NZ In Tranzit

    "What is needed are public transport systems - additional to those already operating - which in effect "leap across" the inner suburbs [or in reality "cut through them, rarely stopping] and link the outer areas to the central city with ease of access and short attractive journey times". Mercedes CapaCity Buses - carrying up to 193 passengers - on segregated busway lanes in Istanbul. With recent extended vehicle length for trucks is it possible than vehicles of this size and quality could one day service specialised busway corridors in Christchurch ? ( photo source wowTurkey.com ) Click on any image to enlarge The dweaded wabbit has been flushed out of hiding by the need to float a few new seeds of thought into the the public consultation on the Prestons development. Prestons is a huge housing development planned by a consortium of Ngai Tahu (the South Island's largest Company), supermarket chain Foodstuffs and Singapore lin...

 "...the real value of installing an Annex Road busway underpass, now whilst it can be done relatively cheaply, is as a first step towards creating a direct bus corridor between the northwest of the city and the southwest of the city" Every area in the world probably has one, a colloquial saying for "you're nuts!".  It is the sort of saying that kids pick up in the playground and use easily and often. It usually refers to the location of the local mental hospital and more often than not also involves a "one way ticket". In Christchurch the old saying used to be "You need a one way ticket to Annex Road". This road was a side entrance to the sprawling Sunnyside Mental Hospital. [To my overseas readers, no, I am not joking. Sunnyside was its real name!  In recent years political correctedness and bureaucratic mundanity has renamed the facility "Hillmorton  Hospital", sure not so bizarre but also era...

"Given the context of it you can't help but think there is a bit of a threat contained within it." - Brent Efford "Morning Report" School's out 3pm!! Auckland's western commuter rail service gets swamped with high school kids at station after station, travel cost about $15 per child per week. National wants the parents and ratepayers in cities to pay more for their children's public transport whilst gifting country parents $1700 per year per child in school transport -  no parent contribution expected! The National Government is making scant attempt to disguise the fact that it intends to rule in favour of its own sectional interest groups and supporters. A recent piece of over-ripe hypocrisy is the decision to charge country school kids no fares whatsoever for catching buses to school, whilst expecting thousands of city children's parents to pay for their kids to travel to school. An education department report - presumably originally ordere...

Our market research showed that 46 per cent of rail users would take the coach if they were offered a comfortable journey with leg room One of my recent submissions to the Metro Strategy Review 2010 was the suggestion for regional bus services, coming from places like Waipara, Oxford, Darfield and - most logical of all Timaru and Ashburton. The relative subsidy cost of these would not appear to be huge, spread across several rating districts, and would probably be anyway recouped by a great many Canterbury residents in just a couple of trips a year, by an elderly relative, a trip to a show or voiding the need to ferry teenagers around.  At the moment virtually all morning bus and coach traffic is out-bound from the city mornings, in-bound afternoons - good for tourists but generally not so useful for locals.  Commuting workers, or students coming back from overnight visits to parents in rural towns, or visitors to the Ellerslie Flower Show, or th...

I have been campaigning since 2002 to have local public transport planners and civic authorities investigate the potential of corridor through St Albans towards Northlands for a busway alignment and direct cycleway to city. Originally I sent letters to the newspaper, in 2005 I sent a beautifully prepared simple clear document with maps to Garry Moore (then Mayor) and to ECan our public transport parent organisation. In 2007 I circulated an extended version of the same scheme - now with a busway corridor right up to Belfast -  to about 35 candidates to the local body elections. One or two were polite enough to say "How nice dear".  In that time Ecan investigated rail twice (ridiculously expensive and unsuited). Never once have I heard the slightest squeak from any corner that busways were being seriously looked at in Christchurch. Obviously once built this corridor would be there for all time, so to speak, could not be built out however big or high rise...

"It astounds me, the genius of Metro planners that again and again, they can take a multiplicity of services and by the most deviously clever planning render them down to a skeleton service" I have just been down Linwood Avenue way. I finish out there when I do late shifts (not very late really, they finsh at 8pm). I could have walked up to Eastgate, the shopping mall in this area, I sometimes do. There are six routes channelling past the Eastgate entrance on Buckleys Road. The most regular is The Orbiter (as the name suggests a cross-town - or rather around the suburbs - frequent service bus) but it is no use for what I want. Of the five routes from Eastgate's front door stop that are central city bound two No 49 Parkside (from Northshore) and No 51 Tower Junction (from New Brighton via Aranui ) do not operate an evening service, so that leaves just three routes heading for the city centre  past Eastgate entrance after 8pm and each ho...

This is just a "filler" photo - I am ferreting away at the moment (can rabbits ferret?) putting together a submission for Metro's long term public transport strategy for Canterbury. I have the spectacular luxury of being able to do what I believe is right and best irrespective of whether anybody listens and the incredible (even to me) toughness just to plug along however many knock backs or rejections I get. There is something perverse in my soul that likes a long tough fight! One of the great models of tenacity must surely be Winston Churchill - I read somewhere he didn't speak until he was five - this the man who delivered the greatest speeches of the 20th century!! He maintained (at least publicly) an unrelenting dogged faith and belief in victory when Britain virtually stood alone after the fall of France and of about six or seven other countries to the Nazis (New Zealander David Lowe's cartoon of a British soldier waving his fist at the spectre of Hitler afte...

Heading off to the pub -  my reward after a few virtuous hours mining beautiful rich soil from our very large,  long term, composting pile -  I spied my new 2nd hand digital camera and thought why not zip that in a side pocket. These little cameras are so easy to carry in a deep pocket, ready for when the mood takes or the situation calls. Also I love photographing the mundane - we don't realise until several decades later how historical many of the features in photographs become, the fashions, the vehicle styles, technologies, shop names, atmospheres. It is a public holiday, Easter Monday, one of those funny nights that doesn't quite fit in any convenient pidgeon hole - perhaps a few more people around than the usual Sunday or Monday evening, a few buskers livening the night, but all in all a pretty mellow mood. I guess even aggro or hyper types can't maintain their extreme energy for four days (although I did s...

I see in this morning's paper [ The Press 3 April 2010 ] that 57% of people surveyed question the period of time that National Government appointees will run Environment Canterbury. Why will it take so called trouble shooter experts three and a half years to right a structural problem? They have already been given extra powers that Environment Canterbury sought for years but were denied, in a huge piece of political chicanery that one of our few remaining  independent newspapers has researched and exposed .  Yet the competence of these persons, given military style top down authority (not subject to elected processes) is such that they will need three and half years?  In what sense in that case are these commisioners going to be more effective than the present elected and now deposed-by-coup body? Or is it just a sleezy trick to give disproportionate power to minority rural sector and the huge corporate farming sector, both traditionally National P...

Throughout history democratic countries have sometimes faced an  administrative situation seen as untenable and unworkable. At such moment usually the President, Prime Minister, the Governor General will dissolve the Parliament or organisation concerned and call for new elections. Those who know their history will know of the Jack Lang Government in NSW in the 1930s, or the Gough Whitlam Government dismissal in Australia in the 1970s, or for that matter the fall of many coalition Governments unable to function effectively in Italy and elsewhere. Such dissolution of an elected body is an extreme case for scenario for democracy. The next step beyond that is one where one party seizes power and throws out or imprisons existing elected members and puts in its own non-elected ruling aparatus. The failure of the Labour Party, the Progressive Party, NZ First, the Maori Party and the Greens (etc) to respond instantly and adequately to the unbridled and savage attack...