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- Date published:
5:30 pm, August 26th, 2026 - 15 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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Daily review is also your post.
This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
Congestion charging cars $50 a week, $200 month, $2400 a year
This would get one
*to use a bus and or train
*afford a commuter E bike
*an incentive to commuter car partner (with shared petrol costs one might save money)
*work from home till the end of commuter hours or leave work before they resume
Thus deliver lower congestion
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/361067822/50-week-heres-what-congestion-charging-could-look-auckland-2030
In Queenstown the congested period is from 8:00am to 6:00pm 7 days. an hour to travel 5km. 80%+ vehicles would have one occupant. There's huge scope for the traffic jam tax here. How it'd go down with the local drivers, especially the tradies, is another matter. Would be one of the dubious pleasures of a National government, watching them try and implement it here. There'd be sparks, and empty popcorn shelves.
That is not a bad idea Graeme/SPC. As you say SPC it is surprising how people will find an alternative (either public transport, EBike, ride sharing or just not travelling) when they are hit with a $10 congestion charge and there would be no avoiding paying it on Frankton Road.
Frankton needs fast regular ferries (hopefully electric) and associated parking infrastructure. The Council should further raise parking costs in central Queenstown to discourage cars.
The pinch point is now movements to / from south through Frankton to / from east. Frankton Road is collateral from the roundabout. There's been gentle feelers for a bypass from Remarkables gate to Bungy Bridge (very broad description) funded by tolls. The problem is so bad, that idea just raised positive comment.
NZTA has been accepting of lateral solutions for years. The $2.00 flat rate bus fares, it isn't legally possible to be free, or it would have been. Ferries are already funded and several operators are looking at expansion. The gondola I'm not sure on, it needs to show it has utility as public transport. Woosh may have huge potential if it does what they're hoping and can be integrated into the street scape and function. The active transport network, cycle / walking trails, takes a surprising amount of commuter traffic and is expanding down to Jack's Point
Now we've got to figure out how to retro-develop the expansion of the last 40 years that's been designed around individual use of motor vehicles to function better with public and active transport than with individual use vehicles. Older areas like Tāhuna are already there, Frankton's another story.
Even with the legislation passed, implementing the Auckland one is going to take several years.
It also requires a very robust bus-based public transport network with a very fast and reliable frequency to be in place beforehand, in order to successfully push travellers to the alternative mode.
Unfortunately this government is liquidating the entities responsible for public transport: regional councils including the ORC.
Otherwise it is quite reasonably criticised as just revenue raising.
As Mayor Brown commented “The legislation doesn't come into force until the end of this year, and the latest advice is that it could take several years before any scheme is designed, approved and implemented. Unfortunately, that means our motorways are likely to continue looking like carparks at peak times for a while yet,” says Mayor Brown.
And the other really big thing from the public in Auckland is very high skepticism that the funding collected from this tax will actually go to stuff that improves things. Auckland's congestion charge on petrol and diesel which raised hundreds of millions of dollars was put to use designing schemes that went absolutely nowhere.
I was being a bit cynical with the Traffic Jam Tax, because that's how it will be perceived. And yeah, there's a lot of work yet on scheme design and data collection, although the move to universal road user charges will go a long way there. Then there's the social licence to, first, think and talk about it then actually do it. In Auckland's case you'd just shift the problem as people try to get around it.
I think Whakatipu has a better chance of making it work. Projects can be closely identified with revenue collection, say CBD charge tied with a grade separated Mann St bypass, or Frankton charge with a Boyd Road bridge and eventually Arrow Junction connection. Devil would be in the detail but it could be possible here.
Yes the Queenstown NZTA network is so narrow and with so few alternatives that it would be practical to implement.
Yes I saw another new bus route development for $5 billion dollars was approved last week for Auckland.
It really looks like Auckland is sorting public transport out finally, which is impressive.
The Commissioner of the Environment admits policy that led to the over-planting of pine forests was misguided.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/361069112/time-take-forestry-out-emissions-trading-scheme-environment-watchdog
""I have listened to farmers wonder aloud about whether volunteer rural fire brigades will be there to defend unmanaged forests planted by distant owners on behalf of equally distant emitters.""
Especially if the volunteer fire-fighters are also farmers … 🙂
Worry, worry, botheration, every move always has some sad sack bringing up practical points that are likely to prevent great ideas from implementation. Ignore them!
I had better put /sarc as there are a lot of deadheads around who haven't learned anything since they were say age 15. As they got older they got into the permitted age for sex, and haven't managed any other world-shaking ideas since.
Upton is a good sort, knows his science and cares about the environment.
RNZ had a good short summary of his personal recommendation, additional to the formal report, that pine forestry was skewing the Carbon tax, and should be re-appraised.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2019049250/forestry-should-be-phased-out-of-emissions-trading-scheme-environment-watchdog
"Remember that $60 million taxpayer-funded grant for Golden Bay Cement?
One month later its corporate parent announced hundreds of millions in profit.
So, why were taxpayers charged for this grant? How can it be justified? We don't know, but Nicola Willis has some explaining to do."
Taxpayers Onion has reservations…
https://www.facebook.com/TaxpayersUnion
Techbro had visions of buying galaxies and colonizing planets. And then he blew billions.
To almost everyone in this world, outside the AI bubble of Silicon Valley, the idea of scooping up property rights outside of Earth might sound improbable. But in Aschenbrenner’s world, that sort of fervent belief was among the reasons the 24-year-old investor was hailed as a visionary.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/situational-awareness-leopold-aschenbrenner-ai-fund-4dbb00a4?st=NbdnA3&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The fairest way to divi moons and planets if we get that far is superimpose a world map on it, and you each country gets the same% as they have now. Of course that'd take grown up sensible humans to be running things !!!?