We do frequently critique Auckland Transport, but this is only because we are impatient for change and AT must play a key role in making Auckland a better city. So it’s great when they create something really awesome – and a good example of that is this new video:
Let’s see this approach coming through in everything AT does.
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Great vid, they are improving their videos it seems.
Credit goes to Rob Pitney in AT’s Campaigns Marketing Team. This video was his work. Well done Mr P.
Thanks Mr M!
Gotta credit the workers mate – the people who get stuff done.
“Let’s Get Auckland Moving” – great slogan. (thinks… where have I heard that before….?)
Yes, let’s.
If this is a true depiction of AT’s current mindset, then this is a massive step change for AT. Very aspirational goals. Now, if we could just convince NZTA to similarly change their mind to this way of thinking too…
‘Connecting Aucklanders’ and ‘Connecting Communities’ are two more tag lines AT got very good feedback on from focus groups in 2013. Its time to dust those off and use them. The climate in 2018/2019 is now appropriate for those taglines.
lets make auckland great again. embossed on some chinese made hats.
Yes! MAGA hats….but in blue, not red.
not one single motorbike pictured
Well motorbikes are one of the big reasons why the number of injuries and fatalities have been increasing as they are one of the most dangerous forms of transport. Yes there are good/safe riders out there, however far too many are dangerous/reckless riders and motorbikes don’t provide any form of protection.
Motorbikes present a level of danger. The built, regulatory and cultural environment they are driven in presents a level of danger. Why is Auckland’s motorbike DSI rate so much worse than elsewhere in the OECD? It isn’t that the motorbikes are different.
Several reasons – 1) Auckland tends to be wetter than most other cities (which is exponential more dangerous for motorbikes). 2) Motobikes are more popular here than in most other developed countries (probably due to high fuel prices and lack of sub-zero temperatures). 3) Motobike riders here tend to take more risks and ridemore recklessly than I have seen in many many other cities around the world. Things like lane splitting at high speed, high numbers of idiot gang members riding around with those ridiculous high handlebars etc. 4) Roads – our roads have a higher proportion of low quality cheap surfaces which provide less grip especially on bikes.
5) Lack of rider training.
Market this type of advertisement all across Auckland. There are many people still out there who thinks Auckland transport is abysmal. AT needs to remind everyone that time has changed and our city’s transport have improved.
Yes, it’s a good video. And it would be helpful if good advertisements based on these ideas were placed on prime time television.
Should be shown subtitled, every hour on every QMS digiscreen across the transit network. Also should be shown on the big timetable screen in the Britomart concourse.
All other things aside, I cannot help but think the the rise in deaths and injuries on our roads had climbed so dramatically was in no small part based on drivers acclimatising to the fact that by 2017 specialised (i.e. traffic safety service) enforcement of traffic laws had essentially ceased, because of the by then routine funding problems all government departments faced, reliant only on police going about other business to do the job.
In other words the chances of getting caught were so low extra care behind the wheel also ceased.
Tax cuts are one thing, as are budget surpluses but at what cost?
Yes. Tax cuts cost lives and ruined families. And the resultant culture of individualism and gung-ho negligence then became ‘normal’.
Not forgetting the 500,000 new immigrants (half of which have settled in Auckland) that have arrived in the past decade. Most of these are from developing countries with poor road safety standards, even worse driving standards, and many which have limited to no driving experience. Couple that with their ability to buy a 2+ ton SUV and you have a recipe for more accidents…
The bad driving in my neck of the woods is from true blue Aucklanders, no help from immigrants required. If you want to understand some reasons for our poor safety statistics, read the Road Safety Business Improvement Review.
Some immigrants are probably leading the statistics in car-free households and in the increase in people who do not use a car regularly (up 3 %age points each year for the last three years). Lumping many diverse people together and then blaming the poor outcome of our bad transport network planning on them is really below the belt. You may not realise your comment comes across as a hate comment, but it does.
OK, I’ll bite. This is a great cartoon, but if I want to watch a great cartoon, I’ll watch an old Simpsons episode.
We need the visualisations of LRT front and centre, showing what it looks like on Auckland City Streets, to be front and centre of what AT is trying to do, and it needs to be more than sterile fly-throughs of station renders. How can people buy into something if they have no idea what it looks like? A cartoon tram does nothing to show people that LRT can work on Dominion Road, or on Symonds St, or Tamaki Drive, or wherever. I’d rather have aspirational videos showing something tangible than a whimsical animated vision of the future.
Considering the festering LRT debate that agencies are letting continue, I know what is more important and what AT need to be communicating more on; and this isn’t it.
“Critique” does not mean “criticise”.
I seemed to have missed the part where Auckland Council and Auckland Transport committed to the CBD being emission-free by 2030 (1:40 in the video). That’s great. Amazing.
Also, only 11 years away.
Has anyone seen the roadmap for how we are planning to get there?
It sounds like a walking and cycling and electric-public-transport utopia, and will require a complete structural rethink of almost everything I see looking out my window.
I look at MBIE’s electric vehicle penetration forecasts of circa 25% by 2030 (high penetration scenario), and think that to achieve an emissions free CBD we’d need to reduce our inner-city SOV road network to about 25% of it’s current capacity, and turn the other 75% into pedestrian/cycle/public transport spaces.
Ha ha … you got it! Just like every carbon emissions promise we’ve had. A set of achievable targets along the way is needed, with ramped up measures if we don’t meet those.
I suppose the CBD promise is more achievable than the city-wide goal: “Auckland Council’s energy resilience and low carbon action plan, Low Carbon Auckland, sets a target for Auckland to achieve a 40 per cent reduction in GHG emissions by 2040 (based on 1990 levels).” That ain’t going to happen with our current RLTP.
For the CBD, if they’re going to go for carbon emission free, I wish they’d be proactive about better building design to prevent all the noise pollution from air conditioning units too. And aim for Gehl’s suggestion of halving the amount of pavement. Once cars don’t dominate, there’ll be more space for more greenery, which will reduce the urban heat effect, reducing the need for air conditioning, which shouldn’t be required with passively cooled apartments anyway..
A little poking around got me as far as here:
https://c40-production-images.s3.amazonaws.com/other_uploads/images/1426_C40_FFF_260918.original.pdf?1537953007
This is a declaration and supporting action. Spoiler: We pledge to ensure a major area of our city is emissions free, but our list of actions, while nice, fall well short of the plain meaning of the words “emissions free”.
Some interesting stuff in there, though. Can you find a date for when it was written? I think it’s pretty recent, although we did became a C40 city in 2015.
The most important thing Auckland can do is reduce our vkt, but the only mention of planning for vkt reduction (as opposed to encouraging walking and cycling and public transport) is in: “Collaborate with suppliers, fleet operators and businesses to accelerate the shift to zero emissions vehicles and reduce vehicle miles in our cities.”
VKT is a product of planning, not of collaborating with suppliers, fleet operators and businesses. That’s passing the buck. Other than that, these commitments are mainly about the marvels of EV.
“Auckland Transport has committed to a fleet of all electric vehicles from 2025.” What? Is that the private operators’ buses or just AT’s cars? It appears to be buses, but Goff’s words are slightly different here: “As part of the declaration I committed Auckland to procure only zero-emission buses by 2025.” https://at.govt.nz/about-us/news-events/electric-buses-to-hit-auckland-s-roads/
So it won’t be the fleet electrified from 2025, just procurement.
Also the first I’d heard of this. Mayor Goff signed us up Oct 2017 by pledging to ban all gasoline and diesel vehicles from the CBD. This has a number of benefits from pollution, to reducing fuel imports and encouraging a shift to PT & active modes.
https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2017-10-23/world-mayors-pledge-emissions-free-cities-by-2030
It is only 11 years away and I’d like to know what the planning is around the new diesel buses beinng purchased. I assume they’ll still be in service but how will they get around having to terminal outside the CBD? Or is the plan to fit them with an electric drive for use in the CBD?
I also assure all the port straddle carriers can be converted to electric, and that all freight will be transferred by electric truck or electric train to an inland port?
I guess petrol and diesel vehicle imports will have to have been shifted to Marsden by then, so they can be driven off the ships.
So AT has made a video, but I just skipped through Auckland Council’s latest “OurAuckland” publication. Nothing on the subjects of light rail, public transport, road reallocation, the need for sustainable transport options, land-transport planning, nor the safer speeds safety campaign AT committed “fully and without question” to running this year.
Why not, Council? If you’re reaching an audience through that publication, don’t you have a responsibility to share the knowledge and expertise from the Council Umbrella organisations with the public?