Posts by Sacha
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
Did wonder how happy Athfield would be having traffic planners designing his buildings
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Architect Ian Athfield lays down conditions for his continued involvement in planning the rebuild - kill one way streets and keep buses out.
Improved transport links were a starting point for the city's regeneration with Athfield saying the city should no longer be dictated to by traffic engineers.
"We need strong arterial routes instead of a lot of one-way streets that take people through the city rather than to the city," he said. "We also run a lot of buses around the city with not many people in them."
The city's new transportation needs will be debated when a task force is established to oversee Christchurch's recovery - a process that could take more than a decade to reach fruition.
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Hard News: Kittens and puppies for happiness, in reply to James Bremner,
made a reference to Libya in the original post
You mean the bit at the beginning where Russell said news had been bleak so the post would be about kittens and puppies instead? I'd jump into any other thread with a plea to discuss war if I were so inclined.
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Google Books settlement refused (PDF, 145KB)
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Hard News: Kittens and puppies for happiness, in reply to James Bremner,
You're joking - you picked the post about kittens to ask that?
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Hard News: Getting dressed for the party, in reply to Cecelia,
Surely they're contributing to the economy?
Not as much as the new highway will cost. Its benefit-cost ratio is less than 1 - and that is assuming an oil price of about $25 per barrrel, which realistically we will never see again thanks to peak oil. The number of cars on the road will steadily reduce anyway, freeing up space for those delivery vehicles. Lack of viable rail might become a problem.
An alternative package of road improvements for the stretch around Warkworth and the Dome has been costed at less than a tenth of Joyce's pet project and able to start immediately, saving another 50 lives in the meantime.
This has all been covered on previous threads. It's not some sort of conspiracy against Northland, just that the business case does not stack up. Some of the other big motorways the government is attached to do make more sense. The holiday highway aint one of them.
Fixing up Northland's rail link would also cost less - and be far more future-proof when oil prices double and more.
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Hard News: Getting dressed for the party, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
That is if Joyce doesn't find out about it and decide that the money is needed more for his holiday highway.
Yes,good luck with that unless perhaps the cycleway is widened so it can take trucks.
And no, the signalled service slashing is not to pay for "new spending" in health and educaton - that's the most basic annual top-up to keep pace with inflation and population changes.
The economy was already in the toilet before the Christchurch quake, which is just a convenient opportunity for some disaster capitalism. Things may have gone quiet on the asset sales front but that won't last long.
Also noteworthy that the massive ETS subsidies to polluters and top-skewed tax cuts (which could pay for the Christchurch hit on their own if reversed) are not on the table - lest our pathetic government of yesterday's men is forced to admit that its ideology is wearing no clothes, just like the 90s when they pulled the same shit. Wake up voters. And grow a pair, opposition parties.
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The footpaths on the north side are being re-sealed and widened
Drove past this arvo. Didn't spot any widening, only the usual rehabilitation. And it 's the wrong side anyway. Said some time ago that anyone running a bar along that route would clean up.
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I like "bubbly"
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the hammer
heh