Weekly Roundup 20-September-2024
Welcome to the end of the week, as we head towards the spring equinox. Let us brighten your weekend with links to stories about ways to make our city a little greater.
This roundup is brought to you by a largely volunteer crew.…
29 Comments Managing on-street parking for local benefit
This guest post by Malcolm McCracken originally appeared on his blog Better Things Are Possible, and is republished here by kind permission.
The case for Parking Benefit Districts: managing on-street parking for local benefit
Parking is often the centre of debate in our cities; particularly on-street car parks, who gets to use them and how we manage them.…
Postcard from Sydney: Southwest and City Metro extension
This is a guest post from Sydney reader Nik Clement After 2 years in Auckland I moved back to Sydney just over a year ago. While in Auckland, I went to the opening of Puhinui station and used it a fair bit, living in Manukau Central and being able to walk to Puhinui station, more often taking the Airport Link to meet up with both Southern Line, Eastern Line or Southern Express Rail buses, during periods of track maintenance, which happened frequently.…
Make it make sense: why axe valuable local projects?
Last week, Matt looked at how the government wants to pour a huge chunk of civic infrastructure funding for a generation into one mega-road up North, at huge cost and huge opportunity cost.
A smaller but no less important feature of the National Land Transport Plan devised by Minister of Transport Simeon Brown is what the government has chosen not to invest in.…
Why Entrust Needs New Leadership
I am part of a new team running in the Entrust election in October.
Entrust is a community electricity trust representing a significant swathe of Auckland, and set up to serve the community. It is governed by five trustees, who are elected every three years in an election the trust itself oversees.…
Weekly Roundup 13-September-2024
Ooh, Friday the thirteenth. Spooky! Is that why certain zombie ideas have been stalking the landscape this week, like the Mayor’s brainwave for a motorway bridge from Kauri Point to Point Chev? Read on and find out.
This roundup, like all our coverage, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland team.…
Cross-party consensus: there’s no pipeline without good faith
There’s been a lot of talk recently about a cross-party agreement to develop a pipeline for infrastructure, including transport. Last month, outgoing CRL boss Sean Sweeney talked about the importance of securing an enduring infrastructure programme. He outlined the high costs of the relentless political flip-flopping of priorities, which drives away skilled workers, drives up the cost of delivery, and hamstrings our future .…
Northern Expressway Boondoggle
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has been soaring high with his hubris of getting on and building motorways, but some uncomfortable realities are starting to creep in.
Back in July he announced that the government was pushing on with a Northland Expressway using an “accelerated delivery strategy”:
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.…
Our transport planning system is fundamentally broken
Ever since Wayne Brown became mayor (nearly two years ago now) he’s been wanting to progress an “integrated transport plan” with the government – which sounded a lot like the previous Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) with just a different name.…
Could outdoor dining revitalise Queen Street?
This is a guest post by Ben van Bruggen of The Urban Room,.An earlier version of this post appeared on LinkedIn. All images are by Ben. Have you noticed that there’s almost nowhere on Queen Street that invites you to stop, sit outside and enjoy a coffee, let alone a meal?…
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