The Government’s Feebate scheme
Labour and the Greens have announced the establishment of a Feebate scheme to incentivise the purchase of electric vehicles and disincentivise the purchase of gas guzzlers.
Environment
transport
Auckland’s Northern Pathway
Last week’s announcement of major changes to the New Zealand Upgrade program in my view was welcome.
Cycling Politics is Winnable Politics
This Sunday Aucklanders have an opportunity to protest the catastrophic failure of NZTA to generate a cycleway from the North Shore to the CBD, and to promote a practical proposal to “liberate a lane” on the Harbour Bridge which would do the job in the meantime.
Cycling Politics Is Damn Serious Business
Don’t knock local politics until you’ve had to stand up and defend a cycleway in public.
Too much too far?
As we lead up to Budget 2021, there’s much more shape to the whole direction of this government.
Its official – Transmission Gully is a fiasco
A damning report into National’s PPP contract for construction of Transmission Gully has concluded that the maximum price the government would pay was set too low, project bidders soon worked this out and that proposals were “value managed down” or made cheaper on designs and timelines that created risks that would eventually manifest themselves after procurement once construction commenced.
Climate Commission Hope Versus NLTP Reality
The very hardest climate challenge New Zealand has is in transport, but the latest National Land Transport Plan is pretty much like the wind being resisted by the Climate Commission air conditioning unit. Time to face our reality not our words.
Powerdown part two
Christchurch transition engineer Susan Krumdieck lays out the realities of the various crises we are facing, and why green tech won’t save us. What can we do instead?
NZ election 2020: Labour win is a watershed moment in the country’s history
The 2020 election was more than just a victory for Labour and more than a crushing defeat for the National Party (New Zealand’s main centre-right political party). This result marks a significant watershed in New Zealand politics which will likely have implications long after this parliamentary term.
No Right Turn: The transport policy we need
All of these policies will get fossil cars off the roads, reducing emissions.
National’s infrastructure bank
National’s proposed Infrastructure Bank is an accounting trick, with very high risks that the entire power of our political order for anyone affected by these monster projects will weaken citizens’ rights.
Will our cities revive?
Our cities are the nation’s lungs; they recycle and accelerate external goods and transform them internally into faster circulation. Auckland and Christchurch have had tens of billions invested in them over successive local and central governments, but has this improved our strength or wealth as a country at all?
Falling into a coma
Why have we fallen into the most boring and predictable election we’ve had since Bolger’s second term?
Everybody gets a road
National has made two major roading project announcements in the past week. Both announcements recycled announcements that were also made before the last election.
Wellington buses now: how a local authority harmed public transport
Sure to form, Paul Swain along with Regional Council Chair and another former Labour MP Fran Wilde proposed tearing down the trolleybus wire and increasing the city’s carbon emission. This was to then promptly followed by re-tendering all the bus routes having redesigned all the bus network so that bus companies could then compete over routes and undercut each other. At one council meeting in mid-2016 Swain was questioned about the possibility of protecting drivers jobs and employment conditions. After a few questions, he lost patience, slammed in hand on the table and ended the meeting. This was the extent to which Swain and the Greater Wellington Regional Council considered supporting bus drivers during this process.
The light rail delay is good
There is a solid silver lining to the delay in the Auckland light rail to the airport project.
We don’t have time for this shit
the government can’t agree is a euphemism for NZ First blocking climate action.
Transmission Gully PPP
I’d agree with what No Right Turn says..
“The entire project looks to be an expensive failure. Rather than transferring risk to the private sector, it turns out to be the usual scam of privatising profits and socialising losses.”
Covid-19 and climate change
The International Energy Agency is forecasting that disruptions caused by Covid-19 will reduce CO2 output this year by 8%. To avoid the worst excesses of climate change the world has a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7.6% for the next decade. How are we going to keep repeating the reductions that we achieved this year for the next decade?
How to kill the car
What would you do so that instead of wandering endlessly through tilt-slab monstrosities soaked in 80s music and fluorescent lighting, surrounded by oppressed minimum-wage slaves who hate being there and you hating being there worried about your wheeled asset damaged in their carpark instead you get freedom?
Draconian Tourism or no Tourism?
If overseas tourists want to visit NZ, they may have to give up a little bit of their privacy to keep all of us safe.
Better footpaths and cycleways are a socialist inspired plot?
National MP Simon O’Connor thinks that making under used streets safer for walkers and cyclers is a Socialist inspired plan for world domination.
The end of petrol driven cars
Boris Johnson’s UK Government has announced that by 2035 there will be no more petrol or diesel cars entering the UK fleet. Is it time for the New Zealand government to announce the same thing?
The Government’s $12 billion infrastructure package
The details of the Government’s $12 billion infrastructure announcement have been released.
Labour’s infrastructure spend announcement
Is the Government commitment to the budget responsibility rules weakening? Because at the Labour Party Conference Grant Robertson has indicated that the Government will shortly announce a big capital spend on infrastructure.
Common-wealth Government
Advantage is testing an idea out. What will a common accountability framework for the government look like?
Dunedin’s Hillside Rail Workshop
Good news for Dunedin and the Country as the Government has announced a $20 million upgrade of the Hillside Rail Workshop.
National’s rhetoric problem
National has displayed a concerning level of rhetoric this week involving a misrepresentation of the GDP figures and the attacking of a board appointee who cannot respond.
Monorail!
Auckland mayoral candidate Craig Lord has announced a policy that may turn the campaign on its head. Or may not.
Transmission Gully
NZTA have determined to not proceed with tolling the Transmission Gully motorway. Does this make it the country’s largest single transport waste?
National tacks right
National has released its economic policies for the next 12 months and they have a decidedly backward feeling about them.
Talk is cheap Tamihere
I am really not a fan of political candidates bullshitting. John Tamihere – candidate for Auckland city Mayor, is this kind of blowhard. He is the epitome of the kind of fool who seems to keep his brain mounted right next to his testicles to inform his mouth what to say. He released a transport policy fantasy… I’ll vote for Goff.
Memo from Crosby Textor – fake news
The Standard has obtained an internal memo from CTF Partners (formerly Crosby Textor) where it responds to allegations that it is a kindergarden for the rich children of Conservative Party donors, has engaged in misogynist behavior and ran anti and pro cycle astroturf campaigns to get a cycleway moved from near a client’s business premises to near an opponent’s premises.
Jacindamania
Despite the babies and the engagements, maybe it’s time to ditch the default Jacindamania.
National’s ranks are cracking about climate change
National Climate Change spokesperson Todd Muller has publicly stated that he is broadly supportive of the Government’s proposed EV incentive policy.
The strait of Hormuz
With the seizing of an oil tanker by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz today as a presumably tit-for-tat escalation for British seizing an Iranian ship, and the U.S. Navy harassing their coastline, we are in for a senseless and dangerous political escalation.