transport

Categories under transport

An open letter to Andrew Little

Written By: - Date published: 6:08 pm, June 26th, 2015 - 433 comments

A respectful open letter to Andrew Little with suggestions for how to win the next election!

Robbie would be turning in his grave

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, May 16th, 2015 - 46 comments

Simon Bridges wants to ease Auckland’s congestion by investing more into local roads and less in rail. And by the looks of things he wants to politicise transport funding in a way that has not occurred for decades.

Hosking wants Auckland Council deposed

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, May 8th, 2015 - 45 comments

From the I kid you not files Mike Hosking believes that Auckland Council is to blame for the housing crisis, not immigration, not favourable tax conditions for landlords, not the global financial crisis and not the lack of restrictions on home ownership.  And he believes that Nick Smith should step in and Roll Auckland Council.

Ten Bridges Too Far

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, April 17th, 2015 - 18 comments

With Crosby Textor by his side, John Key has since learned to employ all manner of specialist PR techniques including ad homs, blame-shifting, distraction,  use of Dirty Politics proxies to defuse the situation, and false equivalence, all woven together in an intricately performed semantic shuffle designed to  provide wiggle room for when he does get caught.

Polity: Pork bridges

Written By: - Date published: 3:28 pm, March 9th, 2015 - 40 comments

A sudden enthusiasm for local infrastructure projects on the eve of a tight by-election. What a remarkable coincidence! I wonder whether the cost/benefit ratios on these bridges are up to scratch? Last year National bribed people in the general election. OIA time

Where have all the houses gone?

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, January 20th, 2015 - 131 comments

Yesterday it was announced that Auckland is the ninth least affordable city in the world requiring 8.3 times their average wage to buy a home. Reducing regulation hasn’t worked, otherwise more than 20 homes would have been built under the 2013 fast track accord. The problem is a shortage of affordable housing.

Skypath

Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, January 17th, 2015 - 6 comments

Generation Zero encourages you to make a submission on the Skypath. All those in favour – say so!

Save the Pohutukawa Six

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, January 3rd, 2015 - 34 comments

Despite local opposition Auckland Transport intends to fell six prominent Pohutukawa to make way for an extra road lane with dubious transport benefits.

Oh dear – National’s “white elephant” is still growing?

Written By: - Date published: 4:56 pm, November 23rd, 2014 - 44 comments

Public transport traffic in Auckland keeps growing by large 7.7% per year. Car traffic despite all of the motorway and roading improvements grew by just 2.3% in the whole period of 2006 and 2013 amongst commuters. But our current idiotic National transport minister wants  more roads? And won’t let Aucklanders decide what they should do despite them voting with their AT Hop cards.

The tweets are alive….

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, September 19th, 2014 - 5 comments

… with pre-election day fervour. It’s an election that’s going down to the wire.  The energy is there for the left to keep talking to people, and to encourage as many as possible to get out and vote. It’s Suffrage Day – reporting via the telegraph in 1893 to the internet today. On-going updates

NRT: The Greens on transport

Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, August 7th, 2014 - 41 comments

There’s a strong element of planning for the future here: peak oil and climate change mean the days of cheap cars (and therefore of massive motorways) are numbered. But it also reflects the changes we’re seeing now. Road usage is already dropping, while Aucklanders are crying out for a better rail system so they can escape gridlock.

Polity: Herald on regional roads fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 12:52 pm, August 2nd, 2014 - 13 comments

The National Government’s $212 million plan has Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee explicitly admitting that it is a massive pork-barreling for government MPs with public funds, and explicitly tells people to piss off if they don’t like it.

NRT: National’s roads are pure pork

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, July 29th, 2014 - 13 comments

The extent that the National minister have been pork-barreling the roading budget for their electorates is crazy. The OIA’s show that most of the $212 million announced by John Key at the National party conference is pure pork for ministers. They are assessed as costing more money to build than they will ever produce in benefits, even using NZTA’s infamously overoptimistic assessments. National MPs and Ministers want to be seen as delivering something for their electorates before the election. So much for assessing needs based on merits. They must be really worried about this election to misuse so much pork.

Polity: Brownlee burns $100,000 or $5 million, take your pick

Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, July 1st, 2014 - 27 comments

The Government has almost finished a $100,000 project to strengthen a bridge it will now tear down and replace as part of its new roading package. The $3m to $5m cost to replace the bridge, with construction due to start next year, was a “massive investment while there’s other more pressing priorities in the region”. Who would have thought that pork-barrel road projects had such poor cost/benefit reasoning behind them. Heckuva job, Gerry. OIA time

Provincial councils not happy over roads.

Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, June 30th, 2014 - 38 comments

National has been sucking billions of dollars out of the provincial road maintenance budgets to throw into “Roads of Significance only to National” since 2009. In the latest round, maintenance costs for roads mostly used by trucks will drop to an average of 52%, with the small populations of ratepayers expected to subsidize trucking firms. Is it any wonder that they’re looking at National’s token gesture  over the weekend with disdain and anger. Meanwhile the urban centres aren’t getting the public transport they need.

Polity: ROPS – Roads of Political Significance

Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, June 30th, 2014 - 131 comments

National’s announcement yesterday of $212 million for 14 roading projects around regional New Zealand hits a lot of bad notes. I think it is a strategic mistake.  New Zealanders are not used to pork-barreling as naked as this. All but two of the projects are in National-held areas, and those other two are on National’s target list in September. And some are complete clunkers. For instance Nick Smith rerouting SH6 from the rich houses on to the kids going to schools

John Roughan: NZ Herald’s white elephant

Written By: - Date published: 1:33 pm, June 26th, 2014 - 70 comments

There is one thing that shines through in the coverage of the biography of John Key today. It is by a veteran arselicker of the right – John Roughan, veteran editorial writer and columnist for the NZ Herald. He is someone that have have no respect for because his writing has a short-term approach to Auckland that is more characterised by stupidity and a rabid adherence to National’s partisan campaign needs. Both as an anonymous editorial writer and in his columns.

Auckland’s forgotten West

Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, June 17th, 2014 - 107 comments

Almost a week after last week’s storm, some people in West Auckland are only just getting their power back on, while others are still without hot water. Some parts of Auckland’s west are becoming increasingly neglected under John Key’s watch, especially since the centralising-moves following Hide’s blueprint for the “supercity”.

Delusional transport predictions

Written By: - Date published: 12:12 pm, June 16th, 2014 - 57 comments

This morning I was reading the Transport Blog on The Draft 2015-2025 Government Policy Statement released by the Ministry of Transport. This is the main starting point for a number of the transport planning documents over the coming decade(s). Somehow based on what looks like a delusional belief that people are going to start driving more as the price of petrol is going up, the MOT is planning about $17 billion dollars to be  sunk into (what I think will be) white elephant new roading over the coming decade.

Digital speed cameras & mass surveillance

Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, June 6th, 2014 - 30 comments

The main NZ news outlets are reporting on the new digital speed cameras about to be progressively installed around the country.  They fail to report on the potential of the cameras to be used for mass surveillance.

The neoliberal power game: cities for sale

Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, May 4th, 2014 - 27 comments

An NZ Herald article about Mai Chen’s book on Auckland Council, supports big power, big money, big competition, and economic activities focused on anything but the production of material needs and wants.  It ignores the struggling precariat living with housing, income, transport and energy poverty.

LocalBodies: Transport Poverty, Bicycles Needed.

Written By: - Date published: 4:51 pm, April 1st, 2014 - 20 comments

bsprout has found out that quite a number of children didn’t have bikes. It shook his middle class perception that all New Zealand kids must have access to a bike. People using them for transport to get to work as they no longer have a car or can’t afford to repair one. While cycling is obviously a healthy and practical choice of transport many are obviously doing it because they have no choice. A fraction of the roading money would provide people with transport to go on them…

Patricia Grace takes on RONS

Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, April 1st, 2014 - 48 comments

The Kapiti Expressway is one of the National government’s RONS projects:  it makes no sense economically.  It is destructive to the environment and the local communities. The NZTA is attempting to run roughshod over ancestral lands, including that of writer, Patricia Grace.  She is taking a stand.

Climate change, peak oil and deconstructing motorways

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, March 30th, 2014 - 62 comments

Three interrelated articles dealing with how far from Scientific Reality Republican Politicians are, how peak oil may just be around the corner and how deconstructing motorways can improve inner city areas.

LocalBodies: Gerry Brownlee, Making Stuff Up Again!

Written By: - Date published: 10:36 pm, March 18th, 2014 - 35 comments

The crazy thing about Gerry Brownlee is that he is so incompetent because he never seems to study anything that he is responsible for. On Monday, Local Bodies wrote about his current burst of illiterate and untutored whining and blowhard posturing about roads. And yet people on the inside of the National party appear to rate him? What does that say about their competence?

Auckland in search of democracy

Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, December 24th, 2013 - 29 comments

Media beat-ups around personality politics divert from Auckland’s real problems: an undemocratic council structure that panders to corporates, & that does not represent Auckland’s diversity, while doing little to counter the destructive impact of the inequality gap.

Transmission Gully: they profit, you pay

Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, December 4th, 2013 - 34 comments

The proponents of Public-Private Partnerships offer two justifications for the extra cost compared to normal government financing: 1) a mystical claim that the private sector will find efficiencies in a PPP that they wouldn’t find if they were just contracted to build a project normally and 2) risk is shared between the taxpayer and the private investors. Except it’s not.

Breaking News: Aratere to be used in the event of a major oil spill

Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, December 3rd, 2013 - 38 comments

As Greenpeace make a bid in the High Court to challenge the EPA’s decision to grant Anadarko permission to deep sea drill, we can reveal the content of secret documents detailing the contingency plan in the event of a major oil spill. The documents outline how the stricken inter island ferry Aratere will be deployed in the cleanup effort, should a catastrophic event occur.

Public transport vs private transport. Don’t waste money on fasttracking motorways

Written By: - Date published: 1:08 am, November 26th, 2013 - 99 comments

Ok, I know this image has a lot of issues. It is a 256 color animated gif. Dithered to hell. Bad colour balance, tilt and even a moving focus point. But it certainly makes its point about what kind of road space we’re paying for to inefficiently fill with cars? Have the idiots at NZTA and in this incompetent National government not read their own statistics? Roads aren’t filling up. Public transport does.

Govt responsible for 7 NZ deaths

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 pm, November 4th, 2013 - 25 comments

National has agreed to lower the drink drive limit. Over 2 years ago they blocked a Labour amendment to do exactly the same thing. Their dithering has cost 7 New Zealand lives by their own measurements – 7 lives unfulfilled and families faced with unnecessary grief.

Because it’s all about “me”

Written By: - Date published: 6:24 pm, October 22nd, 2013 - 22 comments

Cunliffe talked of moving from a “from a cost-based to a values-based” strategy. We need a new narrative: valuing all, including children of those on benefits; about long term benefits for all of less inequality & poverty, and more affordable housing & better public transport, & more.

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