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    • Tunnel vision
      • The long-delayed Ngauranga to Airport Transport Study has finally come back with some options for public consultation. It'll take a while for me to crunch through the many megabytes of reports, brochures and forms, but for the meantime I'll just point you to the Dominion Post's barely restrained glee at the prospect of more roads and tunnels, and frogblog's reasonably measured response.
      • Tagged as:
      • transport

    • The lost commandment
      • If Moses had lived in Willis St, he might have resorted to this as well: Not quite as rude as some of the informal "no parking" signs around, but rather direct nonetheless.
      • Tagged as:
      • parking

    • Art at your feet
      • While there's a lot going on around the Buckle St section of the bypass, Karo Drive itself is going to take a long time to integrate into the texture of the city (sad, empty buildings don't help). Some citizens have taken things into their own hands and decided to give that most anonymous and downtrodden of icons, the pedestrian walkway pictogram, a bit of individuality.
      • Tagged as:
      • art
      • bypass

    • Stupidly lazy?
      • A perceptive (though perhaps less than tactful) commenter said, in response to my post on the Johnsonville Town Centre Plan:The major flaw seems to be the assumption that J'Ville becomes a walkable community.
      • Tagged as:
      • johnsonville
      • transport

    • Just the ticket
      • Many thanks to Greg for pointing out something that should be more widely known: for the month of July, Daytripper passes (unlimited bus travel within zones 1-3 after 9am weekdays and all day at weekends) are half price. At $3, that brings it down to the same cost as the carbon-unfriendly cheap weekend parking that was announced with much more fanfare than this bus deal.
      • Tagged as:
      • transport

    • How not to go carbon neutral
      • A couple of weeks ago, Wellington City Council decided that Wellington should aspire to become carbon neutral. Since then,a council-controlled organisation has started promoting cheap weekend parking; andthe Regional Council plans to increase bus and train fares by 10%.
      • Tagged as:
      • conservation
      • parking
      • fares

    • Toytown
      • I've been wondering when the houses relocated for the bypass would be re-inhabited, thus bringing some life back to a ravaged district. Surely it wouldn't be long before they were snapped up? But no: Karo Drive and Tonks Grove are going to look like toytown for quite some time to come.It turns out that under the Public Works Act, Transit has to look for the original owners or their descendants, and then offer the properties to them at market prices.
      • Tagged as:
      • architecture
      • bypass

    • Taxing times
      • I'm not entirely convinced that a regional petrol tax is the way to go: I think a targeted congestion charge for the CBD and major arterials might be a better way of fighting congestion while funding public transport.
      • Tagged as:
      • congestion-charge

    • Back on track: catching up
      • It's been a while since I've had the occasion to write a "back on track" post, but there's been a recent spate of good news for public transport users. Most of it has been signalled for a long time, and it's generally just catching up with maintenance that's been deferred for decades, but it's worth celebrating nonetheless.
      • Tagged as:
      • trains

    • Distant hills
      • Some ambiguity and a touch of hyperbole in my post about targeted infill led some commenters to think that I was suggesting all of Karori and Churton Park were "distant hills" with "two buses a day if you're lucky". That's not quite what I meant to say, but I stand by my assertion that the outskirts of these suburbs (and many others) have poor public transport service, and thus poor public transport use, meaning that infill in those places would just result in more people driving to work.
      • Tagged as:
      • transport

    • In Memoriam
      • I can finally mention what I've known about unofficially for a while: it's been publicly announced that New Zealand Memorial Park will be built in front of the old Museum on Buckle St. It's not quite what I originally speculated about when demolition of the service station first started, since it will be where Buckle St is now rather than on the north side of it, and there's an additional nice touch in that the "Greening the Quays" project will be extended up Taranaki St to the park.
      • Tagged as:
      • architecture
      • bypass

    • U-turn
      • In a surprise decision, Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast today announced that the inner-city bypass will be scrapped. "We had faith in roads to solve all life's problems, but it hasn't turned out like that at all. It seems that while east-west commuters are saving a few minutes, north-south commuters have had to pay for it with increased delays, and overall, the project hasn't been worth all the money and hassle."The council and Transit NZ are now working to repair the damage.
      • Tagged as:
      • bypass

    • Bypassed
      • Well, it's done. The changeover to the southbound leg of the bypass happened without incident at just after 6 this morning, and while it's hard to tell for sure, there don't seem to be any major snarl-ups around town. Tomorrow will be a bigger test, once commuters hit the new layout in force, but we'll still have to wait for a while before we can see whether it achieves what it set out to do.
      • Tagged as:
      • bypass

    • Back on track: not so new
      • Most of you will have noticed the front-page headline in yesterday's Dominion Post: $200m to ease Wellington rail misery. The more observant among you may have noticed that the improvements mentioned in the sidebar (not online) don't quite add up to $200m, but a slightly less impressive $135m. The even more observant (and presumably long-suffering) among you might also have noticed that many of the upgrades sounded very familiar. Is this really news?
      • Tagged as:
      • trains

    • Bypassing Ghuznee
      • The moment of truth is nearly here: in less than a week's time, the bypass will be complete. Well, sort of. When the southbound route opens at 6am this Sunday, SH1 traffic will finally have been diverted out of the city streets and onto ... some other city streets.
      • Tagged as:
      • bypass

    • All carnivalled out
      • Well, that was one hell of a party. There was even a bit of politics after all, after it was announced that Falun Dafa had been banned from the parade, and in the end they turned up anyway. There were even some rare and wondrous apparitions during the parade: actual buses!
      • Tagged as:
      • fares

    • No Go Wellington
      • When Infratil took over Stagecoach Wellington, I was cautiously optimistic: after all, who wouldn't prefer our buses to be owned by a local company rather than a multinational with an atrocious industrial relations reputation?
      • Tagged as:
      • transport

    • Back on track: a missed opportunity
      • A few weeks back, there was an article in the Dominion Post entitled "Commuters return to cars". The trouble was, since it only showed relative figures ("Peak-time passenger growth soared 11.6 per cent in mid-year as fuel prices peaked. This had slowed to about 9 per cent by September."), it was hard to tell whether passenger transport numbers were actually falling, or just growing more slowly.
      • Tagged as:
      • fares

    • Car-o drive
      • As I said I would, I took a walk along the bypass on Saturday. I was too late to see the protests, but some of the protestors were still there chalking slogans on the pavements, and there a certain tension remained in the air.There's a lot of things I don't like about the bypass, but the thing that struck me the most about it on the weekend is that it just doesn't look like Wellington.
      • Tagged as:
      • bypass

    • Brave New World
      • With plenty of hoopla, including three full pages in the Dominion Post, New World opened their fourth inner-Wellington store this week. It's a New World Metro at the the railway station, and while it looks tiny from the concourse, it expands Tardis-like into the forgotten parts of the station and is actually larger than the Willis St Metro.
      • Tagged as:
      • retail
      • trains

    • Bypassing the truth
      • How sweet. The competition to name the Inner City "Bypass" has been won by Te Aro School, with the name "Karo" Drive. Apparently, "The K represents the kids, Aro their school. Karo is also a small native New Zealand tree that produces sweetly scented red flowers in Spring and grows very well in Wellington". Maybe it's just me, but I don't usually associate "sweetly scented red flowers" with a bloody great arterial road that's been shoved through a city neighbourhood.
      • Tagged as:
      • bypass

    • Bypassing the truth
      • How sweet. The competition to name the Inner City "Bypass" has been won by Te Aro School, with the name "Karo" Drive. Apparently, "The K represents the kids, Aro their school. Karo is also a small native New Zealand tree that produces sweetly scented red flowers in Spring and grows very well in Wellington". Maybe it's just me, but I don't usually associate "sweetly scented red flowers" with a bloody great arterial road that's been shoved through a city neighbourhood.
      • Tagged as:
      • bypass

    • Dude, where's my carpark?
      • Every time that I feel proud of Wellingtonians for being less car-dependent than their counterparts in other New Zealand cities, along comes a reminder that the hard-core vehicle addicts are still with us.
      • Tagged as:
      • parking

    • Back on track: why submit?
      • Submissions on the North Wellington Public Transport Study close on Wednesday, and while this is obviously of major interest to those who live in that area, everyone else could be forgiven for thinking it irrelevant. However, there are many reasons why other Wellingtonians should care.
      • Tagged as:
      • transport

    • Back on track: rants and raves
      • There's a lot going on regarding transport at the moment. First of all, if you believe that shutting down the trolley buses is a bad idea, then there's a public meeting at 3pm this Sunday to discuss what to do about it. Where? At the Aro Valley Community Hall, of course.
      • Tagged as:
      • aro-valley
      • trolley-buses

        • Aro Valley, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)


    • Parks vs parking
      • Thanks to Simon Bush-King, designer of the new Courtenay Place park, for his comments clarifying my detailed questions. Many of us will be glad to hear that yes, the narrow footpath between the north edge of the park and the road will be widened, and the awkward bollards removed.
      • Tagged as:
      • parking

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