NZ In Tranzit

(Sorry 'bout the long break ....too much eating, drinking, walks and craic... and all the other good things of Christmas...alas a few unexpected nasty earthquakes too!) A few months ago I tried to put together a more or less hierarchical listing of the functions and roles of public transport , listed - roughly- from the most important [in most cases] role downwards, through secondary or subsidiary roles It helps to have a generic template of what is sought, even if unique circumstances and locations cause variations from the basic. For example in towns and small cities easily accessible by car and where life for a working age person would be difficult without a car the foremost priority I identified - transporting people to work and study - might actually come in behind "social roles" of transport  for older and disabled people. But having a priority ranking also can make the small town organising authority say "Wait a minute - maybe there  are  people in our...

A couple of months back I was walking the section of the Little River Rail Trail with a friend. This former railway corridor skirts Lake Wairewa on an embankment. At times, I'd guess, this heavy shingle embankment built over 125 years ago is up to 6-8 metres high in places. "Isn't it amazing," I said at one point, "that all this shingle had to brought by horse and cart. Such an incredible amount of work". We walked another couple of metres before I exploded in laughter at my own stupidity. "How ridiculous, " I corrected myself, "Of course they didn't bring it by horse and cart, they brought it by rail as the line advanced and tipped it off rail trucks." It is a truly sad and tragic way to have gained this,  but one asset Christchurch has gained since the year of horrendous earthquakes is an absolutely humungous pile of broken bricks and masonry rubble . Most of this is at the Burwood landfill and may just stay there - ...

Bus Rapid Transit is increasingly giving light rail a run for its money in the USA, delivering far more extensive services than light rail can for the same dollar. Judging by this Detroit news article headlined  Light rail backers battle on common sense is winning out in that city too. There are some interesting parallels between Christchurch and Detroit here. In the past the Christchurch City Council ignored the chance to put a very useful direct bus link between new growth areas in the South West (12,000 new houses are planned for Wigram, Awatea, Henderson and Halswell in the coming decades) and the University, Middketon industrial/office park area,  Westfield and the Airport. Likewise the chance to link Belfast with the central city in 15 minutes in peak hours  by a busway across from Grimseys Road and down Rutland Street and Caledonia Road into the city never appears to have been seriously investigated, despite wide promotion of the concept to Mayor Garry Mo...

There can't be too many situations in the world where a modern city deliberately "de-constructs" . In Christchurch - never much of a towering "skyscraper city" anyway -  a number of high rise buildings are being demolished.  In the very violent 6.2 Richter scale earthquake in Christchurch the extreme ground acceleration in a relatively small area made it one of the most violent earthquakes ever recorded (and also rare, an epicentre right under a city centre). Quite a few of the high rise buildings suffered significant structural damage beyond that which is economic, safe or insurable to restore. This occurred despite these being built to very high earthquake resistance standards since the mid 1970s (two earlier built high rises suffered catastrophic collapse with huge loss of life).  A big relief for all in the city will be the recent engineers report that most of the land in the CBD is stable to rebuild upon, the exception areas being mainly rive...

 Metro Christchurch has finally addressed the complete collapse of bus services to large areas of eastern Christchurch following last February's major earthquake. Ecan has announced two new link bus services to the Dallington, Avonside, Aranui and Avondale areas. Ecan have introduced a token service, two shuttle links with good route structures but so limited in service spread and frequency schedule they do not even offer peak hour services [see here ] This means high school students and workers will still have to walk 15-20 minutes to get to a city bus stop, despite the fact they or their parents are paying full transport rates to Ecan. A second fact is if vehicles can negotiate roadworks on this shuttle routes four times a day, why not eight times a day, or sixteen times a day?? The north, west and southern suburbs have almost all city to suburb services running half hourly day/hourly evening, approx twenty five trips each way a day.   In contrast for these ea...

Top quality coaches with wi-fi are becoming a world trend in city-to-city services, but commuter friendly bus services are unlikely to ever connect Timaru, Ashburton, Rolleston,  Christchurch and Christchurch International Airport under present Canterbury transport strategies.   (Photo: Two door Tour bus  at  Taihape 2010.  NZ in Tranzit)   The Canterbury Regional Land Transport Strategy 2012- 2042 has been completed. This is a policy document whuch must be formulated by every Region every few years under the Land Transport Management Act 2003 to determine provincial  transport patterns and priorities. This strategy document put together with representation from all District authorities and other transport related stakeholders determines policy guidelines across all forms of transport and transport planning for the province. Amongst this is of course public transport and this is examined in the context of bot...

Reprinted with permission of the artist Pete McLauchlan Miss 1. Verb miss the boat or bus to lose an opportunity A talented pen & ink man, artist and writer of great whimsy and quiet irony, Pete McLauchlan has captured many of the heartland stories, characters and buildings of Christchurch, spanning many years. This included, some years back now, about a decade of weekly cartoons with anecdotal captions in The Press. It was one of those sections   always checked in the weekend paper by myself and I imagine a great many other morning paper browsers too. Pete is still going strong (house wrecked and about to take his talents to Dunedin) and has recently published a new set of cartoons, astutely grasping the true slogan of recovery for Christchurch is not Rise Up Christchurch but the wonderful mixture of phallic conceit, quality baking powder and Christchurch history inherent in the slogan "Sure to Rise" (Yeehah...

  The other day I caught a Metrostar from New Brighton. I was pretty pissed off because a long queue in the supermarket meant by the time I was served I only had 2 minutes to get to the stop. It was a case of fast walking and huff and puffing and cursing under my breath because the Metrostar bus stops in this neck of the woods are about three quarters of a kilometre apart - around in Oram Ave or way up by the School on Hawke Street.  I can understand residential stops being broadly spaced to maintain pace across the suburbs but in a built up retail area??  Most of the action in New Brighton is towards the beach end - the beach itself of course, the very popular and busy library and spectacular pier, the supermarket and larger shops and the New Brighton Club. It makes little sense having buses drive past the place people most want to go. However in the circumstances, this time, it didn't really matter. Either my clock was wrong or the ...

  Further to my last posting about Oamaru, this is a poster for the same show I found so brilliantly choreographed, timed, acted, performed etc at the Oamaru Opera house (I am sure The Loons won't mind me further promoting their promo poster, taken from their website ). One of the few criticisms I would have had of the show was the name "Berlin Burlesque", was too generic, lacked its own personality, a distinctive identity, a name to invite enquiry. Someone else obviously thought so too! This is a world class show, and I imagine could literally evolve into that. That said where other countries would find a set of genuine twins as talented as the Twisty Twins ,   acrobats but with superb timing, balance and humour I am not sure! I get the impression that a major aspect of this theatre company's first high standards of performance and high level of acrobatic skills is, in part, linked to the background of some performers who have attended or graduated from t...

    I have been down in Oamaru, one of my favourite haunts, a town of about 13,000 with the character, energy and rich diversity of a much larger city. This time the draw-card was the Oamaru Heritage Festival, a sort of Waitaki District "Show Week" with an historic theme to match the town's fantastic array of Victorian and Edwardian lime-stone buildings. With the demise of much of Christchurch's Vic & Ed streetscape Oamaru's star can only rise further (in a long ago posting I suggested that  the District and city councils of the east coast of Te Wai Pounamu, could unite to offer a heritage and walkway package, united by an iconic weekly steam train Christchurch to Dunedin (and one offering both  tourist and budget class rail) For the festival in Oamaru my partner and I hired Victorian costumes and joined several hundred other people similarly clothed - its a hoot, dress-up for adults, lots of fun and friendliness. It also gives one a so much deeper sens...