Embracing the transfer

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald highlights a key step that public transport system both in Australia and New Zealand need to take in order to both improve their usefulness and the cost-effectiveness of their operation: by encouraging (rather than discouraging) transfers, connections or interchanges (whatever terminology you want to use) between services.…
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Auckland’s PT: expensive and poorly used

An Auckland Council report on various aspects of our transport system makes a number of comparisons of Auckland’s public transport system with various cities in Australia, Canada and the USA – as well as Wellington. The cities used to compare Auckland against, including their population and what different technologies their PT system includes, is shown in the table below: These are a good range of cities to compare Auckland’s performance against, in my opinion.…
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How should North Shore Rail work?

Following on from yesterday’s post about the question of when we might need to think about rail to Auckland’s North Shore, there’s also an interesting question of where it should go and what form it should take. The Passenger Transport Report that accompanies the Harbour Crossing documents looks at this issue in some detail.…
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General thoughts on transport in Sydney

I’m writing this post on the plane coming back from Sydney to Auckland (will obviously post it later than this though). It gives me a bit of an opportunity to put together some thoughts on Sydney’s transport system. Many people say that Sydney is like Auckland’s big brother: there are many similarities like the harbour, the bridge, the tower, the natural beauty and so forth.…
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Sydney Buses – not just for commuting

Well we arrived in Sydney yesterday, and because the weather was so fantastic we headed to Coogee Beach for a bit of relaxation and to enjoy the weather. While we were in a friend’s car, it was interesting on the way back to see how many people were using the bus network to get from the beach to wherever they live.…
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Sydney

Right, I’m off on a quick holiday to Sydney for the next few days! I look forward to riding a few trains and learning a bit more about how both political parties in the upcoming NSW state election appear to be outbidding each other in their promises to expand Sydney’s rail system.…
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Fund the CBD rail tunnel with parking levies?

The big question mark surrounding what progress we can hope to make on the CBD Rail Tunnel in the next few years is “where is the funding going to come from?” If the project costs around $1.5 billion I have always thought a likely split would be central government funding around a billion (through NZTA and most likely through doing a cheaper and more cost effective Puhoi-Wellsford) and the Auckland region finding the remaining $500 million from local funding sources.…
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A solution to the “density dilemma”?

Following on from posts made last week on both the Humantransit blog and on my blog about the complex relationship between urban density and public transport use – and how sometimes we end up with some rather bizarre relationships between the two – Jarrett at Humantransit has done a post that I really think finally cracks the issue of linking density and public transport use.…
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The Curse of Cars

An interesting opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald from a couple of months back has come to my attention, and it makes for quite interesting reading: Premier must lift the curse of the cars GAIL BROADBENT February 19, 2010 Australia has become one of the most car-dependent nations, and Sydney is probably its most car-dependent city.…
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