Auckland vs Vancouver
One particularly interesting element of the NZTA Research Report into creating better public transport networks that has been the focus of a few posts recently is the comparison made between Auckland and Vancouver. While Vancouver is a larger city than Auckland, with a population of over 2 million, as the graph below shows there are a number of similarities in terms of its urban density and the strength of its CBD (in terms of its regional share of employment) that would show it to be a good test case for looking at what Auckland ‘could’ be.…
24 Comments The future for oil…
The graph below shows a comparison between the world’s likely demand for liquid fuels (including oil) over the next 20 years (the blue line) and the various components that will make up the supply of liquid fuels over that time. The emerging gap is alarming, as “Unidentified Projects” would actually be more accurately described as “unfulfilled demand” – meaning quite literally a demand for oil that will not be able to be met.…
An introduction…
Hi all,
Joshua has kindly given me a login for the blog so that I can join him and Jeremy in making regular posts on transport topics. It is probably a good idea that I introduce myself as you may be seeing a bit more of my thoughts in the future, so here goes:
My name is Nicolas Reid, some readers may know me as Nick R from the comments pages, the CBT forums and various other blogs.…
Applying the ‘network effect’ on the North Shore
Like Jeremy and the Admin I am a big fan of Paul Mees’s writings on the network effect, particularly his latest book ‘Transport for Suburbia’. I recently studied a transport planning paper with him which basically followed the same flavour of the book: through the use of a network and transfers you can gain the go-anywhere convenience of the car while keeping the move-lots-of-people-in-the-same vehicle efficiency of public transport.…
The “freedom” of car dependency
On Good Friday Leila (my fiancee) and I were driving around Auckland randomly checking out different bits of the city (as you do when you’re an urban planner, it’s an unhealthy but interesting obsession) when my car simply stopped working as we were exiting from SH1 just near Manukau City.…
Bizarre rail funding controversy
There has been an interesting debate in recent days about a speech that Steven Joyce gave at the 2010 Australasian Rail Association Conference. In particular, I think that the controversy relates to these parts of his speech:
The fourth group we need buy-in from are the regional councils in Auckland and Wellington which, along with the Transport Agency, are responsible for the commuter rail services in their respective cities.…
The “Network Effect” comes to NZ
Both Jeremy and myself have written quite a few posts on Paul Mees and his book Transport for Suburbia. In particular, we have focused a lot on the huge benefits of creating a transport system that is a true “network”, rather than a number of independent lines between suburbs and the CBD – which is what we most commonly find in current public transport systems – particularly in Auckland.…
Meandering Bus Routes
I’ve often wondered why and how Auckland’s meandering bus routes came to pass, Jarrett from the outstanding humantransit blog states:
Every transit system gradually acquires odd bits of route that really don’t make any objective sense. They may have been added to take care of some noisy complaint, or they may just be obsolete services that have been superseded by something added more recently. …
The Network Effect: An Auckland Example
I’m reading Admin’s copy of Transport For Suburbia by Paul Mees and it is a cracking read full of information and examples about Auckland and the rest of the world. The book makes a few points that it goes into in detail: While density can help make the provision of public transport easier, it is by no means the most important factor.…
Christchurch
I am in Christchurch for the NZ Planning Institute conference for the next couple of days, but there should continue to be a few posts trickling out over that time thanks to Jeremy.
I have been pretty impressed by Christchurch so far actually (I was last here when I was 12).…
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