NZ In Tranzit

Tranzwatching in New Zealand Amendments to sveral NZ laws come in to force this weekend. One of these expands the situation under which motorists have to slow down to 20 kmh when passing school buses stopped to load or discharge students.  The official details are as follows;   There is an existing requirement for drivers to reduce their speed to 20km/h when passing a stationary school bus, displaying a school bus sign that is stopped to pick up or drop off school children. From 1 October 2011, drivers passing a stationary school bus displaying an optional ‘school bus’ sign with flashing lights, will need to reduce their speed to 20km/h. The bus driver will also be required to only operate the flashing lights for up to 20 seconds before and after the school bus has stopped. This will help to warn motorists that they need to take care and slow down as they are approaching an area where children are likely to be crossing the road.

Saturday morning traffic on Hagley Avenue queues at Moorhouse Avenue, - the Green Party campaigns  to have continuous bus lanes set aside  and access way for public transport protected (see case study below) NZ in Tranzit - opinion, mine and others I recently received a copy of the submission the Aoraki branch of the Green Party made to the Draft Christchurch Central City plan. The submission paints a very much fuller picture than  the casual comments I made about the Greens last week. These comments suggested that the Green Party (which has announced it will support 60% Government funding for light rail in both Wellington and Christchurch) was jumping on the band wagon, so to speak, backing light rail on knee-jerk and mythology, rather than careful research. This submission to the Central City earth-quake recovery plan makes it very clear the Aoraki Green Party is by no means blindly supporting light rail. Rather the party is very keen to...

Tranzwatching new public transport technology in Germany  I've always found combination tools fairly bloody useless.  I mean things such as a garden handle with a hoe at one and a rake rake at the other of the single handle; or Swiss army knives with a dozen different functions - ok in emergency but no substitute for the real screwdriver, corkscrew etc . I'd be surprised indeed if a vehicle combining tram-train and bus managed to really deliver the unique benefits of each transport mode well. But a group of German inventors associated with the Fraunhofer Institute have developed an interesting a hybrid zero emission [at delivery point] light-train-bus they have named the AutoTram   aimed to give bus flexibility with light rail features. Rather than running on a single charge like an electric car, or a system reliant upon multiple expensive lithium batteries to last hours the AutoTram only goes about 1.5 kilometres before requiring another 30-second jolts of energy...

Tranzwatching school buses in NZ Waitaki Member of Parliament Jacqui Dean says that cars failing to reduce speed to the required 20 km an hour when passing school buses loading or discharging school children is a bigger issue than whether seat belts are installed in school buses.  The problem is caused by local drivers and not just tourists. A report in The Timaru Herald notes that 20km signs are being painted on the back of some buses and buses shelters to try to create greater awareness, and some rural womens' groups are calling for flashing signs on the buses to be used when dropping passengers.

                                                 Light rail - Paris. Wikimedia Commons There are many magic incantations abroad at the moment!! "We need light rail" "light rail is faster"  "rail has much greater capacity"   "rail only needs one driver to pull hundreds of passengers so is much cheaper"  "rail is more environmentally friendly"  "buses don't have the capacity to handle large numbers" "light rail attracts people who won't use buses" All these statements are essentially half truths or outright gobbledy gook. They are lazy thinking - statements having some elements of truth or being partly true, but always only in certain specific situations.  Or they ignore context and downstream effects.  The magic ...

Encouraged by the great success of the Central Connector and Northern busways, three more busway projects look to be on the books for Auckland Akoranga station on the Northern Busway. The covered walkway extends across the Motorway to the campus on the opposite side.  In Christchurch a far more modest programme of suburban bus transfer stations, announced in 2006,  has made no progress in five years of Parker led governance, despite all the usual Council rhetoric. [click on image to enlarge] per Wikimedia Commons Although the exact parameters of the terms busway and bus rapid transit have never been officially defined (if that is indeed possible) a general consensus seems to be emerging in public transport circles that four major components need to exist; (a) bus lanes segregated in part or whole and/or fully separated from conventional road transport (b) priority signals or grade separated intersections (c) bus level platform stations with pre-pay boarding systems ...

I have followed public transport issues for over 40 years and I am appalled that this field of social engineering, with as many complexities as any other field of engineering,  is being treated as some sort of “anyone can do it right” system. We do not choose to purchase expensive medical equipment or wharf cranes on the basis of public or politician whim – why build and run far more expensive public transport on such a ridiculous basis? Proposals to undertake studies on "light rail" and to create a business case for Government appeared designed to choose light rail without first examining other options, when clearly many other technologies exist to create more effective public transport. Obviously funding is finite and $400 million into one light rail project, a single short line, will seriously compromise other transport options for years to come. Not least the future vitality of the central city will largely depend on easy direct access from all corners of the ci...

Christchurch Airport station built on a line,  under Orchard Road and Airport Carpark.  Photo Actually Stockholm underground - Wikipedia This Commentary was significantly updated/shortened from a posting back in December 2010 In a recent post I advocated building a rail link between Redwood area, just south of the Styx rail overbridge heading west to Johns Road, then past the airport down to Islington, creating what is in effect a circular rail network with lengthy spurs, able to be operated in all sorts of inter-active commuter patterns  (see map below). Click on images to enlarge (the map above was superceeded in November 2011 by the one below) For a much larger version go to HERE As well as adjoining many existing residential areas, industrial and office park areas and major shopping hubs, this network would also serve the airport and the proposed/existing Addington City sports and events zone, and the central city....

Tranzwatching in |Dallas, Texas, USA Sometimes it pays to hear the message from the horse's mouth and with a Texas style drawl. T.Boone Pickens,  Texas oil billionaire, conservative, financial backer of George Bush, is investing in USA's biggest wind farm project.  Pickens doesn't mince his words on the crisis facing the USA (and world) over oil production shortfalls, world demand now exceeding ability of oli wells to produce, in this YouTube from US News channel CNBC Wikipedia quotes The Washington Post  which has said that "perhaps the strangest role" Pickens "has fashioned for himself is his current one: the billionaire speculator as energy wise man, an oil-and-gas magnate as champion of wind power, and a lifetime Republican who has become a fellow traveler among environmentally minded Democrats ..." . In an editorial, the New York Times reports Pickens "has decided that drilling for more oil is not the whole answer to the nation...