Month: April 2013

All Things (Auckland) Transport

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The Numbers

 

Friday the Auckland Transport Board will conduct its monthly meeting for all things Auckland transport in March. Today the powerful Council Accountability and Performance Committee is meeting (as of now as I am watching the feed live) in which AT will be grilled on the $60 billion Integrated Transport Program and maybe with luck AT-HOP.

 

However I am focusing the March public transport patronage statistics as seen in the embed below:

 

Of note:

  • Rail patronage over the rolling 12 months has slipped further by 4.2% to 9,951,686 
  • Weekday services up 4.5%
  • Western Line patronage up 0.5%
  • Southern, Eastern, Manukau and Onehunga Lines down 6.9%
  • March Madness was prevalent which does cause a surge as tertiary institutions come back ons-stream. April and May often will level out once that surge is reabsorbed back into the systems

 

While there is some good news with the Western Line and Weekday services (although March Madness might of caused the yearly surge blip as it does) the point being that total patronage is still backsliding DOWN.

 

It is the total patronage over the 12 rolling months we usually look and what NZTA can look to for determining subsidies and further such capital investment such as for example the City Rail Link. So we are still seeing slippage and AT is now for sure not going to meet its Statement of Intent for patronage forecast and revenue.

 

Catch is what is Auckland Transport going to do about it…

 

 

What Your Town Or Metropolitan Centre Might Look Like

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3D Mock Ups of Potential Maximum Development

Apologies for not getting this particular post up earlier as I have been busy focusing on my new company of recent.

Auckland Council via Shape Auckland have released 19 You Tube videos showing potential growth in 19 of our Metropolitan and Town Centres per the draft Unitary Plan. Unfortunately You Tube and WordPress don’t like embedding each other which somewhat makes it a pain so it has to be the links.

 

3D VIDEO MODELS OF POSSIBLE GROWTH ACROSS AUCKLAND

Unitary Plan 3D modelling videos

Auckland Council has developed a 3D model of Auckland to help develop the draft Auckland Unitary Plan.

This included modelling possible growth in 19 metropolitan and town centres around Auckland.

While largely an internal tool to help inform planning decisions, the resulting videos give a useful indication of how centres might grow over 10, 20 and 30+ years.

The model has this week come runner-up at the ALGIM GIS Project of the Year Award (Note: the winner was also from Auckland Council, its Capacity for Growth Study).

It’s important to remember that these are indicative only: clearly actual growth is down to what landowners decide to build and will of course be subject to design assessments. The videos demonstrate the protection of heritage buildings and show that high-rise buildings (9 or more storeys) will be restricted to metropolitan centres.

The videos can be viewed on youtube.com/aklcouncil and the 19 centres are:

Albany Botany Browns Bay Glen Eden Henderson
Highbury Manukau Manurewa New Lynn Newmarket
Otahuhu Papakura Point Chevalier Pukekohe Remuera
Sylvia Park Takapuna Three Kings Warkworth

 

You should be able click each of the individual centres above and see the video.

 

Of course as a reminder this shows the maximum development that could occur if economic conditions are right. Note the English carefully I have used as it is rather specific.

 

BEN ROSS : AUCKLAND

BR:AKL: Bring Well Managed Progress

The Unitary Plan: Bringing Change

Auckland: 2013 – OUR CITY, OUR CALL