Weekly Roundup 28-March-2025
Today's another Friday, and we are almost at the end of March. Here's another roundup of stories that caught our eye this week.
This week in Greater Auckland
On Tuesday, Connor pointed out that people tend to like people-friendly cities.
On Wednesday, Matt looked at the stadium proposals, and their level of feasibility.
For Thursday, we had a guest post by Paris Kirby, about Lunar New Years and the future of Placemaking.
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Eden Park Preferred
The stadium debate at council yesterday resulted in Eden Park being selected as the preferred option.
Eden Park has won Auckland’s stadium showdown with councillors backing the local institution to be the city’s fit-for-purpose main stadium.
Councillors voted 17-2 with one abstention (Mike Lee) to endorse in principle a staged redevelopment of Eden Park as the best and most feasible option it had before it.
That saw the rival Quay Park waterfront stadium proposal miss out.
What's the point of being a councillor if you're just going to abstain from decisions like this?
Level Crossing Funding
As well as the stadium decision, yesterday Councillors also agreed to bring forward funding for level crossing removal following the governments $200 million in funding for them announced last month.
The funding will see eight new bridges built to remove all level crossings on the Southern north of Papakura and the Eastern Line. This involves three new road bridges in Takanini to replace four existing level crossings as well as two pedestrian bridges in the area. Also included are three new bridges to provide station access at Glen Innes, Takanini, and Te Mahia.
A few interesting comments from the paper to councillors include:
On the North Island Main Trunk Line (Southern), train paths north of Papakura will increase from the current 16 trains per hour (tph) during the peak hour to 20 tph when CRL opens and then to 24 tph by 2036. Train paths south of Papakura will be maintained at 16 tph for some time until KiwiRail completes ‘4 tracking’.
The road network in Takaanini is already congested. When the CRL Day 1 timetable begins operation, additional train paths will see traffic queues extending back onto Great South Road at Manuroa Road and Walters Road during the afternoon peak times. The barrier down time will increase delays on the Great South Road corridor by approximately 2.5 minutes in the peak hour.
The station access bridges are expected to be completed next year with the most disruptive elements of the construction expected to happen during existing planned block of lines - presumably the big planned Christmas/New Year shutdown. At those times they'll progress the enabling works for the road bridges but they won't be fully finished till closer to 2032.
The paper to councillors also includes these images of of the proposed changes
The station access bridges for Te Mahia and Takanini both seem fairly straightforward but I noted the Glen Inness changes mean that there will no longer be access to the station from Merton Rd
Ray Delahanty aka CityNerd's video on Auckland is out
Ray Delahanty aka CityNerd visited Auckland recently and as well as having a Q&A event with us, he took a look around Auckland and his thoughts are now available in video form
Why is Christchurch good for cycling?
Spoiler: its because they are building a network. The Spinoff's Shanti Mathias took a look at what Christchurch is doing right.
But stable weather and the horizontal streets enabled by the Canterbury plains can only get so many people on bikes. What really helps is extensive cycle lanes. “In Christchurch’s case, the earthquake was an opportunity,” Kingham says. In the middle of destruction, the extensive rebuild “allowed us to rethink and invest a lot in infrastructure”, Kingham says. As Christchurch put itself back together, cycle lanes were added as the streets were repaired.
Cycle advocates, at least, believe Christchurch deserves its reputation as the best city in the country for cycling. Cycle Action Network, a national coalition of bike advocacy organisations, hosted its annual meeting CAN-do in Christchurch last weekend, a group of perhaps 30 that surely represented New Zealand’s largest concentration of people likely to use the term “mode shift” in everyday conversation. Naturally, several hours on both days of the conference were dedicated to exploratory bike rides.
Bike Auckland's Big Bike Off fundraiser
Currently our friends at Bike Auckland are fundraising for this years 'Biketober" festival, check it out here if you would like to donate.
Biketober is a community-powered festival on wheels held every October. A bigger, bolder and better-than-ever Biketober will change the conversation around cycling, bring local decision-makers on board, and get more people than ever giving cycling for transport a whirl.
We know that Biketober has the power to change hearts and minds. But as a small team, we are constantly stretching our capacity. We need funds to take Biketober to the next level, creating even more of an impact across our region.
James May on Cycling
Former Top Gear presenter James May has some fantastic quotes about the roles of bikes in cities in this article
James May believes much of the anti-cycling opposition out there "smacks of sheer bloody-mindedness" and has been left wondering why councils "are being t***s" when it comes to providing cycle lanes and other cycling infrastructure.
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"Obviously I've spent a lot of time over the years writing about cars and making TV about them, and I love cars, but I do think in my bones they don't really belong in towns," he continued. "Cars are great for going between places, like from London to my pub in Wiltshire. But within London I don't want to drive the car, and when I'm down in the village in Wiltshire I don't want to drive around either.
"Bicycles are a genuine door-to-door transport solution. Cycling is fantastic in cities. Even Google Maps will acknowledge that a bicycle is quicker for some journeys than a car. It amazes me that people go to the shops a mile away in the car. The world has proved that bicycles make immense sense in densely populated areas.
"The bicycle is the only thing in physics that seems to give you something for nothing. I'm still amazed by it now. A bicycle massively improves the efficiency of the walking human being, and on the whole they are much easier to maintain and buy than horses. It is no coincidence that lots of the world's great car manufacturers — Peugeot, Škoda, BMW, Rover — started off by making bicycles."
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"I think the best thing you could do with the driving test is make a part of it on a bicycle"
Paris votes for 'garden roads'
Rail Users Plan Ahead
Kiwirail are in the middle of their works to get the rail network up to standard ahead of the CRL and so this year, as well as the annual Christmas/New Year shutdowns, they'll be closing the rail network for two weeks in April - during school holidays from Saturday 12 April to Sunday 27 April 2025. One of the reasons they will have chosen this time period is it contains both Easter and ANZAC day in the same week which means a lot of people are bound to take leave to take advantage of it so travel demand will be lower.
AT have now started to publish details about the rail replacement buses that will be run during that time.
The 12 from 27 April
A few weeks ago Matt highlighted the planned changes to buses in Upper Harbour, including upgrading the 120 to the 12 and giving it a new route along the motorway between Greenhithe and Constellation Station. AT have now confirmed the changes will go live on 27 April. However, the new 12 route won't actually be all day frequent at first and instead will increase from the middle of the year.
In addition, the 132, peak only service that runs from Te Atatu Peninsula to the city will stop and a bunch of new electric buses, including electric double deckers will be introduced.
WX1 will have new electric double decker buses with distinctive light blue livery at peak times. Diesel double decker buses will be used at off peak times. By mid-2025 all WX1 buses will be new electric double decker buses.
From 27 April some electric double decker buses will be used on Route 12 along with double decker diesel buses. By mid-2025 all Route 12 buses will be double decker electric buses.
From 27 April some electric buses will be used on the 11T and 11W route along with diesel buses. By mid-2025 all Route 11T and 11W buses will be new electric buses
Have a great weekend