Transport Safety Blog New Zealand
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Auckland Light Rail Has Never Been About The Airport.
Newsroom has just published a pair of articles by Mike Lee, an Auckland Councillor of quite some longstanding. He was on the Council from 2010 to 2019 and was re-elected in the local government elections last year. Before that he was a member of the Auckland Regional Council from 1992 to 2010, the last six…
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Report Into Telephone Road Level Crossing Options Ignores Grade Separation
The saga of the Telephone Road level crossing at Puketaha and at 11.08 km track distance from Frankton on the East Coast Main Trunk Railway is continuing since Waka Kotahi produced its conclusion on 14th March that the crossing should be closed. As part of that process, WK attached a report produced for them by…
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Temporary Container Shipping Service For Gisborne Could Become Permanent
RNZ reports that the Government has contracted a coastal shipping service between Gisborne and Napier due to the ongoing closure of State Highway 2 by Cyclone Gabrielle. The service is expected to operate for up to three months. Gisborne Port primarily handles logs at present and is not permanently equipped to handle containers. However an…
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Telephone Road Level Crossing To Close
Waka Kotahi, Kiwirail and Waikato District Council have jointly announced the closure of Telephone Road Level Crossing, located at 11.08 km on the East Coast Main Trunk Railway between Ruakura and Eureka, to motor vehicle traffic. As referenced in the preceding post, this crossing has been rated dangerous due to a number of factors, including:…
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Integrated Safety Assessments For Level Crossings
To date TSBNZ has spent a fair bit of time looking at level crossing safety. Along the way one of the learnings has been the apparent extent to which the agencies concerned are operating their own systems for managing level crossing safety in isolation from each other and blaming the other for safety problems. The…
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Christchurch Public Transport Plan Disappointing, Underwhelming
On Friday 10th March, the government’s Minister of Transport visited Christchurch to announce that $78 million would be invested into a “revamp” of the Christchurch bus network. This revamp consists of adding extra buses and bus priority measures to just five of the city’s existing bus routes. These are named as the No.1 bus from…
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Crash at Beach Haven Road Traffic Island (Auckland)
This morning there are news media reports of a crash involving two cars at a pedestrian island in Beach Haven Road, Auckland. The reports appear to place the scene of the crash near 164 Beach Haven Road. Beach Haven Road appears to be a local arterial route serving the suburbs of Beachhaven, Birkdale and Kauri…
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Reversal Needed of 1989 Local Government Reforms [3]
Well this series has wandered all over the place, and this definitely will be the last part. Today’s local government issue of note is of course the 3 Waters proposals. 3 Waters is one of those things you think councils should regard as their core business, but the real problem with it is the value…
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“Greater Christchurch Partnership” Is A Sham For Public Transport
In 2017, the Labour Party campaigned for the general election on a platform of offering to spend $100 million on public transport in the city, which included the investigation of commuter rail. The lofty and noble ideas have since become bogged down in local government politics as Christchurch City Council has simply rehashed its long…