Posts by Sacha
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Coherent transport/urban planning will be a great thing for Auckland. Just don't expect Minister Joyce to support it.
So local body wish lists for $2.3b CBD rail tunnels on top of all this need to be fully tested; and someone else besides taxpayers (and international moneylenders) will have to put their hands in their pockets if they want to bump those sort of projects up the queue. We also should be wary about putting too much faith in a mode of transport that currently carries less than 2% of Auckland's commuters to and from work each day, even after some quite spectacular growth.
No, the real reason for the road versus rail debate was laid bare in Oram's article last weekend. It's a debate about how we should live in our cities.
Some people believe the way our cities have grown is wrong. They think the quarter acre section is a fool's paradise. People should live more in apartment buildings and less with a backyard, or heaven forbid, in a small town outside of the city.
It's a philosophy that argues that urban planners should have much more say about how we live our lives; and it's an agenda that the old ARC had in Auckland for a long time...
See, it's all about unfettered freedom to drive one's V8 wherever one pleases from one's home in Albany, St Heliers or Drury. Oh, and something about trucks..
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Jolisa,
"bloody" was once "by Our Lady"
Didn't know the Strayans had been messin with the Queen's English for quite so long..
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to James Butler,
I have always heard "twatcock" to rhyme with "hot rock"
Same - the alternative just doesn't flow the same, to my ears
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Hey, it's not my fault if I'm ignorant, unwilling to get informed but still eager to make my opinion known and drive traffic to my blog.
You must be "grandstanding" to point that one out. :)
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
you aren't seriously suggesting that the news media is a means of education?
Education is failure - just ask that Mike Hosking chap.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Yes, one wonders if Edwards considers "the communication to the public by the police" to include the media in between?
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Te Herald shows its balance and fairness by publishing its third anti-cyclist rant in a row - but it's OK, Mike Hosking is a cyclist as well as a V8 driver, so he's allowed to be smugly stupid.
But the cycling fraternity have done themselves no good this week.
They sound like an up-market trade union; a lycra-wearing grievance society.
They want rights. They complain. They moan of unfairness and in doing that so starts another tedious debate about behaviour and education.
Let's put it bluntly: If you're so thick you can't look in your rear-vision mirror before you open your car door, education isn't going to help.
If you're that fat, bald man with the bad attitude behind the wheel who honks and flips the bird, education isn't going to help.
Equally, if you're that cyclist with the lycra, thinking you're Alberto Contador, riding three abreast because "that's your right"; education isn't going to help, either.
Of course we'd solve all the problems if our roads were wider, there were barriers between bikes and cars, if we had cycleways the length of the country, if the cycleways we did have didn't double as carparks and bus lanes.
But we don't, and we're not going to. Therefore the debate is pointless. Talking about education is what you talk about when you can't think of anything tangible or realistic by way of a solution.
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Some useful stuff in the comments
..like this from Edwards himself:
Curiously enough, I was speaking today to a member of the Waihi Mine Rescue Team whose view was that the communication to the public by the police had been poor at best. It took him two minutes to explain to me how one trouser leg brushing against another could produce enough static electricity to cause a further explosion as someone walked along those 2 kilometres.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
denying Edwards the oxygen of publicity
Some useful stuff in the comments.
the preliminary talk seems pretty solid to me
Not quite prelimiinary. Key initially said a royal commission wouldn't be needed but polling since no doubt said otherwise. Now it's his idea. Good politics..
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Scott A,
The Brian Edwards posts about Pike River.