Levelling up the Takaanini LXR project
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, which will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah.
Also like the city centre, this is an upgrade predicated on the City Rail Link.…
23 Comments A Market Model for Intercity Rail
The North Island Main Trunk rail line between Auckland and Wellington is 680km long, mostly electrified, and low speed for intercity rail (80-100kph). It’s a major public asset, but woefully underutilised.
How can we work this asset harder, to deliver way more benefits for our country and our people?…
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.…
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.…
Implication and Opportunity: NorthPort and the AKL rail network.
With the Upper North Island Supply Chain Study (UNISCS) starting to show results, I thought it would be a good time to examine some of the possible implications; constraints and opportunities, for the Auckland rail network, of an increased freight task to and from Northland.…
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.…
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.…
The Marsden Point Rail Link
A few months ago I outlined the opportunities for Northland rail upgrades. After doing some more research I have found some more interesting information that backs up the case. For this post, I will focus on the Marsden Point line and log traffic.…
Cities need Transit, both to thrive, and to do so more equitably.
Continuing our summer holiday reading this New York Times article on New York’s Subway, The Case for the Subway, touches on many important issues. Its overt subject is the terrible current state of the Subway, but along the way it covers universal issues about how cities work and the role of effective Transit systems in successful cities.…
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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