5 MB). The AA say they have 1.4 million members nationwide of which 900,000 are personal members and of those 285,000 are in Auckland. Between November 2013 and February 2014 the AA conducted two different research projects to obtain the views of many of their members through two research projects on issues like infrastructure priorities and how to fund it.…
Funding local transport projects
On Wednesday the Council’s Infrastructure committee meet again and there are a couple interesting papers on the agenda. One is about transport trends which I’ll write about in a separate post the other is about funding assistance rates (FARs). They are probably a fairly boring topic for many people but they can have huge implications on councils as they determine how much money the councils get to help pay for transport projects. …
More on the Budget
This is a more comprehensive post looking at the outcome of yesterday’s budget.
As mentioned briefly yesterday, when it comes to transport the big news of the budget was that government providing $375 million in an interest free loan towards $800 million of additional motorway projects that they had announced last year.…
No more buses in the City Centre? Is light rail an answer?
An idea that crops up quite often is whether we can get rid of all the buses in the city centre. This idea is normally backed up with the suggestion that buses are dirty, smelly, noise loathesome things that have no place in a civilised city.…
What if we really were doing “social engineering”?
An article on Planetizen a few months back highlights an issue often missed in the debates over roads versus public transport or sprawl versus intensification – the fact that for the last century most government spending and policy has supported car use and lower density development.…
Returns on Government transport investment – A “BOE” calculation
In this recent post Matt mapped census journey to work data across Auckland.
I will now use this data to draw some high-level inferences about returns on Goverment investment in transport infrastructure in Auckland in the period from 2007-13, i.e. between the last two census.…
Are diesel drivers paying their share?
In NZ, we don’t have many diesel cars. They make up around 8.4% of the “light passenger vehicle” fleet,1 similar to Japan (where most of our cars come from) and the US, but much lower than most European countries. Diesel engines are more common for “light commercial vehicles”, i.e.…
Affording the CFN – each and every year
Late last year we illustrated how easy it is to afford to build the Congestion Free Network across Auckland over the next 17 years. Despite investing over $60 billion in our transport system over 30 years congestion is still expected to get worse and we believe that is predominately because overall the current plans prioritise investment in roads well ahead of investment in alternatives that can help improve mobility and encourage a shift in mode share.…
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