The Roadfather
A great little sign spotted at protests against the Kapiti Expressway near Wellington:…
7 Comments What influences public transport patronage?
One strange thing about NZTA is that, despite being a generally roads-obsessed organisation, there are parts of the agency which come up with great initiatives and great work. Whoever write NZTA submissions on plan changes and resource consent applications in the Auckland area often comes up with great points to make (often a lot better than what ARTA had to say), while another great part of the organisation is the work done to fund interesting research into transport matters.…
Exploring the mystery $300 million
I noted in a post last week the weird mysteries in Auckland Council’s draft annual plan when it comes to what they’re going to be spending the transport money on. To refresh memories, here’s a table showing the council’s proposed capital expenditure on transport for the 2011/2012 financial year: The big mystery is the $307 million proposed to be spent on the “road network” in the 2011/2012 financial year.…
NZTA’s sound barrier double-standards
One welcome improvement to the way NZTA builds motorways over the past few years is the addition of sound barriers. I’ve spent quite a while wandering around Greenlane (delivering leaflets about the Project Greenlane upgrade a few years back) and one thing you really notice when you’re walking near houses located close to the southern motorway is just how damn noisy it is.…
Waterview Connection – hearing starts Monday
After years of background work, arguments, designs, redesigns, re-redesigns and so forth, the Waterview Connection project will have its official planning hearing from Monday onwards. The hearing is likely to be quite lengthy, with NZTA putting forward a vast array of witnesses, Auckland Council doing similar, and a relatively large number of submitters also being very interested parties.…
NZTA’s February Board Meeting
The agenda for NZTA’s February board meeting, which took place this morning in Wellington, has been posted on their website. Here’s an outline of what was discussed: Probably items 2, 4, 7 and 8 are the most interesting. Time to send off the OIA requests!…
Auckland Council’s submission on Puhoi-Warkworth
The next meeting of Auckland Council’s Transport Committee is at 1.30pm next Tuesday in the Reception Lounge of the Town Hall. Compared to past meetings, the agenda for this one is fairly small – not surprising given that they had a meeting just before Christmas and most of the time in between has been holidays.…
More secrecy from NZTA
My second to most recent OIA request to NZTA finally arrived today. There are a number of interesting documents that I will read through over the next few days and potentially pick out parts that I think are worthy of discussion.…
Puhoi-Wellsford videos
I hadn’t actually noticed these before, but there are a number of Youtube videos about the Puhoi-Wellsford Road beyond just the alignment of the Puhoi-Warkworth section. We have:
Project overview: Ground conditions/geology: Road Design: Environment: Traffic: Ecology: Noise: Watching these videos I do get a slightly weird feeling that everyone knows this project’s a huge waste of money, but they’re going through the motions simply because they have to.…
Puhoi-Warkworth: my submission
NZTA’s preferred alignment for the Puhoi-Warkworth section of the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” is currently open for submission – until January 28th. I went to an open day on the alignment late last year – and blogged about some of the details at the time.…
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