Buses stuck at Westgate
I have been getting a few emails lately from people who catch the express buses from Westgate or Kumeu to town about an issue with the bus lanes, or lack of them as a result of the new bits of motorway that opened last year.…
25 Comments The elephant in the room: a familiar tale of traffic decline
While the UK trends have been around a bit longer than ours, this could very easily be a good description of the current disjoint between reality and the government’s transport policies in New Zealand:
Build on falling traffic trend – not on the countryside
10 November: Quarterly traffic figures are out, showing falling vehicle numbers and undermining the case for new roads.…
Did the NZTA just admit they are incompetent
Last week the NZTA and government announced that they were going to build Transmission Gully using a PPP and in the process seem to either shovelled a whole pile of ideological crap or admitted they are completely incompetent at the one thing we thought they seemed good at, building roads.…
Changing the ground rules
We have been pretty critical of many of the business cases for the roads of nation significance that have been produced because like as has been seen in Australia with their PPPs, many use incredibly over inflated traffic projections and even with those some still don’t make economic sense.…
Tauranga Eastern Link – another white elephant motorway?
NZTA were pleased to announce on Wednesday that they are making good progress on the “Tauranga Eastern Link” road, a Road of National Significance that we haven’t paid much attention to in the past. Given our general disdain of the justification for projects given this title (Victoria Park Tunnel and Waterview Connection excepted) I thought I’d look in a bit more detail around what the Tauranga Eastern Link road actually is – and whether it falls into the category of pointless and stupid RoNS (like Puhoi-Wellsford, parts of the Waikato Expressway and most of the Wellington Northern Corridor project) or more reasonable RoNS (like the aforementioned Auckland projects and perhaps part of the Christchurch projects though I’m not too familiar with them).…
The Great Reset?
We have talked quite a bit recently about what is happening with traffic volumes, both here and overseas. If you haven’t seen those posts then a quick recap, all across the developed world we have seen stats showing that traffic and total distances travelled by people have not only stalled but fallen.…
What really happened with Snapper/HOP – Part 2
Following on from my post yesterday on the Snapper/HOP mess, I felt that a lot of further questions remained unanswered. Phil Twyford attempted to get some answers out of the Minister of Transport in parliament: While questions around why Auckland Transport decided to allow Snapper to become involved in the HOP scheme remain frustratingly unanswered (perhaps until I read a bit further into the mountain of information I have), a question that I want to look at in this post relates a bit more closely to the title of this post – why did things go wrong?…
What really happened with Snapper/HOP?
Back in August Auckland Transport kicked Snapper out of helping to deliver integrated ticketing in Auckland. Subject to any legal battles over whether compensation is due or not, this was the final line in a very sad and sorry tale about Snapper’s involvement in Auckland’s integrated ticketing system.…
What’s rotten about transport – the politics or the profession?
Over the last week or two we’ve highlighted that there’s something really rotten going on about transport planning and policy in New Zealand. Here are the highlights: NZTA deliberately fudge the numbers in a report looking at justifying a $5 billion transport project, by far the most expensive transport project ever proposed in New Zealand.…
What’s Best for Northland?
Pretty much every single time we hear the government talk about the Puhoi to Wellsford road of national significance they say that its crucial to Northland’s economy, even standing up and saying so in parliament here are a few quotes from different exchanges:
Dated 15 August 2012
Phil Twyford: Does it make economic sense to borrow to fund the Pūhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway”, which has a benefit-cost ratio that barely breaks even and costs $1.7 billion, when a $400 million upgrade would fix the congestion and safety problems?…
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