Do economists think we should build more infrastructure?
Should we spend more money on infrastructure?
That’s a good question. Recent posts on Transportblog have looked at the case for a greater focus on providing better transport choices in Auckland, the need to start discussing rapid transit provision in smaller but growing cities, and the need for better connections between New Zealand’s cities and towns.…
20 Comments Removing the RUB won’t necessarily work as planned
Yesterday Phil Twyford announced that it would be Labour’s policy to abolish Auckland’s Rural Urban Boundary (RUB), as part of a policy to improve housing affordability.
Labour wants the Government to abolish Auckland’s city limits to get people out of cars, caravans, garages and tents.…
Our insane traffic projections
Many times in the last few years we have highlighted a ‘flat-lining’ or at least slowing of growth in car travel across New Zealand. The same trends have been seen in many overseas cities and countries – with the slowing in the UK dating back at least 20 years now.…
Transport Spending: what’s the point?
As a country we spend a lot of money on transport, at three levels: central government, local government and personally. In the 2012 budget, around $3.8 billion of expenditure on transport by central government was proposed. Further to that, transport is generally the biggest item of expenditure for local government – the Auckland Council spends over half its money (more than half your rates bill) on transport each year.…
Treasury’s interesting position on road pricing
The National State of Infrastructure Report was released by Treasury’s Infrastructure Unit a few weeks back, and makes for some quite interesting and amusing reading in relation to transport. I’ll leave what’s said about transport in Auckland to another post (basically it seems like they’re suggesting Auckland needs a whole pile more motorway but aren’t quite sure where they’ll go), but perhaps one of the most amusing parts of the document is in relation to road pricing.…
National Infrastructure Plan
The government has today released its second National Infrastructure Plan, outlining its expenditure (and the principles behind it) on infrastructure such as transport, electricity, telcommunications, water and social infrastructure over the next four years. In terms of transport, as far as I can see there’s absolutely nothing new in the plan – but it provides an interesting and useful collation of information.…
The Problem with KiwiRail
There has been a lot of talk in recent days about how some railway lines might be under threat of closure because KiwiRail is not generating enough business along them to make them viable. It probably didn’t help that the National Infrastructure Plan’s fairly mixed words on KiwiRail’s future came out on the same day that KiwiRail reported worse than hoped for financial results.…
The National Infrastructure Plan
The government has today released their “National Infrastructure Plan“, which details the state of various infrastructure around the country as well as giving some guidance about where investment in infrastructure is likely to occur over the next 5-7 years. It’s not the “big bang” plan that looks 20 years into the future that I somewhat expected it to be, but in a way I think that might be a good thing.…
Processing...