NZ In Tranzit

Despite its poor technical quality this is one of my favourite historical photos of Christchurch. It shows a Baldwin steam tram pulling at least ten double deck trailers, turning from Buckleys Road (now home to Eastgate Mall) into Linwood Avenue. In those days the Avenue was called the Canal Reserve, legacy of attempt to built a canal for shipping up from the estuary into Christchurch. I estimate the steam tram is pulling 400-500 passengers, presumably tofro some major event. or maybe (given the era) a bible school convention. It is even possible that this blog may be only the second place that this photo has been published in the last fifty years. As far as I know or can recall it doesn't appear in any of the well known NZ tramway histories and I think I've read most, some several times a few years apart. It is scanned here from its original printing in "New Brighton - a regional history 1852-1970" by Geo. W,Walsh, self published, it appears, in 1971. The photo...

Recently I came across a opinion piece - "The Emperor's New Light Rail" in the "Houston Chronicle" about the huge city's light rail system. It brings to the surface many of the unchallenged assumptions - the mythology - of those who propose light rail. So often when one hears of a light rail proposal the advocates shunt out the same arguments, like a line of old tramcars - LRT vehicles have higher capacity; LRT lines attract more riders than bus routes they replace; LRT reduces congestion; systems cost less per passenger to operate and allegedly require less staff to operate; having lines engenders a sense of permanence and boosts investment in areas through which a light rail passes. Some of these may true or relevant in certain limited situations, much of this thinking ignores real costs, including spread capital costs which render light rail unacceptably expensive in Christchurch and often an indulgent luxury in even big cities like Houston.. Personall...

Automatic Pre-Pay bus ticket machines on a Select Bus Service route in New York. Passengers purchase ticket from these and board articulated buses through all three doors (mass loading in less than 30 seconds). Regular checks by inspectors and police and heavy fines for having no ticket work on the "proof of payment" system common on European transit. Systems like this - or even computer chip cards only - ensure fast boarding and remove the slowing effect of complex driver-passenger interactions. On-street bus lanes need to be heavily policed to work well in creating rapid bus transit, as New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority recently found out. (Image Wikimedia Commons) In a recent posting "Metro Strategy Delivers" I said I felt the latest Metro Strategy update, for 2010-2016 has more vision and yet is also far more specific than previous Strategy documents of the last decade. In that posting I identified four areas where to me the Strategy spoke with ei...

All over the world - bus systems are starting to get the investment appropriate to their potential capacity, flexibility, frequency, and ability to reach all corners of a city AND run express, as here in Xiaxen, where the busway is built as a viaduct snaking across and above the city. Photo thanks to ITDP To be fair to Mayor Bob Parker newspapers rarely get it right and many reports misintepret or put things the wrong way. I say this because it is hard to make much sense of a recent news item in The Press Parker renews tram-train call. [ The Press 16 Oct 2010 ] To quote " Bob Parker, buoyed by the ‘‘absolute vindication’’ of the light-rail policies of the new Auckland and Wellington mayors, said yesterday he hoped the first street-based tram trains would be running within five years". First off, light rail in the normal sense of the word (modern trams) has made no foothold in Auckland or Wellington yet other than the decision by Auckland Regional Council in June to build a h...

The main problem with electric buses is they are so quiet they sneak up behind you and you don't even notice! Imagine one of the new technologies coming up behind Bob Parker while he is busy down on his hands and knees concreting in the city's new light rail system at $10 million per kilometre [and the rest]. The first thing Bob knows is when the bus horn goes toot toot." He just about jumps out of his skin "Come on Bob get out of the way of progress" yells the driver with a big grin. This lovely retro mag cover above celebrated a Swiss bus system that tried to do the rechargement bit using traditional batteries and a flywheel, way back in the 1950s. As usual technology moves in leaps and bounds, a scientific pattern better known to every kid as leapfrog. It needs all the bits to come together to make the next jump forward. Quantitive research and testing, sometimes spanning decades, in a moment can join the dots to become a quality shift. Back in 1954 the bits h...

Hamilton Transport Centre - city bus exchange, regional and long distance services (including booking office), taxi ranks, luggage lockers, real time signage, cafes. Could Christchurch build on this model - impressive for a smaller city - and on the model of airports and rail and bus stations overseas to create a lively hub offering easy mobility and transfers, with added multiple activity purposes, a hub that is largely self financing? "It is absolutely pointless spending millions on a bus exchange and not guaranteeing the free flow of buses in and out of the passenger loading area". Bob Parker has re-emerged as mayor, mainly thanks to the kudos he won for his commitment and leadership in the weeks following the major earthquake on September 4th. It is not often a politician wins because he or she is standing on shakey ground! And it would indeed be shakey ground to pre-suppose, on the base of pre-earthquake polls, that Parker has any mandate for light rail, let alone his...

Suggest reading previous post first; The large letter link here link sums up the contradictions of big dreams, small population, and trying to be as successful as Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, without a huge mineral base and only a fraction of the equivalent state population!! Brown confident about $10b transport plans Relevance to Christchurch? Nice guys get washed away in the rain? A comment that was published in the 1950 Canterbury Centenary publication shows nothing much has changed in our forlorn city's psyche; "The result is that Christchurch gives the impression that very little has been left to chance; it has something of the stability that comes from respected tradition.** Its people are proud that the city carries this mark, even if they do periodically wonder whether they are not a little slow in pushing their claims against those other parts of the country...." *** ** Even our disasters are done and handled in a very polite and tidy manner - wabbit grin *...

For those worried that giving one city a disproportionate say in this country's future, by virtue of a one third block vote and an ego that sometimes sounds suspiciously like it barely recognises life beyond the Bombay Hills.....if I may be so bold as to point a few things out Newly elected Auckland Mayor Len Browns' vision of Auckland's role in NZ........... "Our country, our community, our New Zealanders as a whole are looking to we Aucklanders in this time of unity to give a great and comprehensive lead to this country into the international marketplaces." - TVNZ website Saturday October 09, 2010 Source: ONE News We are? That's certainly news to me!! I rather thought the basis of our economy was agriculture, especially dairy, forestry, oil, coal and mineral extraction and tourism....not sure Auckland is the source of much of this For those who worry that a city only three and half times the size of Wellington or Christchurch and only one third the total ...

I have a mate who is holds a master builder certificate who worked as a carpenter, 18 months OE, for a big building firm in the UK. At one stage he pointed out to management that a wall they were building still needed to have internal plumbing and wiring (or something) fitted the response was "You do the building and we'll do the thinking [sonny]". The patronising attitude, "we know best" and the entrenched "top down" hierarchy of class system is of course legend in the UK ....needless to say a week later a perfectly good new wall had to be partly demolished and rebuilt to accommodate the missing elements! Something of that same complacency and smugness, "you leave the thinking to us sonny, we know where we are going" it has felt to me has emanated from Metro and Metro strategic plans in the latter half of this decade, at least until very recently. I believe public transport has huge potential to be a key player in re-creating a more livab...

"I have no idea how they plan bus schedules but there is little to suggest the classic service motto "the customer comes first" is being applied" Even though I dress on the left and occasionally wave a tattered red flag, I must confess I also enjoy the humour, pungent insight and pithy comments of right-winger P.J.O'Rouke. It is probably a dangerous thing to quote a passage read ten or much more years ago from memory - the most fantastically inaccurate part of the brain. But....but I remember one article I read in (I think in his highly "objective" study of economics "Eat the Rich") where he describes his trip to Soviet Russia not long after perestroika opened up this semi-secret empire to western ideas. Our man on the spot "P" (I hope I'm not sounding too familiar here!) goes to a Moscow restaurant considered up-market. I can't remember the precise details, but you know the sort of Soviet era thing, the long wait...