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.…
96 Comments 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.…
Light-rail is light in name only
Ever since it was announced light-rail was being considered to rail to the airport there has been a ton of debate about the merits of it compared to extending our existing rail system. This has only increased in the last week since we launched the Congestion Free Network 2 (CFN).…
CFN 2 – The Northwest
Yesterday we launched CFN2, the second version of our Congestion Free Network. It has been great to see your response to it, and already we’re getting serious support by key decision-makers. Our detailed report runs through how CFN2 works across different sub-regions of Auckland, and over the next days and weeks we’ll put some focus on our key initiatives, and the reasons behind some key choices that we have made.…
Airport Rapid Transit: A Way Forward.
Below is a post I wrote in August 2016. We are re-running it now because it is confirmed what we have learnt since from both the seemingly endless number of reports on this issue and the increasingly dysfunctional traffic in the area.…
Queen Street – We don’t have to wait for LRT to make it Great.
Queen Street, our showcase harbour-to-city spine is a gently-rising parade of shopping and business, and, while in the 1980s and 90s became dull and empty, today it is again teaming with people. Along with its own attractions, its footpaths are the great north-south city movement route.…
NZTA support light-rail to Airport
A briefing to Councillors (from page 251) included in an attachment for the Council’s Planning Committee meeting for next week says that both the NZTA and Auckland Transport boards have now agreed on a way forward for the city to airport corridor. …
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