Posts by George Darroch
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Yeah, why can't they just declare one bridge lane for buses?
Brainless people in charge of things once again.
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Incidentally, does anyone know the reason why port bound trucks, rather than using the expensive motorway built for them, tend to drive up symonds St.
Because they want to kill university students.
I've long maintained that mid-Symonds should have been reduced to 30kph and two lanes once the motorway extension was built.
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Angus, again I cast my mind to Melbourne which has a much bigger port right next to the CBD and manages fine. It's fine because they keep expanding all kinds of capacity, roads, rail, light rail, etc. It's no surprise that ports end up next to cities - more accurate to say that cities initially tend to grow around ports.
Auckland's port is very much geographically constrained when compared to Melbourne. They have a much better infrastructure than Auckland though, absolutely. Because they didn't have insane Governments for 20 years; destroying, selling, and underinvesting in rail.
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Moving the port's a non-starter. The cost of trying to find enough land to viably take over as a container park means it's never going to happen, especially given that it must, by definition, be coastal land. It must also be flat, accessible by road, and preferably able to be linked into the rail network.
There's been a diversification of port usage, with Tauranga taking an increasing part of the upper North Island's imports and exports. Importantly for PoA though, they've opened an inland container park in Otahuhu, connected of course by rail. This is helping take some of the burden off the inner city motorway network, and improve reliability of PoA services.
Why try and move jobs out of the CBD? Move them where? That would likely make traffic problems worse, forcing people to head on cross-town trips rather than converging on a central destination, with the corresponding decrease in public transport utility and utilisation.
I believe Auckland's employment patterns are considerably more distributed than they were 30 years ago. There will always be a concentration in Central Auckland though, and as the city increases in size that number isn't likely to diminish.
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I'm not angry and feel no hatred for it, it is however still a waste of money, because the existing network is a joke. Our network serves too few Aucklanders
To repeat myself, the CBD tunnel is desperately needed to increase capacity. Britomart is already under strain. Until those capacity constraints are fixed, an Eastern line, the Airport line, increased services on other lines, and more regular services are literally impossible.
Unless you want to build a huge shunting yard at Penrose station, and turn all the trains around there, short of their destinations.
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Bizarrely, I quite like JKT, but only for brief periods (3-5 days maximum). I've spent a lot of time there, and love the food and mix of sub-cultures. Bahasa as spoken on the streets is fascinating and confusing.
But, yes, it's a filthy broken dump as well.
I'm very likely moving to Jakarta for at least 4 month next year, but only because there's something I absolutely want to do there. I currently live in Canberra, a paradigmatic example of overplanning, blandness, and wide empty streets, so I think the opposite might seem attractive for at least a couple of days.
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Kurt, selamat datang teman, dan bahagia hari kemerdekaan. What's the sentiment like in Jayapura today - I'm guessing there are a lot of people unenthusiastic about official celebrations?
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But how do you kill a zombie?
It is difficult to kill that which does not exist. Myths persist as long as there are people who want to believe them.
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likewise downtown melbourne has about 5 stations in a ring, all at key points feeding into the tram network. some of which are only about a km apart.
They're a pleasure to use, when they're not breaking down in summer heat. I hope we'll have something to approximate this within a decade. Melbourne's inner-city is well served, but its hypersprawling outer-suburbs built in the 1970s-2010s are awfully neglected. They make Auckland's underserved Eastern suburbs look decent in comparison.
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Then again, my experience of Auckland is always a little different. I always enjoy how little traffic there is in the city when back.
I suspect anything would look good in comparison to Bangkok. Which, not incidentally, has finally got round to starting on a decent rail system, if I understand correctly.