NZ In Tranzit

In the last few weeks I have been out walking, or just commuting home from work, and wonder why  the council isn't doing more to help bus users. The easiest way to tell the story is in photographs; Whilst walking from Belfast one Saturday afternoon I snapped this rough shot of a B-Line bus approaching Northwood.  B-Line Saturday services are meant to operate every 15 minutes apart. services alternate with a bus to Belfast (edge of the city area) and then the next one, 15 minutes later to Rangiora (a satellite town) via Belfast; next one 15 minute later just to Belfast .. and so on. The important thing to note here is not the bus but small berm ot ornamental grasses and lancewood trees and the distance from where I was standing on sloping berm and the shorter word Belfast on the destination screen. According to my photo file download this was photographed at 4.34pm Less than a minute later, as I near the ornamental berm the Rangiora bus goes past - the photo f...

....they have no idea how appallingly bad public transport is in New Zealand if measured against any genuine vision of reducing car use in New Zealand Most bus systems are still running 1950's style, many places around the world.  Here a Christchurch example, on  weekend hourly bus services, these two serving adjacent locations, common key points, and the same broad suburban area of Christchurch,  by different routes running five minutes apart (yeah right!!).**   This typical waste of resources by bizarrely named Environment Canterbury reflects outdated and dis-integrated planning in this age when bus lanes, computers, computer chip cards, GPS should be offering "go any direction" effective interactive grid pattern networks.  Updated June 8 & October 2 2013  This is the second most viewed posting on NZ in Tranzit - 17, 452 page views to Feb 2018.  Imagine if school committees by law had to be run only by people who had neve...

Re above - Crossing Cranford Street might be better achieved by a bus-bike only ramped over  bridge Bob Parker recently spoke of land use being intrinsic to good public transport.  Yet   Council seems determined to ignore the most useful potential transit corridor of all In the last decade there have  the massive investments made in rail and busway systems in Auckland and Wellington - pro-rata spending many times more dollars per population on public transport than Christchurch, most of this sourced from national taxes. This was because these cities had identified their rapid transit corridors - Auckland 1995 and Wellington c1999 - and developed specific projects ready to fund.  To date Christchurch has not even identified a single segregated rapid transit corridor and even its minimum budget policy of part-time bus lanes on nine route corridors (except for the busiest and most congested choke points!) is miles away from completion.  Transfe...

Quirky little locals in search of something special for Edgeware !! So far there have been a number of suburban centre plans, as part of the post quake rebuild. I've seen Linwood, Selwyn Street Shops, Lyttelton and Edgeware and at least amongst these four there is little to impress. Essentially a bit of fancy paving, a courtyard or two, a few building height designations. Clearly planners are working under some sort of budget restraint or orders to keep things low key. In the case of the inner city suburbs such as Edgeware and Stanmore Road they seem to be planning for the 1980s type road conditions. Opportunities to buy a couple of metres frontage on empty sites were not taken up, despite the chance this gave to provide quality cycle lanes, or bus advantage corridors, or just a wider more attractive street. It is obvious, that a few fancy roading services are not going to stop these areas being heavily impacted by heavy traffic in the years ahead, including traffic try...