NZ In Tranzit

I see in the Pegasus Post (a free community newspaper letterboxed to Christchurch's eastern suburb households) that the City Council has now bought the Burwood-Pegasus Community Board Rooms on the north-east corner of Union Street and Beresford Street in New Brighton (previously leased) and intend to spend $237,000 for a makeover. The purchase price is not revealed ("commercial sensitivity" -yr) but I would imagine the whole deal will cost in excess of $450,000 -  I'm no expert, perhaps perhaps a lot more. A possibility reported in the Pegasus Post is of also installing on-site a full time council office, a City Council Service Centre, similar to those operating out of Smith Street Depot in Linwood and Shirley Library at The Palms. What a high flying wabbit who works in the area sees, (and you can too, Googling up the map for "Beresford Street, Christchurch") however is the unusually wide apron of land on the site  fa...

Double EMU on suburban line,  Frankfurt und Rolleston, mit engineer Bob at the controls? New Zealand's railway network is approximately twice as long as the German rail network* *Per capita - and taxpayer. Germany has 43,000 kilometres of railway track (much of it double and electrified) and 81 million residents. If the wabbit caculates right, that means around 1890 residents (and pro rata taxpayers) for every kilometre of rail track. By comparison in New Zealand we have 4000 kilometres of railway track but only 4.3 million residents or 1067 residents (and pro-rata taxpayers) per kilometre. In Australia this difference is even more exaggerated - only 661 residents per kilometre of track - but it also has huge long haul ore and coal trains etc which may soften the costs for taxpayers. So if even before we step on a train - and even if we don't - a kiwi taxpayer will be forking out around two bucks for every one dollar equivalent of German citizen...

Photo from Institute forTransport and Developmental Policy - Thanks I can't find any blurry self taken photos to pass off as artworks ( see previous Art in Transition entries ) and have other engaging commitments at the moment, but I know the insatiable appetite of my millions of readers for constant fresh news!  So to keep both of you happy I enclose a random photo of one the busway stations on the TransJakarta Bus Rapid transit System - when I last checked carrying over 160,000 passengers a day. Note that the bus doors on this dedicated do not open at conventional street level but are designed to offer platform level loading. With Paris and Montreal having rubber tyred trains, and many busways having dedicated tracks there is almost no clear cut-off or dividing line between bus and rail except for one key factor, relevant to lower density cities - busway vehicles can leave the corridor and pick passengers up and drop them off close to departure points and destinations - ...

Following a common pattern overseas the car addicts in Auckland are reclaiming the bus lanes.  The "Citizens and Ratepayers" [a National front?]  dominated Transport Committee has decided to consult business and land owners and "stakeholders" such as the Auckland Regional Transport Authority on whether in essence to convert bus lanes into HOV lanes giving them into "T2" status. That would mean buses sharing space with any other motor vehicles with two or more occupants.   [ For more information click on the title box of this posting]

Throughtful Jigging between (gasp) pot shotting rabbits in Central Otago, NZ c1900 Alexander Turnbull Library (No Copyright Restrictions ) Here is my synopsis for recreating passenger rail between Christchurch and Dunedin! Anyone who knows anything about rail knows its is hugely expensive and in the current climate [or to be precise climate change and peak oil stage] we do not have the numbers to sustain a regular service. I suggest just one train a week each way! But this a train service so very strategically planned it might have the potential to meet most or all of its immediate costs. The cost-benefit ratio to the communities it serves and the accommmodation, hospitality and tourism sectors it fosters could  be significant, way beyond just the patronage itself, making it a win win win win situation. In this scenario one train a week is enough to establish an world class iconic image (adding immensely to existing rail based t...

Photo courtesy of Independent Transportation and Development Policy  (see below for website) Photographer Karl Fjellstrom This is the busway through the centre of Chinese coastal city Xiamen (2.5 million population). No, no, the busway is not where you can see the buses, that is just an on-street lane - the busway is on the viaduct above! More photos of this impressive piece of public transport infrastructure available here I remember watching a BBC Economics  type programme on TV a couple of years ago. It was an interview with China's associate Minister  of Finance (or was it Development? He was fairly high up in the governmental apparatus anyway). He said words to the effect that China was not trying to catch up with the developed world - they are trying to see where technology is going to be headed in the future and jump right over the top. Starting more or less from scratch they had the benefit of brand new technolog...

.... public transit is first and foremost about moving, mobility, flexibility, options to get places, options to avoid waiting. Foreword by the Zen Wabbit .... The best ideas are often the simplest. In engineering, as in artistic media, close relationship of form to function, symmetry and sense, harmony of all working parts, repetition of themes, all play a part in creating beauty, instinctive understanding, ease of use and appreciation. To create simple ideas, the most effective ideas, paradoxically can take great depth of understanding.  Rarely are simple concepts made real life and part of every day without great complexity of prior development. (Pssst - You may now clap politely with one hand if you so wish).  Main Article by David Welch (thanks dalai wabbit) I believe the greatest gift Metro could give Christchurch is to create an integrated bus route pattern and a co-ordinated departure time pattern, city wide, covering 90% of operating h...

Anyone who travels across the motorway, over the Curletts Road overbridge, and up through Curletts Road to Upper Riccarton, morning or evening will be familiar with the huge sea of cars that swamp this area at peak times. Yet not a single existing bus route offers the same link...   I have taken to carrying my camera when I go out - the most innocuous scenes can have meaning to me in terms of some larger global picture! Here is northbound traffic on Christchurch's Papanui Road at 4.30pm, on a today's winter evening (2nd June 2010). Clearly the bus lanes are working well - it constantly amazes me the "duh" factor when people write letters to the paper about "empty bus lanes"... I mean like an unimpeded bus takes about 30 seconds to appear and then pass out of visible range so if there are 40 buses an hour (potentially 1500-2500 passengers) in any give rush hour the bus lanes will have a visible bus less than a third of the time. Duh? That's how they w...