More Homes vs Light Rail
Last week, the Coalition for More Homes sent a letter that we really shouldn’t have had to write. But first, some backstory and some acronyms.
Auckland Council is required to implement Government planning reforms called the NPS-UD and MDRS. The NPS-UD (National Policy Statement on Urban Design 2020).…
51 Comments Sooo… Tunnelled Light Rail
On Friday the government announced their decision on Light Rail.
I should start by pointing out that it’s fantastic the government have agreed to invest so much in public transport in Auckland. At $10.3 billion in today’s value, or $14.6 billion with inflation by the time it is finished, this will easily be the largest single transport project ever attempted in New Zealand.…
Light rail veers off course
The government has released the recommendations from the Auckland Light Rail team (ALR), ahead of this being considered by Cabinet later this year. This appears to be a case of trying to gauge public reaction so they don’t end up with a repeat of the Northern Pathway – and that’s understandable given the cost of the options now range from $9 billion to $16.3 billion.…
Staging the Northwestern
As described here, Auckland is in the middle of a multi-decade process of retro-fitting a Strategic Rapid Transit Network (RTN) to the city.
The process used to date for this is best described as incremental. All of our current RTN began very much below the ideal standard but have been more-or less constantly improved since.…
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.…
Development update: June 2018
Here on Greater Auckland, we’ve got the sponsored RCG Development Tracker page which shows hundreds of housing projects across Auckland (and NZ): apartments, terraces, retirement villages etc. It also shows big commercial developments and Auckland’s rapid transit network.
After a great post from Matt the other week, I’ve updated the Development Tracker with the proposed light rail lines along Dominion Rd and out to the airport, and out to the North West.…
Light Rail Ticketing
Light rail plans are progressing fast, which got me thinking about the different options for doing ticketing for these services.
First off I think it is likely the service will have to either not accept cash fares or will need to provide ticket machines at all Light Rail stations.…
Light Rail is not really about the Airport
There’s been plenty of talk about light rail in the media and why we shouldn’t build it. So we thought we’d offer a different point of view. On Tuesday, the Herald published the below piece from me about it. There’s a lot more that I would have or could have said if it weren’t for word limit.…
Platform Screen Doors – Light Rail
We think Platform Screen Doors should be part of the City Rail Link project, in the underground stations. There are four main reasons for this: Lower operating costs as Air Conditioning/Heating are not lost, and items cannot be thrown on tracks;
Higher platform capacity as larger crowds can be accommodated without risk of people falling on tracks;
Higher resilience as the tracks cannot be accessed from platform by passengers;
Higher passenger satisfaction as creates feel of modern metro system as well as more effective air conditioning; Platform screen doors should be included day one of the CRL as adding them in later will cause unnecessary disruption.…
Crosstown Light Rail: Connecting to New Lynn
Recently I wrote a post about the feasibility of a cross-isthmus light rail line. This is shown in red in the map below and essentially extends the light-rail that is proposed along State Highway 20 between Mt Roskill and Onehunga further west towards Avondale.…
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