NZ In Tranzit

Christchurch; after a month or two in operation our post-quake temporary " Central  Station" Bus Station appears to be fast and effective for bus movements.  The design is simple and attractive and open in style. This latter aspect probably well captures the preference and mood of local citizens! Even if the existing Bus Exchange was not demolition material the public enthusiasm for waiting in enclosed spaces (accessible through tunnel corridors) with several floors of car-parking above is at an all time low in a city where the earthquakes just keep on coming. Unlike the previous Bus Exchange, which quickly grew to small and had buses queuing to get in and out at peak hours, the new "Central Station" has a simple grouping of bus stops into four main groups, with room for several buses to pull in and out at each and room for buses to move easily past each other. In a previous blog posting I   suggested that a portacom bus station was a degrading...

  You'll probably need a magnifying glass to spot The Orbiter bus in this congestion under the new Barrington St motorway over-bridge - a small hint of things to come under present council policies ?? Or future? WITH COUNCIL ELECTIONS ONLY WEEKS AWAY...it is good to remember just how badly Christchurch has done public transport planning over the last 15 years and why we need real new commitment to quality public transport.  (This posting first appeared in January 2012 - some things slightly outdated,  but the essence remains) Has anyone noticed something rather strange. The road on Barrington Street under the over-bridge on the new southern motorway extension has no room for bus lanes. This is a piece of infrastructure built for decades to come, even for the day when the city may have a million people. It would seem common sense to have added an extra couple of metres each side combining with the cycle lanes to ensure buses [or even possibly] light rail trams...

Last New Year's greeting from NZ in Tranzit included a photo of rather pensive and doubtful Charlie Chaplin in front of one of Christchurch's venetian gothic style buildings . I like to think it summed up a mood of our city, still getting severe after-shocks, such as on Boxing Day following the 7.1 richter scale earthquake on September 4th 2010. Nobody died and so few were injured in that first huge pre-dawn quake it seemed too good to be true. And alas it was. On February 22nd 2011  a smaller but far more violent, intensely localised quake, hit directly under the city itself in the lunch hour, causing massive damage and injury and killing 182 persons, most of these in two older high rises buildings that suffered catastrophic collapse. The building behind Chaplin in the aforementioned photo , suffered irreparable damage and has since been demolished, as with many other historic buildings, almost all in fact, destroying much of the city's strong heritage character. Ov...

(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...