Who Cares What The Trains Look Like?
Surely all that matters about the new trains is how they function, how user friendly the interiors are and above all how well the system is designed and run, right? And how efficiently. Isn’t that why we spend hours drawing little maps, trying to work out running patterns and arguing over the various merits of various systems.…
44 Comments AT June Board Meeting
Auckland Transport has its next board meeting on Monday and the business report is now online. Here are some of the bits I found interesting:
First up some news about the work going on to update the Public Transport Network Plan, of which the new bus network will be a part of.…
Excellent in Parts: The NW Cycleway Finally Arrives
With much excitement NZTA and AT announced the extension of the strangely terminating NW Cycleway into the city. The evening was carried along by the limitless enthusiasm of Barbara Cuthbert of Cycle Action who certainly has decided that smiles and and encouragement opens more doors than complaint.…
Rail Real Time System is Live
One of Auckland Transports long promised projects seems to have gone live. Real time displays have been promised for years and over the last day or two the displays on the western line have started showing a due time for trains.…
Density and traffic congestion
Logic says that higher densities will lead to more congestion. Concentrating many more trips within a smaller area may be more efficient (less need for so many roads and a greater role for public transport, walking and cycling) and as more people catch the train or ride the bus along exclusive bus lanes, congestion becomes irrelevant to an increasing number of traveller, but typically we’ve often thought that even taking all that into account it’s inevitable that you’ll see more congestion as you increase densities.…
A New Arrival on Queens Wharf
Queens Wharf has a new arrival, the latest mock up of our new electric trains (EMUs). My understanding is that this is one of the last stages before the real ones starts getting built although the first EMU will be built slowly to ensure everything goes together as planned.…
Petrol tax to increase
As expected, today the government announced that petrol taxes and road user charges will increase (by 2c a litre and 4.1% respectively), as of August 1st.
Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee has today confirmed increases in petrol excise duty of two cents a litre and an equivalent increase in road user charges of an average of 4.1 per cent.…
Freight and Driverless Rapid Transit
There was some good feedback on my earlier post suggesting a pretty radical change to the future of rail in Auckland, through the introduction of driverless rapid transit (or “Light Metro”) – much like the Skytrain in Vancouver, the JFK Airtrain in New York and systems in Copenhagen, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, among many other cities.…
The case for the Eastern Link
The other day I covered part of the case against having an Eastern link, with this post I thought I would look at the case for building it and also whether we could live with things if it was not possible to grade separate the junction with the western link.…
More information about the RoNS
A couple of further documents relating to the Roads of National Stupidity Significance, prepared by NZTA, provide a bit more information on where each of the projects are at.
Ministerial Briefing – February 27th
Investment Outcomes – March 16th
There’s also a good Radio New Zealand piece on the documents, in which both Phil Twyford and Julie-Anne Genter (Labour and Greens transport spokespeople) highlight their fundamental concerns with the RoNS package, whether they’ll actually be able to be funded, whether they’re value for money and so on.…
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