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By Patrick Reynolds, on January 10th, 2012
This is a new kind of post for readers interested in a quick roundup of transit related news and analysis from around the world. The plan is to aggregate a bunch of links that relate either directly or tangentially to Auckland transit issues. This will include examples of similar transport debates and solutions from elsewhere, but also related issues such as urbanism, energy supply, and economic challenges. Clearly Auckland is facing situations common to other cities in the world, and there is a rich and growing resource online that we can learn a great deal from. It is also intended as an opportunity for readers to comment on any issue raised in the links and especially to share their own resources.
In fact it never ceases to amaze me how similar the debates seem all over the world to our own. And just as we followed other western nations in investing heavily in automobilie and suburban infrastructure over the last 60 or so years this was largely because we faced similar problems and opportunities as those places. But times change and it seems pretty clear that we are now facing new pressures that are best approached by a different mix of answers, but these are still similar to those faced elsewhere. Here, for example, is an incredibly condensed summary of the big picture by Portland based economist and oil analyst Gregor MacDonald at Gregor.us
For a view of how the most dynamic and important developing nation is responding to urban growth, congestion, and quality of place issues here is a summary of China’s commitment to urban rail transit. Important to note that many of the cities mentioned are around the 1 million people mark, like Auckland. And that the writer is emphasizing that the metro solution allows suburbs to retain their identities and economic viability by offering connectivity without destruction. An important reminder that expansion of AK’s RTN network is not all about the CBD, but also about making this suburban city connect and thrive.
For an example of why open space isn’t always the best answer in cities especially to severance issues have a look at this view of Boston’s ‘Big Dig’ via Old Urbanist. Yes the future of the city is greener but better joined up built forms are also often the answer to broken cities.
Long but good. How we can learn from LA, and just stop building expensive and place defiling parking infrastructure. And great data that shows less really is more when it comes to parking, for the sake of our city’s economic health and viability, no matter how counter-intuitive that feels to auto-man.
Two-waying, or how to unlock the economic performance of traffic sewers.
This is just cool, urban explorers.
Learning from the master, or perhaps mistress. Why Jane Jacobs is still relevant.
Why we will never catch up with Australia, or wherever, by paying each other less. Look for NZ on this chart.
One for the urban cyclists out there. Cool rack.
No roundup would be complete without a link to The Oil Drum, too much to choose from, but this short interview shows the mainstreaming of the Peak Oil observation. Feels like old news to me but this debate and its arguably even more worrying sister Climate Change is curiously absent in NZ. This site is great too, Californian physicist Tom Murphy Does The Math so that we don’t have to.
 Quality of place versus speed of vehicle movement: The same part of LA 1894 and 2011. From Atlantic Cities. A site always worth keeping an eye on. Note the train in the upper left of the first image, I wonder what happened to that line, or is it still there? Happy reading.
By admin, on July 3rd, 2011 Alon Levy’s Pedestrian Observations blog has a fascinating post on the two group of ‘transit advocates’ in the USA, which he splits into the ‘technicals’ and the ‘politicals’. Here’s how he describes the two groups:
Politicals are the people who tend to trust the transit authorities, support a general expansion of all rail transit projects, and believe the primary problem is defeating oil-funded anti-transit lobbies. Technicals are the people who tend to distrust what the authorities say, and prefer their own analysis or that of technically-minded activists; they support transit but are skeptical about many projects, and treat agency inertia and turf wars as the primary obstacles for transit revival.
From reading through the many thousands of comments on this blog, as well as contributions to other places where transport is discussed – such as the Campaign for Better Transport forum – I think it’s fair to say that the division is quite universal. Of course, that’s not to say that technicals don’t talk about ‘big picture’ issues and the politicals aren’t at all interested in the details. Levy’s post discusses this matter in more detail:
Despite the name, being technical does not mean ignoring politics, or supporting technocracy. On the contrary, the primary impetus for the technicals, mistrust of transit and government authorities, is often bundled with mistrust of engineering standards, and with preference for practices that have worked abroad (European commenters on American blogs almost invariably side with the technicals). The difference is that the political battle lines we draw are less about mode wars and more about the interests of agencies versus those of riders, how broader political ideas affect transit and cities, or just plain corruption and incompetence.
Conversely, being political does not mean ignoring everything other than the effort to get projects built. Although the politicals are less picky about what projects to support (Bruce McF once referred to the position that only true high-speed rail be funded, rather than medium-speed lines such as the since-canceled 110 mph Ohio Hub plan, as another form of HSR denialism), they often do care about alignment and regulatory choices. For example, opposition to security theater on trains is universal. The difference is that they subsume them into the main political fight, treating them as less important issues, or just believe that truly incompetent decisions such as airline-style security will not happen. Insofar as the government’s statements on train security send mixed signals, they may be right; on the other hand, the FRA’s self-reforms are half-baked.
In a recent comment, Stu Donovan did a pretty good job at explaining one way that the distinction could be interpreted:
No, questions over funding should be answered by politically engaged citizens and their democratically elected representatives. In contrast, the job of transport people like us is to have an opinion on the best way to spend transport dollars once they have been decided as part of the political process.
Now of course there will be some overlap between the politically engaged citizens and the transport professionals, but it’s important to remind oneself of which hat you are wearing at any particular time. I think it’s entirely appropriate for me to advocate for increased public transport funding (as a citizen) and more spending on buses (as a professional).
I’m not entirely sure whether I would classify this blog as being purely a political or technical blog. At times, in my support of big picture policy issues, like the large rail projects or funding decisions, I am probably highly political – disregarding the details of whether Airport Rail would actually be a cost-effective project for now. On other matters, such as reducing the complexity and thereby improving the cost-effectiveness of the bus network, perhaps I’m a bit more technical.
After all, I think public transport advocates (both here and in the USA) need both sides of this argument. We need to passionately argue big picture political issues – to get public transport’s benefits more widely recognised, to ensure better alignment between transport and land-use planning and to ensure funding and policy-making decisions give us the more balanced transport outcomes that are so desperately needed. Yet we also need to ensure, once those big picture decisions are made, that they translate through to the best possible outcome. We need to be sceptical of how public transport money is spent, not only to ensure that we make the most of the limited amount of money thrown our way, but also to ensure that politicians making the big decisions see that spending money on PT is ‘sensible’ and cost-effective.
By admin, on May 5th, 2011 As will be obvious to all, the blog is finally back online after being deactivated by my hosting company at around 7.30pm last night. Apparently something in the database was causing very long delays and crashing their servers.
Through the whole mad process of fixing things up I must say I have been really unimpressed by Blue Host, the hosting company I currently use – so I’m looking for a new location to host the blog. Preferably in New Zealand.
Many thanks to Cam Pitches and Lynn Prentice for assisting in helping me in both helping to resolve (and merely understand) the problems, and for setting up backups that I will be using to shift things to another host as soon as possible.
Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again and sorry for any inconveniences.
By admin, on February 22nd, 2011 When it was decided that the new transport agency in Auckland would simply be called “Auckland Transport“, I thought it was amusing that if they ever wanted to run a blog, I’d got there first with the name of this blog. Vancouver’s public transport agency actually operates a very successful blog – Buzzer – which is used to interact with customers, encourage feedback, provide updates on service changes and also just comment on various things going on around the transport world. Maybe they’ll have to buy me out one day  .
Of course, Auckland Transport does have its own website – a fairly useful place to go to as a repository for transport plans, policies, reports, strategies and so forth. There are also all the recent media releases and board information (including, at long last, more detail on what was discussed at least week’s board meeting). In fact, it was reading through the business report included in the meeting agenda (which for some stupid reason doesn’t include anything about public transport patronage) that I noticed some quite amusing data on the number of visits their website receives a day (though keep in mind most people probably use the MAXX website for information on public transport services): I have no idea whether 700 visits a day is meant to be high for a site like that or not, but it doesn’t seem particularly high for such an official website. On average, this blog gets around twice that: I suppose I think it’s somewhat amusing that this blog gets around twice the number of visitors as Auckland Transport’s official website. But more seriously, I think it also means that Auckland Transport needs to do better when it comes to making their website a place where people go to find out about what’s happening to improve transport in Auckland. Perhaps there should be a blog similar to “Buzzer” in Vancouver? Perhaps they should have some sort of in-built discussion forum or somewhere for people to suggest ideas to improve public transport… there are so many possibilities.
By Matt L, on January 31st, 2011 This is the start of a new feature on here, a quick recap of all of the posts we have had from throughout the month. I think most post titles are fairly self-explanatory but any that aren’t I will try and give a brief description. Let us know what you think and if there are any other things you would like to see.
General
What does 2011 hold in store for public transport?
We could have integrated ticketing in place tomorrow – Why we don’t need a smart card to get integrated ticketing.
The importance of perception – How people’s perception of PT greatly impacts how they feel about it and how much they will use it.
Defending Westfield – Westfield looking to introduce fines for parking too long
Your help needed: making NZTA accountable – NZTA delaying and obstructing OIA requests
Flat fares?
Measuring PT success – How bus patronage has fared over the last 8 years.
Further patronage analysis – A broader look at patronage across the entire PT system over the last 8 years.
Why not just buy them a dishwasher? – Questioning the benefits of transport projects.
Len Brown on CBD rail tunnel
Q&A with David Warburton – CEO of Auckland Transport
Frequent Network Mapping – Is there a better way to display our PT maps?
Auckland’s Public Transport Network in Action
Dare I hope for better buses? – Are there some simple things that could be done to really improve buses?
Real time bus tracker Chicago using technology to better inform people when their bus will arrive
Don’t forget the public transport users
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Planning
Forcing urban sprawl – Our current planning rules have actually forced sprawl rather than tried to contain it like many believe.
Planning controls and urban sprawl
London’s Spatial Plan
Transport and the Auckland Spatial Plan
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PT Developments
Trams are actually on their way back The Wynyard Quarter heritage tramway starts to take shape
Onewa Road’s extended T3 lane The “T3″ lanes on one of Auckland’s busier bus routes get an important extension.
Cleaning up Otahuhu bus station
Changes to monthly GoRider passes
Bus changes: simplification or just confusion? Is it really route simplification when you just change the numbers?
More secrecy from NZTA – The NZTA’s true thoughts on Puhoi to Wellsford
Integrated ticketing: the real work begins
Auckland Council’s submission on Puhoi-Warkworth
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Thinking Ahead
More Northwest Motorway Widening – Widening of SH16 around Lincoln Rd and Royal Rd and that there is no RTN being built.
Just how fast will our Electric Trains be?
Northern Busway extension a reality? – The NZTA is investigating extending the Northern Busway
150m public transport trips by 2021? – Is Len Brown’s vision for Auckland’s PT patronage realistic? How might we achieve it?
Expanding the ferry network – The most commented on post this month
Puhoi-Warkworth: my submission
Puhoi-Wellsford videos
Thinking differently about ‘rail to the airport’ – The future of Auckland Airport
K Street Transitway A proposal in Washington DC for median bus lanes.
Improving the CBD section of the Northern Busway – Improving the CBD section of the Northern Busway
Council’s expectations of Auckland Transport
Improving the bus system – without breaking the bank
Council’s exciting CBD vision
B-Line on weekends too? – The advantages of high frequencies for PT off peak
Keeping it lean and mean: getting the maximum ‘bang for buck’ from the CBD tunnel (Part 1)
Keeping it lean and mean: getting the maximum ‘bang for buck’ from the CBD tunnel (Part 2)
By admin, on December 8th, 2010 As you may have guessed from the title of this blog post, this is the 1000th post of Auckland Transport Blog, since the very first back in May 2008. The early posts of this blog were really simply a part of a previous blog that I used to run – that was more focused on my personal life. Funnily enough, when I started blogging about transport matters – particularly those with an Auckland focus – people starting becoming a whole pile more interested in what I had to say than had ever been the case before.
Often people who I meet ask me “why are you so interested in transport stuff?” or “how did you get started with writing a transport blog?” Well, I’m an urban planner by profession and as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in cities and interested in how we get around cities. As a child (and more recently) I drew massive make-believe cities, complete with the most spectacular motorway spaghetti junctions that you’re ever likely to see. In fact, it’s quite interesting to think how roads-focused I was until relatively recently – I think largely because I pretty much never used public transport until I started university. I do wonder whether the poor transport decisions that politicians often make are the result of them never actually using the public transport system.
But essentially, I’m interested in transport – and I write this blog – because I think that the only way Auckland can become a better city to live, work and play in, is by first sorting out its transport system. So much emphasis is placed on how land-use patterns influence transport outcomes, but I think that it’s the opposite direction of influence: how our transport decisions influence the form, shape, function and feel of our cities, that is of utmost importance. Construct a lovely pedestrian-focused space like Vulcan Lane, and of course you will encourage bars, cafes and other people-focused activities to locate there. Construct massive one-way semi-motorways like Hobson and Nelson streets, and of course you will end up with crap buildings and no pedestrian activity. Similarly, at the macro-level, construct motorways and you will encourage sprawl; construct high-quality rail systems and you will encourage intensification.
From a fairly humble beginning, I must say I’m amazed and surprised at how the popularity of this blog has grown. Back in May last year (when I really established this blog as completely separate from my previous personal blog), the number of people visiting was around 4,000 a month. This has increased to a high of 50,212 visitors in October this year (the Super City election results boosted the stats for that month). On average, these days this blog gets around 1,500 visits a day.
A few other statistics are quite interesting. There have been 12,755 comments (excluding spam). The 1,000 posts have included a total of 762,362 words, while the comments have included 1,098,506 words. There are 242 tags – identifying post topics, which I periodically try to reduce down a bit (generally without much luck). I know that a number of MPs, councillors, local board members and council/Auckland Transport staff regularly read this blog – and I have appreciated their feedback and willingness to contact me to discuss transport matters. My invitation is always open for people who want to email me about an issue or meet up – if this needs to be done in confidence then of course I will do just that, and I have done so in the past on numerous occasions.
Perhaps my biggest hope from this blog is that all who read it can develop a better understanding of Auckland’s transport situation. I hope that people have learned about complex concepts such as induced demand, cost-benefit analyses, wider economic benefits, the network effect, the importance of bus lanes and so on. Countless poor transport decisions have been made in the past, and continue to be made, because the general population is poorly informed and politicians and/or bureaucrats are able to get away with it. Reading numerous letters to the editor over the past few weeks on transport matters, generally exceptionally well written and well informed, makes me hopeful that the days of an ill-informed public on transport matters is ending. If this blog has had a role to play in assisting the quality of the public debate we have on transport matters, then I think that will have been its greatest achievement.
So where to from here? Amazingly, these days I very rarely sit down in front of the computer in the evening and struggle to know what to blog about. Sure, there has been a lot recently on the CBD Rail Tunnel and Puhoi-Wellsford, but I think the fact that there’s always a blog post or two waiting to be written about something that’s going on just shows how critical getting transport right is to Auckland. So I certainly have a lot of blog posts to pump out in the future.
However, to put it simply, I would quite like some help. At various points in the past I have had assistance, and that has been awesome. There also seems to be a growing number of guest posts, which is also fantastic – as I like to get a range of perspectives on Auckland’s transport situation. But it would be great to have some regular assistance in running this blog. Obviously you will need to know what you’re talking about, but the quality of comments I get suggest that there are a huge number of very well informed people out there when it comes to transport matters.
Perhaps I’m a little naughty to ask, but if there are people within any transport related organisation who wish to assist me, I can assure you of utmost anonymity – and I’m sure everyone would appreciate the knowledge you could bring. One of the biggest problems in having a well-informed transport debate in New Zealand is that pretty much everyone who really knows what they’re talking about happens to work for a transport-related organisation – and therefore can’t actually publicly say anything. While I guess that’s understandable in some respects, I think that as a whole we are much poorer for the relative lack of intelligent dialogue that creates. A lot of fascinating stuff, and very clever thought, goes on behind the scenes – I would love for more of that to be out in the open.
Anyway, here’s to the next 1000 posts.
By admin, on October 20th, 2010 For some reason WordPress is sending most comments into its spam box at the moment – which means that they won’t show up immediately. I’m not quite sure why this is happening as I have even deactivated the usual anti-spam plugin – but they’re still being caught.
I will try to fix this issue as soon as I can, but in the meanwhile be reassured if you make a comment but it doesn’t seem to appear, it means it has gone into spam and needs me to approve it. I am trying to regularly approve comments.
If something doesn’t show up for quite a while, send me an email. Address is under “Contact Us” in the top-left corner.
Sorry for the inconvenience, it’s a pain for me too.
By admin, on August 22nd, 2010 While browsing through a few North American transport blogs I found myself looking at the “Buzzer blog”, from Vancouver. The interesting thing about Buzzer, is that it is a blog run by Translink – the organisation which operates Vancouver’s public transport system. Effectively, their version of ARTA (except Vancouver was smart enough to not sell off all its buses).
While obviously official blogs need to ‘toe the party line’, and outline an ongoing series of positive stories about what’s going on with transport in Vancouver – Buzzer is actually a surprisingly good read. Just tracking down some recent posts there are a whole range of things, including a detailed analysis of feedback Translink has received on the relatively new Canada Line, a post that lets people know about special public transport services to an event, photos from the opening of the Canada Line to mark the one year anniversary of that date, and a fantastic post that asks people for their suggestions about how route-mapping could be improved to better highlight the frequencies of services.
The great thing is that people can post comments, and there’s a dedicated person there to reply to them. Furthermore, the blog format allows quite a lot more depth – whether that be in the form of more in-depth discussion or just more photos – than would ever be possible in the old-fashioned media release.
Reading something like this got me thinking how it would be really fantastic to have something similar in Auckland. While blogs like this one and Jon C’s Auckland Trains provide “outside the tent” analysis on what transport upgrades are happening, we only know what is already out there and we while we may be important cogs in the wheel of getting people more interested in what’s going on in transport matters within Auckland – having an official blog published (most probably by Auckland Transport post Super City transition) would be a superb way for that organisation to truly interact with the public. They could use it to let people know about service disruptions, important milestones, special events, and so forth – in much the same way that media releases are done now. But perhaps most excitingly they could use it in ways similar to Vancouver’s Buzzer Blog – to put out suggestions for comment, to invite ideas, to let people really know what will be going on within what I imagine will be a pretty closed-off and secretive organisation.
By admin, on August 6th, 2010 As I noted in yesterday’s blog post, which went on to rather dominate the comments thread, I will be out of the country in North America between September 3rd and September 26th. Leila and I are taking a three week holiday that has been about two years in planning. The plan is as follows:
September 3rd: fly to New York
September 3-7: stay in New York
September 8th: Amtrak train from New York to Boston
September 8-10:stay in Boston
September 11: Flight from Boston to Montreal
September 11-16: staying in Montreal and Quebec City (train between cities)
September 17: fly from Montreal to Washington DC
September 17-20: staying in Washington DC
September 21: Amtrak from Washington DC- New York
September 21-23: staying in New York
September 23-24: flight back to NZ
From a transport nerd perspective I am very much looking forward to seeing the New York Subway and the Washington DC Metro in particular, although the transit systems of Montreal and Boston are certain to also be fascinating.
One issue which has been at the back of my mind in recent times is what will happen to this blog while I am away. It will be during the last weeks of the lead-up to the Super City elections, the time the Onehunga Station (finally) opens and the time that the CBD rail tunnel business case is first released. I’ll probably be able to do a little bit of blogging from internet cafes: although I will probably take that opportunity to share my experiences in the various North American cities I am visiting.
I do have my handy blog assistants, who I am sure will keep things running a bit with what’s going on here in NZ. But I think it’s probably timely to remind people that I am open to people submitting “Guest Posts“, and in particular if there’s a transport issue that you think is worthy of being raised by way of a guest post then I’m quite happy to schedule quite a few posts to “pop up” while I’m away and keep things reasonably busy.
Oh, and if there are any really useful tips for visiting any of the cities listed above I’d be more than happy to hear about them!
By admin, on July 19th, 2010 Over the past few days my anti-spam mechanism seems to have been getting a bit over-excited, and has been catching a lot of “false-positives” for some reason. Hopefully it sorts itself out after a while, as I really do need an anti-spam (otherwise the comments really would be flooded with spam).
If you post a comment and it doesn’t show up, feel free to send me an email (address under “Contact Us” in the sidebar) and I should be able to approve it pretty quickly. Don’t worry about posting your comment again, or editing little bits out of it, I assure you the system has received the comment – it just got marked as spam for some reason.
Thanks, and sorry for the annoyances.
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