Caution needed over trackless trains
In the debate over light rail in Auckland, opposition to it generally falls into two camps that we should build heavy rail instead
that we can just use buses, especially new technology buses. In this post, I want to focus that second camp and particularly on that last part.…
80 Comments Crosstown Light Rail
In the comments and on Twitter recently has been some discussion about what would a Crosstown Light Rail line look like, while I think we have a lot on our plate, there isn’t any harm in looking at how it could fit in.…
What a different Manukau Harbour Crossing could mean for Mangere
Recently I wrote about rethinking how we build light rail across the Manukau Harbour Crossing. While writing it, I also thought about how people have spent a lot of time talking about Onehunga, Dominion Rd, Queen St and the especially the Airport, but hardly any time actually considering how this line benefits the people of Mangere and the broader Southwest part of Auckland.…
Rethinking the Manukau Harbour Crossing
With the election of a new Government, it is highly likely we will see Light Rail from the City to the Airport via Dominion Rd and the Southwest built within the next decade. This was not only a campaign policy of the Labour party but a major part of the confidence and supply agreement between the Labour Party and the Greens.…
10 Years
Change and Continuity Rather than just look ahead a short distance I thought it may be productive to project forward a decade or so into Auckland’s future urban form. Partly as this is surprisingly easy because of the long lead in times for urban infrastructure, we know what’s coming, and partly because a longer look ahead gives us a better sense of the what the coming change is likely to mean.…
What makes a good light-rail route different from a good busway route?
While the “bus versus light-rail” argument over Dominion Road and Airport “mass transit” is now settled, it is inevitable that this argument will come up over and over again as we develop Auckland’s strategic public transport network over the coming years.…
Northwest Light Rail Thoughts
In the Congestion Free Network 2, we floated the idea of Northwestern Light Rail along State Highway 16, rather than a Busway. We did this for a few reasons: Aspirational: We suspected that like the Northern Busway the Northwest Busway would also be a victim of its own success.…
Airport Rapid Transit isn’t really about the Airport
The idea of providing Airport rail through a short spur from Puhinui is one of those ideas that continues to pop up. It emerged again in an opinion piece the NZ Herald ran just over a week ago (which was oddly a repeat of a piece they ran exactly a month earlier).…
Trains to the Planes
Auckland Airport Public Transport access is a geometric problem with a two sided solution. There are two immediate sets of catchments, East and North, plus a city-wide overlay then a region-wide one. The Airport is a natural terminus (excuse the pun), because short of looping around there are no destinations beyond the airport.…
Democratic Tin: Observations from Bourke St
Melbourne has the largest surface Light Rail network in the world (there were larger ones, mainly in the Americas, but these all fell to the fashion of the mid last century for all-in motordom). And this network, despite its foibles and peculiarities, is part of what makes Melbourne such a successful, connected, and particular city.…
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