How Cities Foster Innovation
We talk quite a bit on this blog about the importance and value of agglomeration, which is the additional level of productivity which comes from locating activities close to each other. Agglomeration is why Auckland growing will be good for all New Zealanders, and at a smaller scale why central parts of Auckland growing will be good for all of Auckland.…
Almost the world’s most liveable city
The 2012 Mercer Quality of Living Ranking survey has Auckland as the world’s third most liveable city – retaining the same ranking as 2011. The survey is designed to assist employers in the placement of expatriate staff and how much they should receive in living allowances, so the results tend to indicate quality of living if you’re really well off, however they give a useful guide.…
Sideswipe Covers Travel Time Savings
In recent days the Herald “Sideswipe” column has helpfully illustrated some of the core issues around urban sprawl and using travel time savings as a measure of the worth of a transport project. It started with this on Monday:
Good life in the country costs less
OK, so you move out to, say, Whangaparaoa from the North Shore to get a more affordable mortgage.…
Measuring ‘transport benefit’ better
In transport planning there’s a lot of talk about ‘cost-benefit analyses’, leading to a “BCR” (benefit cost ratio) for a particular project. Projects with a BCR of greater than 1.0 deliver more benefits than the money expended upon them (and any disbenefits the project generates) and are therefore worth considering spending money upon.…
The disputed economics of the City Rail Link
A few months back when Auckland Council and the government released vastly different results from their (supposedly) joint review of the City Rail Link’s business case, we learned that the process of determining whether a project is “worth it” is not the objective exercise that is so often portrayed.…
CBD Tunnel Review: my thoughts on the Council document
As I noted in yesterday’s blog post, which focused on the Ministry of Transport review of the CBD Rail Tunnel business case, Auckland Council – in conjunction with Auckland Transport and a wide variety of international consultants, also reviewed the business case.…
Outlining why Puhoi-Wellsford is a stupid project
It was good to read in yesterday’s NZ Herald that the Labour Party has committed to cancelling the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” if they’re elected at the end of the year. While the polls indicate that the chances of Labour actually being elected are reasonably remote, if we assume that they retain this policy into the future, the long timeframes for actually planning, consenting and eventually constructing Puhoi-Wellsford should mean that the project never goes ahead in its current form, as eventually Labour will become the government again.…
The UK approach to Wider Economic Benefits
When the CBD Rail Tunnel business case was released late last year the Minister of Transport was skeptical about many of its details – and in particular its approach to various forms of ‘wider economic benefits’ (WEBs). He was reported as calling many of the benefits outlined in the business case “WEBs on steroids”.…
Measuring the economic impact of Auckland’s rail upgrade
Measuring the benefits of transport projects is usually done through a process of comparing how long it took someone to get from A to B without a particular project, how long it is expected to take from A to B with that project, compare the difference, apply some value to the time, multiply it up by how many people will benefit and get a big round number.…
Next steps for the CBD rail tunnel
The agenda for Auckland Transport’s board meeting tomorrow has been posted online (both the boring open agenda and the rather more interesting confidential agenda). In the closed agenda, along with various items that seem relatively normal, will be special consideration of the following: One imagines that the EMU Procurement item is responding to KiwiRail’s short-listing down to two of the preferred suppliers that was announced a few days back.…
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