The Buses Are Fixed
Some good news from Auckland Transport yesterday that the bus driver shortage is officially over.
At the peak of the driver shortage just eight months ago, Auckland was 578 drivers short.
Auckland now has three more bus drivers than the required 2,306 to operate Auckland’s buses.…
25 Comments Changing Auckland’s “Complex Transport Ecosystem”
On Thursday, Mayor Wayne Brown will ask the council’s Transport and Infrastructure committee to push for a legislative change in the way transport strategy is delivered in Auckland by giving Auckland Council itself a bigger say. The Mayor also wants Auckland to have the ability to make other key regulatory decisions around transport, such as the ability to set its own parking fines.…
August’s Important Regional Consultations
There are a few important consultations on at the moment that are worth highlighting as some close this week, including one today. Local Board Plans – feedback closing 4pm today
Auckland Council are consulting on three-year plans for each local board.…
The Opportunity Cost of Auckland’s “Big Digs”
On Monday, I posted about Labour’s harbour crossing boondoggle. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins called it a “bold” project, but really it represents a twenty year delay to building the rest of Auckland’s Rapid Transit Network.
I also noted on Monday that for the combined cost of the project and the City Centre to Mangere light rail project, you could build about 300km of surface-running light rail all over the region.…
Rail Safety and closing level crossings
It’s rail safety week – and as part of their latest safety campaign, Kiwirail have highlighted just how many collisions and near misses there are:
In the year to 30 June, 40 vehicles or people collided with trains across the national rail network and there were 305 near misses.…
A vision for the Waterfront
While we’re underwhelmed by the vision announced on Sunday of a roads first harbour crossing, far more interesting is the vision for the waterfront being pushed by Mayor Wayne Brown and the council that was released last week.
At a series of confidential workshops, council staff, independent advisors Flagstaff Partners, GHD Engineering and Eke Panuku discussed the draft findings of land release options for waterfront land.…
The Harbour Crossing Boondoggle
Yesterday, not to be outdone by National’s mega roads plan, Labour announced an absurd $35-45 billion harbour crossing programme that doubles down on the transport planning mistakes of Auckland’s past.
Two new three lane road tunnels under the Waitemata Harbour, one going in each direction, and a separate light rail tunnel that will link to the existing Auckland Light Rail corridor is the proposed plan for a second Auckland harbour crossing, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Transport Minister David Parker announced today.…
Weekly Roundup 04-August-2023
Welcome to the end of another week. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. The Week In Greater Auckland On Monday Matt laid out some ideas and policies we’d like to see from political parties this election.…
National’s 2023 Transport Policy
On Monday, National launched its transport policy for the upcoming election, showing that at least National have learnt how to recycle, with the policy largely recycled from their 2020 campaign, which itself was mostly recycled from 2017.
As expected, the policy is almost all about building lots of big roads, once again using the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) name.…
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