Completing the RTN

As I state in this recent article at The Spinoff  I see Auckland as around half way through a roughly 30 year long programme to retro-fit a complete Rapid Transit Network to itself. Cities are of course never finished, and nor are their transport systems, but at the end of this period Auckland will have something new and powerful in its very structure: A complete city-wide top tier integrated Strategic Transit Network fed and supported by the Frequent Network below it: A complementary mirror to the city’s motorway and arterial road networks.…
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Quiet Revolution

This post originally appeared on TheSpinoff, reproduced here with permission. There’s a quiet revolution underway in Auckland. Slowly but relentlessly transforming the city. It began early in the century, a big change of direction taken in small steps, and has been continued by every council and government since.…
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Rail Across the Waitematā: some thoughts

The North Shore Line, The Northern Line, Te Raki Tereina… NZTA in a recently released report showed that there is some urgency in starting work to replace the Northern Busway with a higher capacity rail system on a new crossing. This is because: Demand to access the city centre from the Shore is on a sustained growth path with ongoing growth on both sides of the harbour.…
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Fixing Rail Congestion in Auckland

It has been known for a while what the major congestion points for rail that will not be fixed by CRL are: Westfield-Wiri where a third main (track) is needed as most Auckland Freight movements, as well as two passenger lines the southern and eastern share limited tracks in this section; Westfield Junction which suffers from many of the same issues as the above where a proposed “Westfield Lite” upgrade is proposed.…
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Fixing the National Land Transport Fund

As discussed in this morning’s post, the Labour/Green confidence and supply agreement will lead to major change in transport investment priorities going forwards. Especially the following: National Land Transport Fund spending will be reprioritised to increase the investment in rail infrastructure in cities and regions, and cycling and walking.…
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