You can view it here https://twitter.com/AkTransportBlog

However, my sadness in ending my involvement with the blog is tempered by my excitement for what I’ll be doing in the new job – and also by my confidence (fully reinforced by this couple of awesome recent posts) that  the future of the blog is in good hands. I have updated the “Contact Us” page – with Matt L generally being a first point of call for news related matters and each blogger being contactable for feedback on their posts. I’ve found this to be helpful over the years, and many links sent through via email have inspired countless blog posts.

It’s been fun.

Here are two interesting posts on Twitter and Transit. One beautiful the other more for the quants. Both instructive.

The second is via Atlantic Cities where there is also this argument for High Speed Rail in the Union’s most populous State, California. Newt of the GOP has been banging on about the US heading back to the moon in some kind of pissing contest with China, but frankly if they can’t even get a train to run from SF to LA and any decent speed I think he’ed better dodge that race. *Note for Geoff: These arguments here for HSR are intended as a metaphor for local arguments for urban transit, not as a literal argument for HSR in NZ. Same things apply, land use transformations, economic return not a financial one etc, but at a vastly different scale.

More from the States on gas prices [as they call them] and what to do, and for once this doesn’t involve bombing somewhere else or other wise frackin’ it all up.

Closer to home; no round up from me will be complete without at least a passing note on resource supply issues. As we head to the exciting singularity of peak damn near everything it’s good to see some people have their heads up. Here’s an introductory note from across the ditch, what I especially like about this is that it states a view that I also have, namely that it could just be that a world with less freely available oil may well be a lot better in a number of ways; once we’ve made the adjustment. Like London after the peasoup smog and mountains of horse-shit. I’m also guessing less isolation, more localiasation, more human interaction, less alienation. Perhaps more meaningful lives. Perhaps.

There’s also this guy, Denis Tegg, I know nothing about him but he has been manfully plugging away on this issue in NZ for a while and here he is bringing an important shelved report to the surface. I say manfully because there is a really creepy silence on this issue and Climate Change in the mainstream media and in government in NZ. It’s like if we don’t mention these problems they’ll just go away.

Look away Actoids! Here’s a well reasoned piece on the attractions and limitations of neoliberalism. It’s short too. Relevant how? Transit like our cities need long term planning, by elected bodies. The market is a great tool, but a lousy master, and an even worse god. As I think we’ve just seen.

Those interested in the strange ways that change can happen will like this. Why the US Marine Corp may well lead the US into a solar future.

Back to transit, and more personally; I have new wheels, yay! and loving it, but won’t be going to these extremes to protect them. No.

• 1,688 posts
• 1,266,909  words in those posts
• 26,198 comments
• 2,249,494 words in those comments

But some statistics can only really be seen behind the scenes, so for your curiosity here are a few:

• 1,198,579 all time views
• 3,771 views on the blog’s busiest day ever – which was May 31st last year (the day the review of the City Rail Link business case was released)
•  Aside from the main page, the most visited post ever is this one on the world’s best rail systems (generally because it is a high result when searching for maps of Tokyo’s rail network).
• Other top posts include those about new train timetables, the Outer Link timetable and the Super City election results.
• Top referrers have been from No Right Turn, the Campaign for Better Transport and, quite interestingly, intranets from both ARTA and now Auckland Transport. Most people still tend to arrive by way of search engines though.

It has also been interesting to see how visitor numbers to the blog have changed over time, going from under 8000 views in July 2009 to almost 66,000 in August last year – the busiest month so far. This post on Public Address, in particular, seemed to really bring what had previously been a generally ignored blog, into public view.

Of course, it is the knowledge that many hundreds of people visit the blog each day, and that many of them take the time to comment and share their thoughts, which has kept me going and keen to post almost every day. I’m sure it’ll take me some time to adjust – but in the meanwhile I am curious about how the various readers of the blog found their way here the first time, which post do they remember (if any) which encouraged them to keep coming back and if there are any particular favourite posts. Because, I’m a curious person too.

What makes Jon’s decision to shift to Australia and discontinue blogging particularly sad, perhaps, is the fact that my days of being able to continue writing blog posts here are also numbered. In the last couple of weeks before Christmas, the dream transport planning job for me  came up , I applied for it, and I was the successful applicant. I start in that role on January 31st. It will involve me definitely working to achieve much of what I’ve discussed on this blog over the past few years, inside the system rather than outside it. As I knew when applying for the role, unfortunately in life you can’t have both. Of course, as someone with pretty much no transport planning experience, I highly doubt I would have been able to get such a job without the blogging work I’ve done here.

As I think Jon C has noted in the final few posts on his blog, transport blogging is fun, but is also hard work at times. With a new baby, I have found it more and more difficult to find the time to put together the type of posts that I most like to write. Posts like this and this, which I know got various people at Auckland Transport thinking quite a bit about how they might rework the way the City Rail Link’s cost-benefit analysis should be undertaken.

I do feel that I have achieved quite a bit in my blogging time. Perhaps the best illustration of that is to look at what’s in the background behind Len Brown the day he found out he had won the mayoralty: Yes, that map looks remarkably similar to something I had posted on my blog a few months earlier.

Other things that originally were proposed on this blog, like two-waying Hobson and Nelson Streets, initiating an 020X route and many others, have been incorporated into official plans. Operation Lifesaver, a cheaper alternative to the Puhoi-Wellsford road, was taken up by Labour and the Greens as a way of freeing up funds to build the City Rail Link. I have also generally seen a vast improvement in the quality of our transport debates, compared to a few years ago. Often when a transport issue comes up in the newspaper, I don’t have to write a letter to the editor because there are three or four others saying pretty much what I would have.

Personally, I certainly will miss blogging. While it’s hard work, it is also enormously rewarding and at times, fun. I still get a little thrill each time I have an email telling me there’s another comment. I still particularly enjoy commenters who challenge my way of thinking, but avoid simply acting as trolls. I constantly find myself wanting to be challenged on the big question of whether a greater focus on public transport really is the way to go. What would it take to prove me wrong? What would I argue in a debate if I was arguing on the side of a roads-centric policy? How would I refute that argument? It’s important that I’m able to answer that first question, because if I’m not going to change my mind no matter what evidence is produced – then we’re talking ideology rather than an informed opinion. I have tried not to be ideological about this issue.

Fortunately, this blog will not cease to be updated from January 31st onwards, as I have a bunch of keen and excellent writers to take up the reins. In a way, I think the blog could benefit from being more of a “group effort” – although knowing how challenging it is to keep writing post after post, I’m certainly keen on growing the number of writers to ease the pressure on those contributing. Guest posts over the next few weeks, and beyond, are therefore most welcome. I think that transport blogs have played a pretty important role in the transport debate over the past few years (heck even Steven Joyce mentioned us in parliament once) – and I hope that trend continues.

Blogging might be a bit light in the next wee while (although I am off work, so there might potentially be even more posts than usual). Now, just need to think of some names.