Urban Change: Evolution or Revolution?
“Change is the law of life and those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future”
-JFK
Life is nothing but change, and cities being concentrations of human life manifest this fact in their physical fabric: They are constantly changing, always incrementally, sometimes abruptly.…
40 Comments Poll shows people want more spent on PT
Stuff have released the results of a poll they’ve conducted asking about transport funding.
Auckland has sent a clear message to the Government over its transport priorities: Give us better public transport rather than better roads.
The latest Stuff.co.nz-Ipsos poll found that nationally people wanted a government focus on better public transport over roads by a margin of 30 per cent to 24 per cent.…
The hypocrisy of the GPS
If there’s one thing – more than anything else – that annoys me about the government’s approach to transport, it’s the double standard they apply between state highway projects (particularly RoNS projects) and public transport investment. Getting any public transport funding requires analysis after analysis, proof that the timing of the project is optimal, proof that it’s definitely the most viable and cost-effective option, links with triggers around the level of use or growth in the area the project is located – the list goes on.…
The Draft 2015-2025 Government Policy Statement
Yesterday the government released the draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) for 2015-2025 and it continues the 1960’s thinking that we’ve been stuck with for years. As things are currently set up the GPS perhaps the most important document in determining what is invested in.…
New Waikato and Bay of Plenty motorways confirmed
The NZ Herald reports:
This afternoon Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee is expected to announce funding for two transformational roading projects. A $4 billion four lane motorway between Cambridge and Taupo, extending the Waikato Expressway a further 100 kilometres to the south and an $8 billion 50km motorway from Cambridge to Tauranga which includes a 14km road tunnel.…
Does building roads harm the economy?
Most proposals to build new roads or widen existing ones seem to boil down to an ultimate belief that it will “help the economy”. Whether it’s by improving freight reliability or getting people to their jobs faster or helping business travel or whatever, there seems to be a fundamental belief among many that quite a strong relationship must exist between building more roads and improving the economy.…
Is the government trying to take over Auckland Transport?
In his column this morning, Brian Rudman covers an area we haven’t been paying enough attention to, how the changes to the Land Transport Management Act will affect the governance of transport in Auckland. Rudman starts out by explaining the situation:
By sheer weight of numbers, elections are won and lost in Auckland, so it would seem suicidal for a government to declare war on a third of the population.…
Kiwis want more spent on Public Transport
Well the title says it all really and it comes from a survey done by UMR Research, included in their Mood of the Nation Report for 2013:
New Zealanders are much more likely to support Government funding to go to public transport than they were 20 years ago.…
Submit on the LTMA Amendment Bill
There have been a few posts on this blog over the past year or so on the Land Transport Management Act Amendment Bill. Looking through the “LTMA tag” I come across the following: Steven Joyce’s revenge? Big changes proposed to LTMA
Should NZTA be allowed to borrow for the RoNS?…
NZTA Gives Auckland Some Roads
Some news out of the NZTA today that they are revoking the state highway designation on a number of roads in the Auckland region. To be fair this isn’t something that is new and it has been signalled for some time and is even logical but the cynic in me can’t help but think that it is also partly in response to the belt tightening that the agency needs to be doing due to the effective cuts to maintenance in the government policy statement.…
Processing...