public transport
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Veolia Transport: where were the backup plans?
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 pm, April 26th, 2012 - 73 comments
I have and still do deal with quite a lot with systems in my day-job. But this…. I’m aghast at the self-evident stupidity. A power outage has shut down almost all train services across the Auckland region. The fault at KiwiRail’s National Train Control in Wellington, which controls Auckland signals and radio control, occurred about […]
Labour overshadows Key with Auckland transport policy
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, October 30th, 2011 - 130 comments
Labour has just over-shadowed Key’s big smile and wave show today – where he is expected to reannounce spending – with another big policy. Labour will cancel National’s Holiday Highway. With the money saved, they will make the existing road safe, and go 50-50 with the Auckland council to fund the CBD rail-loop and get Auckland moving sustainably.
Government to overrule Auckland?
Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 24 comments
Nick Smith is looking at issuing a “Government policy statement” to ensure that the Auckland Plan complies with their agenda. They may ban the urban limits that are proposed to keep green, productive land around Auckland and help ensure rates stay low and public transport works in a more liveable city.
McCully needs to front up
Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, September 11th, 2011 - 92 comments
McCully is Minister for the RWC. He claimed the government had done “their best” and assured Auckland that the transport systems were ready to go. He was wrong in every respect. In the aftermath of the fiasco McCully now needs to front up and get three things right…
Auckland transport shambles
Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 111 comments
The RWC public transport fiasco was not a good look for our biggest city, and not a great advertisement to the world.
Life imitates art…
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 pm, September 7th, 2011 - 50 comments
Sometimes the similarities between life and art are uncanny.
A reader sent us in a Steven Joyce lookalike pic (over the jump).
National vs Auckland
Written By: - Date published: 1:42 am, May 23rd, 2011 - 23 comments
National are not acting in accordance with Auckland’s wishes. Aucklanders want public transport, and its Council wants a quality compact sustainable eco-city – National seem to be aiming to frustrate that. Aucklanders should submit their views to strengthen our voice against the government.
Aucklanders think Joyce is crazy.
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, April 5th, 2011 - 27 comments
Even considering putting in a new harbor crossing without heavy rail that hooks into our existing public transport rail system is simply ideological stupidity by National. Well it is good to see that Aucklanders recognize the critical requirement for a new harbor crossing – “Rail crossing wins big backing in poll”. The sample is small but quite clear…
Kiwis want buses, not holiday highways
Written By: - Date published: 1:34 pm, April 4th, 2011 - 32 comments
Kiwis are voting with their feet, or rather their arses. Patronage of public transport is skyrocketing to the point of overcrowding while state highway use is falling among except for freight. You have to wonder why the government keeps building expensive highways that will be underused when public transport is full to the brim.
Steven Joyce: still living in the 20th century
Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, March 27th, 2011 - 46 comments
Steven Joyce and the NZ Transport Authority seem to be living in the 20th century. You know the time, when there was a strong causation and correlation between rising numbers of people and increased use of roads. But neither appear to have caught up with the 21st century where that isn’t happening. Yearning for the 1960’s in planning transport infrastructure doesn’t help Auckland or the rest of NZ
Future Auckland Transport
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, March 23rd, 2011 - 78 comments
This post was going to be about Auckland Unleashed which is being released today, but has been somewhat, er, derailed, by the bridge vs tunnel report that’s come out.
Auckland: a sprawling car future?
Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, March 12th, 2011 - 77 comments
National will reject Auckland Council and Aucklanders’ view on what their future city should look like. Instead they propose One ever more sprawling city, with ever more sprawling motorways, ever more cars clogging its veins, ever less community, and ever less government money.
More Government Christmas Crackers
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, December 23rd, 2010 - 2 comments
The government’s hoping-to-be-ignored Christmas announcements continue. They’re shockingly cancelling payouts to care-giving relatives of disabled adults, diverting the dodgy PEDA funding and investigating the Auckland central rail tunnel. Look over there – there’s Santa!
Nats’ ideology: outsourcing NZ
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, December 15th, 2010 - 29 comments
3 under the radar stories yesterday. All linked by ideology. Kiwirail to buy 300 wagons from China because its cheaper than building them here. Not allowed to consider wider economic gains. Collins outsources her new prison to a multi-national with a history of prisoner abuse. English wants more ‘value’ from public assets. Value for whom? The likes of Serco?
Nats waste money on roads, ignore rail
Written By: - Date published: 6:17 am, November 25th, 2010 - 25 comments
It’s official: the Auckland CBD rail loop would bring more benefit to the country for its cost than any of National’s ‘Roads of National Significance’. And that’s even before we talk about peak oil. Any rational government would put the money into the project that gets most benefit for the taxpayer buck. Not this one.
National’s anti-Public Transport message
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, October 19th, 2010 - 16 comments
Different voice, same message: instead of Stephen Joyce or John Key, we now have Bill English saying that they don’t have any money for Public Transport. Just money for roads. They’ve been forced to commit to $1.5 billion of ongoing Auckland rail projects, and that’s all it’s going to get, thank-you.
Nats turn blind eye to peak oil
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, October 15th, 2010 - 103 comments
Russel Norman asked Bill English about the economic impacts of coming oil shocks and how transport infrastructure planning takes them into account. I’m not sure which was more surprising: English’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment that peak oil is coming, or his attitude that the government doesn’t need to act because the market will sort things out.
Aussies build trains “for a living” – that’s why their standard is better than ours
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 pm, May 4th, 2010 - 33 comments
Steven Joyce has virtually ruled out Kiwirail building its new trains here in New Zealand. The Aussies have a completely different view about government purchasing, as I learnt from my years on the Industrial Supplies Office management committee in the 1990’s. They believe in Australian jobs for Australian money.
So much for ‘ambitious for New Zealand’
Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, May 3rd, 2010 - 161 comments
A new report says that building the half a billion worth of new rail rolling stock for Auckland in New Zealand would boost GDP by $250 million, improve our current account deficit by over $100 million, add $70 million to government revenue, and create 1200 skilled jobs. But the Government just want the cheapest price for the rail cars, and that means going overseas.
The Eyjafjallajökull opportunity
Written By: - Date published: 12:53 am, April 19th, 2010 - 48 comments
European air travel has been grounded for four days and there is no end in sight. What will be the effect of further prolonged disruption? What if the eruption lasts a year or more? Can the current crisis be turned into a constructive opportunity for rail?
Infratil and NZ Bus – pay up.
Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, October 14th, 2009 - 15 comments
Day 7 of the bus strike by Infratil The idiotic employers at NZ Bus owned by Infratil have dragged their lockout into a 7th day of disrupting Auckland’s commuters. Yesterday they repackaged some of their old proposals and tried to make it look like something new. What the grasping employers want is for the drivers […]
Infratil are pissing into the wind
Written By: - Date published: 4:58 pm, October 13th, 2009 - 7 comments
Day 6 of Infratil’s strike Brian Rudman had a column yesterday that clearly articulated how Aucklanders view the bus strike by Infratil management at NZ Bus. Only a few days ago, my bus had to take an unscheduled stop outside the public toilets in Victoria Park. The driver locked his money box then made the […]
ARC threatens to terminate NZ Bus contract
Written By: - Date published: 12:53 pm, October 12th, 2009 - 35 comments
ARC chairman Mike Lee has delivered a blunt ultimatum to NZ Bus as its lockout of drivers reaches day five. “We have had enough. Auckland will not be held to ransom. If you can’t deliver the services that the people of Auckland rely on, then we will have to find someone else who can… “NZ […]
Infratil / NZ Bus striking for more profits
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, October 8th, 2009 - 7 comments
Well the intransigent owners and managers of Infratil / NZ Bus finally went on strike this morning in their quest for higher profits. They locked out the bus drivers for threatening to abide by their contract. This is causing widespread chaos amongst other businesses as their employees are unable to get to work. We just dispatched […]
Drivers locked out for following their contracts
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, October 6th, 2009 - 51 comments
Yesterday, around 1,000 bus drivers and support staff issued noticed to their employer, NZ Bus owned by Infratil, that from Thursday they would be working to rule in protest over the company’s unacceptable pay offer. Essentially, the company wants to combine several existing collective agreements by keeping the weakest elements of each. Sure, it’s offered […]
Shock, Horror – Infratil managers strike for more pay!
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, September 8th, 2009 - 7 comments
Yesterday Infratil got their NZ Bus hand-puppets to announce that they will be going on strike. On Wednesday, if the bus-drivers refuse to donate their time freely to increase Infratil returns to investors, the company will remove bus-services from the commuters of Auckland. If the reasonable attempts of the bus drivers to increase their wages […]
Heavy-handed tactics from NZ Bus
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 7th, 2009 - 27 comments
Auckland bus drivers have been in negotiations with NZ Bus (which is owned by Infratil) for a 70 cent an hour pay rise. Currently, they’re on between $14.05 and $16.75 an hour for 13-hour shifts. Many workers are on split shifts, which means up to four hours a day of unpaid time between shifts. Negotiations […]
Transport: on the wrong track
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, August 27th, 2009 - 53 comments
The government’s 3-year transport spending plan is out. Where’s all the cash going? Surprise, surpise it’s state highways. We’re going to spend $1.5 billion a year on state highways and just $300 million on public transport. Meanwhile, oil’s above $US70 a barrel and staying there, petrol is pushing $1.70 a litre – the highest it’s […]
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