Form follows parking
Here’s a fairly random street in Sydney, Australia that looks like it’s a big box retail area with some office parks thrown in. You know, like the kind of thing you find in Auckland in places such as Albany, Wairau Park, Highbrook, Lincoln Road and of course Manukau.…
History never repeats …. Except for Transport in Auckland
They say that history never repeats but that doesn’t quite seem true when it comes to transport in Auckland. Our transport history is littered with examples of poor planning, bad decisions, underestimated demand, a lack of vision and corner cutting in order to save a few dollars.…
Analysing Manukau’s land-use
I thought that after yesterday’s post, which looked at how newer town centres in Auckland seem to be mimicking ‘hollowed out’ US cities by devoting so much land to parking, I should take a look at some of the numbers for Manukau City (which seems to be the worst culprit here).…
AMETI: still ignoring the elephant in the room
An NZ Herald article today shines light on some growing worries that the “Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative”, known more commonly as “AMETI” may be a first step to reviving the dreaded “Eastern Motorway” – which Aucklanders resoundingly rejected in the 2004 local government elections.…
People are not the same as stormwater
I remember someone once telling me that a significant problem with the “transport field” is that many of the experts start out their academic studies as civil engineers, and the first thing they study is stormwater. Now I have a great appreciation for stormwater engineers, as they make sure our cities don’t flood when it rains, but ultimately it’s fairly logical stuff: x amount of rain falls and you need to get rid of it without flooding the place and without polluting the environment.…
Manukau Rail Link Photos
With thanks to Manukau City Council, I have some fantastic photos of the Manukau Rail Link, a project that is coming along very nicely indeed it would seem. It seems as though the station will be open by July next year, although with a temporary station only.…
The benefits of making off-peak PT useful
On Friday I had a meeting in Manukau City, and our work car was being used by someone else, so I thought I’d honour my public transport commitments and catch the bus down there from the CBD. The weather was utterly horrible, but I can’t really complain about the bus trip in terms of its reliability – in that it showed up at both ends exactly when expected, it arrived at Manukau City pretty much exactly on time and so forth.…
What cost-benefit ratios should be like
With many motorway projects having extremely marginal cost-benefit ratios, such as the Transmission Gully motorway near Wellington having a BCR of 0.6 and the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” having a BCR of around 0.8, one can wonder whether the analysis process is perhaps a bit too harsh.…
Manukau Rail Link
A couple of years ago there was a lot of debate about where the Manukau Rail Link should terminate – with Manukau City Council showing their true colours as a roads-loving council by not stumping up the few extra million to bring the link truly into the heart of Manukau City Centre.…
Carparks everywhere!
A few days back I wrote a scathing blog post on minimum parking requirements, and how they are a huge hidden subsidy for private vehicles. Not only that, but MPRs actually completely destroy the urban fabric of our town centres.
Let’s take a look at Manukau City Centre as an example.…
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