christchurch
I make fairly regular visits from Christchurch to Auckland and Wellington, mostly for work. Much of the time, I find that the available public transport services there are sufficient to get me to and from the respective airports to where I need to go (usually downtown), so I have the "full set" of PT cards … Continue reading A bouquet (of sorts) for the Christchurch airport bus
Greetings of the season from Stewart Island. The other day, I wrote a piece about patronage in Auckland, Greater Wellington, and Greater Christchurch. This was based on Auckland data up until October 2018, and Wellington and Canterbury data up until June. Here’s an update. Auckland Transport issued the November update on their website in mid-December. … Continue reading Patronage update
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a report Ecan commissioned in 2014, which concluded that a bare bones commuter service was technically feasible, relatively cheap at $8m, and would most likely attract the 500 daily passengers it needs to be financially viable. Now I'm going to describe an earlier report from 2005 which … Continue reading Commuter Rail – Previous Reports 2
This post first appeared on TraNZport and is republished with permission. A few years ago, something strange happened in Melbourne. A major inner-city motorway (or, freeway as Victorians prefer) was proposed at the eye watering tune of $15-17 billion, with a first stage of almost $6 billion contracted just before the state election of 2014. … Continue reading The curse of “East-West links”: Rethinking ‘road strategies’ as ‘transport strategies’
When you promise much but deliver little. This post first appeared on the TraNZport blog and is republished with permission. There are two interesting developments in train (no pun intended… sort of) at the moment in two New Zealand cities. In Wellington, the new bus network, based on the hub and spoke model, is being … Continue reading Implementing public transport plans in NZ cities
Let it be known that I'm not a great fan of how our regional council, ECan, presents their patronage statistics. In August 2018, they reported the following to the Greater Christchurch Public Transport Joint Committee: Patronage for the year ending 30 June 2018 rose by just under one percent to 13,572,240 boardings for the year. … Continue reading Lies, damned lies, and patronage statistics
Christchurch used to have commuter trains, as described here. At the moment there are a lot of people who think the smart thing to do is to get them going again, including Brendon Harre in this article, and James Dann in this article. This has been looked at sporadically by various organisations in the past. … Continue reading Commuter Rail- Previous Report 1
Here's a quick update of a few significant things I've seen happening in the transport world of late. There was a fantastic article on newsroom by Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw, that voiced a lot of the frustrations I've found working in transport in Aotearoa: "it is timely to explore why transport is an area in which … Continue reading Christchurch Transport Update
This article by James Dann first appeared on The Spinoff and is published with permission. Christchurch is a sprawling mess. Its only major geographical feature is the Port Hills, a buffer that has slowed growth in one direction. From the vantage of these hills, you can look out across the Canterbury Plains, once the nation’s … Continue reading A new plan for Christchurch rail
TALKING TRANSPORT 