Rudman on the current Transport plans
It’s almost as if Brian Rudman had been reading the blog (I’ve heard that he does).
Labour’s Auckland issues spokesman, Phil Twyford, says Labour now backs Mayor Len Brown’s bid to levy an extra charge on Auckland road users through road or congestion charges or a regional fuel tax.…
25 Comments Why are ratepayers funding the NZCID?
Infrastructure plays a critical part in our everyday lives and improving our infrastructure is seen as a way of improving our economy and our standard of living. The group pushing for more and better infrastructure more than any other is the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development (NZCID).…
Government study brings back “Eastern Highway”
The NZ Herald reports:
In a surprise announcement, Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee yesterday asked the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to commence investigations into a motorway between Panmure and Downtown: along a very similar route to the alignment of the Eastern Highway that cost John Banks the Auckland City mayoralty back in 2004.…
Funding Aucklands future transport
Despite the rhetoric, one of the biggest disappointments about the Auckland plan was in the area of Transport. Seemingly unwilling to say no to anyone, the Council included in it almost every single transport project ever conceived, effectively creating a massive, and expensive wish list.…
Strong support for motorway tolls?
An article in today’s Herald notes the results of a survey undertaken by the NZ Council for Infrastructure Development, which looks at different levels of support for different ‘alternative’ funding mechanisms for paying for Auckland’s transport system.
Pollsters have found almost two-thirds support from Aucklanders for motorway tolls to ease congestion and raise extra transport money.…
Why the AA and Steven Selwood are wrong
Whenever there is a large transport project like the CRL, or probably any large project for that matter, the responses tend to fall into four categories. The enthusiastic supporters and you can put us in that category
Those that don’t really have a view either way and this probably covers most of the general public
Those that object to the project and we can probably put the government in this group
Those that could be classed as fence sitters or who think they know better For this post I am going to look at that last group as while they publicly support the project, they don’t back this up with their actions and this is usually manifested in one of two ways.…
A good Herald editorial
I must say I was rather shocked this morning to find an editorial in the NZ Herald on transport matters that I agreed with to such a great extent. Typical editorialist John Roughan, with his “Auckland wants to sprawl” and “Auckland should pay for the City Rail Link if we really want it” (not that I disagree there, our petrol taxes should help pay for it, but I don’t think that’s what he means) must have been away because I can’t ever recall seeing such a strongly pro public transport editorial.…
Public Transport lets Auckland down
Hopefully this will be my last blog post on last Friday’s events. My overwhelming feeling of the events that unfolded nearly a week ago was that Auckland’s public transport system had let the city down. Aside from the overcrowding issues around “Party Central”, including the bizarre failure to close Queen Street to cars, everything else (aside from the public transport) worked a charm last Friday.…
The problem with obsessing over congestion
I have recently got hold of (for the second time) Paul Mees’s first book: A Very Public Solution. While it has many similarities with his most recent book, Transport for Suburbia, there are early parts in A Very Public Solution which give a good overview of the “transport situation”, setting the scene for why we need better public transport and – the main focus of the book – what better public transport might actually entail.…
Tolling motorways to fund City Rail Link?
An article in the NZ Herald yesterday talked a bit further about the different options being looked at to fund Auckland’s transport projects over the next 10-20 years.
Aucklanders could pay between $1 and $3 to drive on the city’s motorways to pay for the inner city rail loop and a new harbour crossing.…
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