Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Candidates have been selected for the Northcote by-election, dark web booming for drug trafficking, and attacks on DOC rangers getting more frequent. The candidates are in for what should be an intriguing by-election contest in Northcote. Nationals’ Dan Bidois will defend the seat after being the clear favourite … Read more
With heavy rain and wind pounding away at New Zealand, what does it mean for the buses, trains and roads? It’s a little more complicated than you might think. What sorts of weather lead us to change our daily travel behaviour? How do we respond to scorching heatwaves, sapping humidity, snow and frost, strong winds, … Read more
Hayden Donnell might be living far from New Zealand these days, but there’s no escape from the relentless idiocy of our transport policy debate. He runs down the latest media salvos in the battle between road warriors and public transport champions. I’ve been in London for a while now. It can be tough being so … Read more
The stakes of the next election can be found in the recently announced housing plan for Unitec and a transport blueprint that prioritises trains and bikes over cars. Labour is moving into the dangerous territory of telling people how they should live, writes National minister Wayne Mapp Getting a fix on the ideological bent of … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Government transport proposals prove to be incredibly divisive, EQC re-repair bill climbs, and an extraordinary warning about funding for Auckland addiction services. The government’s transport plans have proven to be the most important policy announcement of the year so far, and have provoked a storm of response. It’s become … Read more
The new government yesterday announced its blueprint for an overhaul of transport funding in New Zealand. Matt Lowrie of Greater Auckland delivers his verdict. I couldn’t help but think of Joe Biden’s phrase “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value” following the release yesterday of … Read more
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Huge changes in transport strategy announced by the government, the Defence Force boss is stepping down, and the Royal Commission into state care abuse is open for submissions. The government is proposing an increased fuel tax, and money is being moved out of state highways, in … Read more
It’s ridesharing app versus ridesharing app as global juggernaut Uber and local upstart Zoomy go head to head. Which one is fastest, cheapest and easiest to use? Jihee Junn enlisted Don Rowe to help find out. Going up against Uber is no easy feat. Just ask Lyft, which has long played second fiddle to Uber’s … Read more
Greater Auckland’s Matt Lowrie looks at the hidden benefits of rail outlined in a 2016 NZTA report released just this week, which transport minister Phil Tywford says was intentionally sat on by the previous government. For the last few decades, we’ve treated rail in New Zealand quite differently to the way we treat roads. Rail has been considered … Read more
Auckland has a new bike share scheme! Or does it? Simon Wilson investigates the strange case of the bumblebee bikes in the central city. Seen the brand new OnzO bikes all over central Auckland? Two by two, like animals from the Ark, gleaming black with shock-yellow wheel rims, they’ve turned up suddenly at almost every … Read more
New plans for transport and housing, sure, but the government’s coalition and support deals promise much more for Auckland than that. As Simon Wilson reports, there’s even a big win for Metiria Turei. Arise the other Phil: we have a new Mr Auckland Rumours the new government is going to change the name of Auckland … Read more
There are few areas of government policy in which the gap between National and Labour was as stark as in transport. We republish Greater Auckland’s Matt Lowrie on the likely priorities of the incoming government. When Winston Peters announced he’d chosen a coalition with Labour to form a new government on Thursday much of the … Read more
Transport minister Simon Bridges says no instruction was given to transport officials to hide the business case for the proposed new highway from Auckland to Whangarei. Simon Wilson reviews the paper trail that tells a peculiar story. First, this happened. On August 8 a staffer at the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) wrote an email to … Read more
Bill Cashmore, deputy mayor of Auckland, tells Simon Wilson why he loves working with the government and why he has such high hopes our problems will all be fixed. Bill Cashmore gets up at 4am so you don’t have to. It takes him an hour to drive to work and he’s there before six. Cashmore … Read more
Apparently Jacinda and Metiria weren’t the only ones making political news this week. Simon Wilson has five things to say about some of the transport and housing bullshit that went down this week. 1. The Auckland roads lobby cooks the numbers Did you see that “Auckland traffic ‘pouring $1.9 billion down the drain’” front page of the … Read more
It’s just been a very bad start to the week from the government when it comes to statements on transport and housing, weeps Hayden Donnell. National has a long and proud tradition of being wrong about everything when it comes to Auckland. Its ministers have consistently had to be dragged screaming out of the 18th … Read more
Remember that proposed new highway from Penrose to Onehunga, the East-West Link, set to cost close to $2 billion? Turns out no one has worked out, using current figures, if it’s worth the money – and it’s most likely no one ever will. And it’s not clear if the responsible ministers even know this. You … Read more
Mike Lee, councillor and former chair of the Auckland Regional Authority, explains why he thinks the Auckland Chamber of Commerce CEO Michael Barnett has got it wrong on a port sell-off – and why Mayor Phil Goff is an even bigger problem. This is part two in our debate on the future of the Auckland … Read more
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today: Simon Wilson orbits a State Highway One showpiece. Ah, the Waikato, where NZTA sends its maddest roading engineers to do their worst. Which they certainly do: absurdly over-engineered exchanges at Te Kauwhata and Rangiriri, giant new motorways leading in and … Read more
The usual defence of stories about Pākehā enraged by Māori ‘uppitiness’ is that the media are simply reporting people’s views. And that’s bollocks, says Aaron Smale. If you drive down the new expressway on the Kapiti Coast towards Wellington, when you get near Waikanae there is a slight bend. On the left a large concrete wall … Read more
Just when you thought transport planning in Auckland was beyond all hope, here’s a plan to save us all. Or something close to it. Welcome to the Congestion Free Network, version 2.0. Do you have to be a nerdy traffic analyst to fall in love with a map? Probably. I like to think I’m not … Read more
The government is about to push through a plan to build the most expensive road in New Zealand history – without declaring an up-to-date business case or providing any good evidence of the need. Simon Wilson asks why it wants to waste so much of our money. Boy did it rain last week. In that … Read more
Look at us Kiwis, a bunch of risk-taking, rule-bending, fresh-thinking suck-it-and-see adventurers, right? Who wouldn’t want to be one? So if we really do think that’s who we are, how come our transport planning isn’t keeping up with the ideas now transforming the cities of the world? Not radical ideas, just orthodox planning ideas. Like: … Read more
How come there’s still no publicly available business case for the government’s next big transport priority in Auckland – the East-West expressway that will cut Onehunga off from the foreshore? Simon Wilson reports from Council. Mayor Phil Goff took the stairs to the meeting room on the top floor of the town hall two at … Read more
Driving in Queenstown has become a kind of Russian roulette. Platitudes about ‘education’ won’t cut it: we need a tourist licence requirement, and urgently, argues Peter Newport. The ability of Governments to ignore reality is fairly well established but the deaths and chaos around Queenstown being caused by overseas drivers has to stop. I was … Read more
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Of all the streets I regularly drive on, Patteson Ave is the worst. Not for its condition or quality, but for the danger it puts you in by combining off-street parking, a hill, poor visibility and double yellow lines. I … Read more
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Last year I was a Sandringham resident and caught the 233/243/249 to and from work. There’s nothing special about this route or those buses. Once a week I would need to get to the North Shore after work and I would … Read more
The executive leaders of Auckland Transport are almost exclusively white males. Generation Zero’s Vonnie Veen-Grimes and Eden Williams explain why that needs to change. Often it feels like no matter the amount of passion and drive behind a cause, it is the faceless bureaucracy at the top that creates an impenetrable force preventing progress. The … Read more
MPs on all sides have embarrassed themselves in their ignorance of Uber and similar services. The simplest, cheapest way to tackle traffic gridlock is for the ruling party to abandon its timorous don’t-rock-the-boat attitude, writes ACT leader David Seymour. I sometimes joke that my parliamentary colleagues aren’t in their current job because they got bored … Read more