City Centre (and other) speed limits have now changed
From today speeds in the city centre, and many other roads around the region have been reduced in Auckland Transport’s bid to lower the amount of deaths and serious injuries (DSI) on our roads. All up, about 700km of roads will have speed limits changed.…
74 Comments Alternative ways of achieving airport goals
Last week we learnt that the light rail process had ended after the government parties couldn’t come to an agreement on the outcome. One reason for that that appears to have been a desire from the minister for the project to become a much more expensive, fully grade separated Light Metro system with a key requirement that it could get from the city to the airport in 30 minutes.…
Weekly Roundup – 26-June-2020
It’s Friday again so here’s our weekly roundup. Aotea Station Construction Begins
The City Rail Link reached another milestone this week with the two Phil’s (Twyford and Gofff) officially kicking off the work to build the walls of the station. Up until now the work in and around the station location has been about moving services but is now starting to move to the actual station itself.…
Light Rail dies but Light Metro may return
When the government came to power in 2017, light rail was effectively ‘shovel-ready’. Building the project was the first election policy of then newly minted leader Jacinda Ardern. The government swiftly took the project off Auckland Transport and the biggest issue at the time seemed to be the complete radio silence from Auckland Transport and then Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency about the project which had allowed misinformation about it to sprout like mushrooms after rain.…
Innovating Streets Round 1 Outcomes – Auckland “Falls Short”
Back in April the Waka Kotahi NZTA launched a fantastic initiative, a $7+ million pilot fund for tactical urbanism called Innovating Streets for People. The agency invited councils around the country to apply and would provide financial (90% of costs), organisational and technical support for tactical urbanism projects.…
From Ugly Car Parks to Loved Buildings
Guest post from Brendon Harre that although Christchurch focused, raises New Zealand wide questions of importance, such as, inner-city car parking policy and how to rebuild extensively damaged city centres.
Christchurch’s earthquake damaged city exposes many underlying urbanism lessons. Minimising land wastage on car parking is one lesson.…
Auckland’s Busiest Bus Routes
With COVID-19 impacting things, February represents the current high-point for public transport use in Auckland. In the 12-months to the end of Feb, 103.6 million boardings took place on the network and almost three quarters of those, 75.3 million, took place on buses.…
Weekly Roundup – 19-June-2020
Here’s our weekly roundup Queen St Sense
Sanity has prevailed and yesterday the Council announced that next month they’ll start piloting ‘Access for Everyone’ – the plan in the City Centre Masterplan (CCMP) to make the city more friendly for pedestrians.…
The Framework for Housing Quality
The Covid-19 lockdown showed us all how important housing quality is. Some homes were uncomfortable or got cold. Some homes were fine physically, but not well suited for how they were used over lockdown. For me – a numbers-focused economist type guy – it’s a crucial reminder that it’s not just about the quantity of our housing and whether we’re building enough.…
Speeding up (some) consents
On Monday the government announced they’ve created a new fast track consenting process to speed up consenting for 11 projects around the county with six of them in Auckland. The new process is expected to reduce the time to consent these projects to as little as 45 days.…
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