Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, September 30th, 2020 - 40 comments
All of these policies will get fossil cars off the roads, reducing emissions.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 5th, 2020 - 43 comments
Our cities are the nation’s lungs; they recycle and accelerate external goods and transform them internally into faster circulation. Auckland and Christchurch have had tens of billions invested in them over successive local and central governments, but has this improved our strength or wealth as a country at all?
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, July 10th, 2020 - 13 comments
National has made two major roading project announcements in the past week. Both announcements recycled announcements that were also made before the last election.
Written By: - Date published: 7:27 am, July 6th, 2020 - 15 comments
Sure to form, Paul Swain along with Regional Council Chair and another former Labour MP Fran Wilde proposed tearing down the trolleybus wire and increasing the city’s carbon emission. This was to then promptly followed by re-tendering all the bus routes having redesigned all the bus network so that bus companies could then compete over routes and undercut each other. At one council meeting in mid-2016 Swain was questioned about the possibility of protecting drivers jobs and employment conditions. After a few questions, he lost patience, slammed in hand on the table and ended the meeting. This was the extent to which Swain and the Greater Wellington Regional Council considered supporting bus drivers during this process.
Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, June 25th, 2020 - 16 comments
There is a solid silver lining to the delay in the Auckland light rail to the airport project.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, June 24th, 2020 - 52 comments
the government can’t agree is a euphemism for NZ First blocking climate action.
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, May 3rd, 2020 - 55 comments
The International Energy Agency is forecasting that disruptions caused by Covid-19 will reduce CO2 output this year by 8%. To avoid the worst excesses of climate change the world has a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7.6% for the next decade. How are we going to keep repeating the reductions that we achieved this year for the next decade?
Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, April 29th, 2020 - 45 comments
What would you do so that instead of wandering endlessly through tilt-slab monstrosities soaked in 80s music and fluorescent lighting, surrounded by oppressed minimum-wage slaves who hate being there and you hating being there worried about your wheeled asset damaged in their carpark instead you get freedom?
Written By: - Date published: 8:06 am, April 14th, 2020 - 65 comments
National MP Simon O’Connor thinks that making under used streets safer for walkers and cyclers is a Socialist inspired plan for world domination.
Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, February 9th, 2020 - 36 comments
Boris Johnson’s UK Government has announced that by 2035 there will be no more petrol or diesel cars entering the UK fleet. Is it time for the New Zealand government to announce the same thing?
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, January 29th, 2020 - 96 comments
The details of the Government’s $12 billion infrastructure announcement have been released.
Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, December 1st, 2019 - 35 comments
Is the Government commitment to the budget responsibility rules weakening? Because at the Labour Party Conference Grant Robertson has indicated that the Government will shortly announce a big capital spend on infrastructure.
Written By: - Date published: 8:14 am, November 18th, 2019 - 16 comments
Advantage is testing an idea out. What will a common accountability framework for the government look like?
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, November 4th, 2019 - 15 comments
Good news for Dunedin and the Country as the Government has announced a $20 million upgrade of the Hillside Rail Workshop.
Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, September 16th, 2019 - 26 comments
Auckland mayoral candidate Craig Lord has announced a policy that may turn the campaign on its head. Or may not.
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, July 28th, 2019 - 138 comments
Despite the babies and the engagements, maybe it’s time to ditch the default Jacindamania.
Written By: - Date published: 4:17 pm, July 13th, 2019 - 52 comments
A tunnel is like a wormhole to another dimension. It changes people’s behaviour ever so slightly, ever so briefly, without them realising.
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, July 9th, 2019 - 134 comments
Julie Anne Genter has released a policy document proposing rebates for the purchase of electric and fuel efficient vehicles funded by a surcharge on gas guzzlers to start the transition of our vehicle fleet to carbon neutrality.
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, April 24th, 2019 - 26 comments
When providing a voluntary carbon-offset scheme, make it as simple as possible, but not simpler, and tell people about it.
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, February 1st, 2019 - 62 comments
Simon Wilson has suggested that the only way National may have to establish a Blue Green presence in Parliament is to offer them the seat of Epsom.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 13th, 2019 - 153 comments
Welcome to TS’s Sunday think piece. It’s a blank sheet, a tabula rasa, waiting for your thoughts on the future and How To Get There.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 6th, 2019 - 20 comments
The rise of cycleways, e-bikes, and e-scooters is steadily revolutionising commutes around Auckland, especially Central Auckland. Like public transport the economic reasons for commuters are easy to understand. You don’t get ridiculous parking costs or the lousy variable commute times of fat footprint cars jammed up on crowded roads.
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, December 27th, 2018 - 132 comments
National has taken to criticising the Government for not building roads that had no coherent business case and no proposal to build.
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, October 14th, 2018 - 96 comments
There has been some push back against the Government’s light rail proposal for Dominion Road from some unlikely sources. But they are concentrating on what is best for airport users, not what is best for the city as a whole.
Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, September 24th, 2018 - 66 comments
Wellington has been the poster city for public transport in Aotearoa, but the debacle of introducing the hated hub system to Wellington’s bus system not only threatens that status but has wide implications for the success of government’s policy of favouring public transport over cars. Intervention is needed.
Written By: - Date published: 3:21 am, August 27th, 2018 - 7 comments
On Friday 27 July 2018, Wellington Tramways Union Vice President Chris Morley passed away after a short battle with Cancer, aged 62. Chris had been a Wellington bus driver since 1978, when public transport in the city was run and controlled by Wellington City Council. In 2008 I was privileged to be elected to the Tramways Union […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, June 30th, 2018 - 57 comments
Not all the current government’s fault, but the arrival of the fuel tax this weekend heralds a number of very sharp rises in what we have to pay in order to run a car.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, May 12th, 2018 - 62 comments
There was intense competition this week. Paula Bennett with her attack on Jacinda’s Spotify playlist almost won but Northcote candidate Dan Bidois succeeded for managing to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and only confusing his tongue.
Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, April 29th, 2018 - 32 comments
National has responded to Labour’s ATAP proposal by refusing to accept there is a problem, drumming up anti Auckland resentment in the rest of the country and claiming they would have done the same thing.
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, April 26th, 2018 - 39 comments
Minister Phil Twyford and Mayor Phil Goff announced the ATAP, the transport programme for Auckland for the next ten years. At $28 billion it is the largest civil infrastructure programme since World War II.
Written By: - Date published: 1:03 pm, April 4th, 2018 - 89 comments
The Government has released a draft Government Policy Statement on Transport for consultation. A radical shake up of the Transport system is being proposed.
Recent Comments