Auckland’s Rail System: thinking long term
With studies into the CBD Rail Tunnel seemingly progressing well, and studies into protecting a route for rail to the airport kicking off, I couldn’t help but get my thinking cap on again just a little bit in terms of what I think Auckland’s long-term rail system could look like.…
41 Comments That Southeast RTN
As I have mentioned in a couple of recent posts, I am extremely worried that a lot of the work going on at the moment in planning important transport projects (like AMETI) and large-scale land-use planning projects (like Flat Bush) is ignoring one of the most important pieces in the puzzle of sorting out land-use and transport planning in a huge swathe of Auckland: its southeast.…
Transport in the next five years
Having finally got the 30 year Regional Land Transport Strategy completed, it’s important to look at the question “where to next?” This is particularly important to consider when you realise how the whole management of transport in Auckland is going to be revolutionised in the next few months, with the creation of the Auckland Transport CCO.…
Fixing Flat Bush?
Manukau City Council seem to have finally come to the realisation that creating a massive area of auto-dependent sprawl out in a far corner of Auckland, miles from any railway lines, motorways or high-frequency bus routes, might not be the smartest idea.…
AMETI: ignoring the real problem?
The Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative, generally known as “AMETI“, came out as something of a replacement of the failed “Eastern Motorway” idea. It’s a fairly complex series of projects designed to ease congestion and improve transport for a number of different modes in the Panmure/Mt Wellington/Pakuranga part of Auckland.…
Manukau-Botany QTN
Another interesting part of the information I got from NZTA via my OIA request relates to the public transport upgrades being planned for Manukau City – in particular the steps being taken to implement a “Quality Transport Network” (QTN) between Manukau City and Botany Town Centre.…
Future CBD Rail
As the CBD Rail Tunnel project slowly inches towards potentially becoming a reality, as a good public transport dreamer I feel that it is my task to look beyond this project to see what longer-term future projects might be needed to ensure that Auckland’s central city has the ability to cope with possible future railway lines that may feed into it – including a North Shore Line, a “Far East Auckland” Line (that I generally refer to as the Howick/Botany Line), an airport line and so forth.…
Where should “Auckland Transport” CCO be based?
There was an article in the NZ Herald today about where the different parts of the new Super City will be located. Here’s what the article says:
Details about the location of council services are contained in a memorandum from the agency designing the Super City, obtained by the Herald.It…
Planning for rail expansion: Phase 1
How should we roll out Auckland’s rail expansion? How can we do it as cheaply as possible but ensure we get good quality and also maximum ridership?
Here is my proposal for expanding Auckland’s rail system, I’ve included diagrams of the lines that differ from the current plan, the expansion is in two phases, Phase 1: The CBD tunnel, it is absolutely crucial for any further expansion, the reasons for it have been covered extensively on this site as well as others.…
Beware of “PT-Washing”
The term “Greenwash” is quite well known, meaning situations where companies disingenuously promote their products as environmentally friendly when they aren’t, or over-sell what are really quite modest environmental benefits. Wikipedia defines the term as follows:
Greenwashing (green whitewash) is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.…
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