Guest Post: There’s an election coming – but who to vote for?
This is a Guest Post from occasional blog commenter Peter
Like many others I found myself rather depressed as a result of reading through the Government Policy Statement (GPS), which has been out for consultation over the past couple of weeks.…
58 Comments HOP: the bigger challenges are yet to come
The first week of the HOP card rollout seems to have passed by without too many horrific stories. On Friday the NZ Herald reported that some people were trying to jump back onto their bus when they remembered they hadn’t tagged off (if you don’t tag off you can be charged the longest fare of that particular bus route).…
$4 billion+ to allow heavier trucks across the Waitemata Harbour
An article in yesterday’s Herald on Sunday confirmed a suspicion that I have had for a while now: one of the primary reasons Steven Joyce is so keen on another harbour crossing (despite its absurdly high price tag and absurdly low cost-benefit ratio) is because that would make it possible for heavier trucks to get across the Waitemata.…
Shared streets or full pedestrianisation?
The completion of the Darby Street shared space, and progress on Fort Street’s makeover have led to some interesting debates in the the posts I have written on these projects in the past few days: should they be shared spaces or should they be fully pedestrianised?…
Submit on the 2012 GPS
Since the release of the “Engagement Document” for the 2012 Government Policy Statement (GPS) on transport funding I have written a couple of posts (particularly this one) on the document – and what I think of it. The Ministry of Transport have been pretty quiet about things (not surprising since I imagine they’re utterly embarrassed by it) but everyone actually has the opportunity to make a submission by May 27th.…
Big drop in car use
Somewhat unsurprisingly, rising fuel prices over the past few months have led to a fairly substantial reduction in traffic volumes on state highways around the country. NZTA’s April 2010 traffic volumes report (I am amused that the website still calls it the traffic growth section – it’ll take NZTA a long time to adjust to the new reality of stable or declining traffic volumes) confirms the numbers for April 2011 compared to April 2010: A pretty interesting definition of the word “growth” there.…
Fine dining on the NYC subway
This video is so cool I simply must share it: NYC DiningCar: A 6-Course Dinner Party on the NYC Subway from Ronen V on Vimeo.
It’s amazing what you can do on a train.…
Fort Street: coming along nicely
With the Darby Street shared space now completed and open, it’s worth looking at the next major shared space that will be completed in the relatively near future: Fort Street. Work down there is coming along quite nicely:
Fort Street is most definitely a bigger job than Darby Street was – as the road is much wider and also quite a bit busier.…
Why does Auckland hate pedestrians?
If there’s one thing that really annoys me about Auckland’s city centre it is how there are so many occasions when pedestrians get unnecessarily treated like rubbish. In the heart of New Zealand’s biggest city, with extremely high pedestrian flows and decreasing car numbers we still dedicate an enormous amount of space to cars.…
Darby Street: awesome
Darby Street is the first of the excellent “Shared Spaces” in central Auckland to have been completed. I took a wander around there at lunch time yesterday with my camera: I like the fact that the trees that the gutter create something of a boundary to where one would expect cars to be (so there is a place where you feel truly ‘safe’) but at the same time if you want to walk down the middle of the street then you also feel quite comfortable doing that.…
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