I’m finding it somewhat perplexing that the council on the one hand refuses to consider spending $6 million on a rail link that cannot guarantee sufficient business (and quite rightly so) but on the other is prepared to put Auckland into hock for $7.3 billion for a highly speculative central city link.
Auckland’s northwestern settlement of Waitakere is to lose passenger trains after more than 130 years.
In a move condemned by rail enthusiasts and local politicians as short-sighted, Auckland Transport intends axing the final 3.9km Swanson-Waitakere section of its network when electric trains start running on the western line in 2016. Read more »
There are many lessons from the WA election at the weekend that apply to New Zealand. This lesson applies to Labour here. Labor got hammered in the WA election. A former Labor MP, now independent, explains why.
The result is that the party has now probably lost everything in the region; the message they just don’t get is that carving seats up based on union heavies personal whims, factional membership and the sex of the candidate is a bad idea.
Another bad Labor idea is recycling old pollies – it almost never works.
This election has put Labor in a very bad place and the light on the hill that Ben Chifley spoke of, if not quite extinguished, it certainly has the dimmer on low.
There are lessons for Len Brown too. Labor campaigned on a new expensive, gold plated, rail line to the airport…voter simply didn’t like their grandiose spending plans.
The Metronet rail network is the centrepiece of Labor’s plan to snatch an unlikely victory over Premier Colin Barnett at next Saturday’s election.
It involves building rail lines to connect Perth’s suburbs in a bid to ease congestion.
Last month, Mr Buswell released documents from the Public Transport Authority which put the cost of Metronet at about $6.4bn. He stood by the estimate today, saying the Treasury costings had not included a $1.2bn section of rail between Bayswater and the CBD.
Mr Buswell said a $5.2bn injection into Perth’s rail system was not warranted. “It’s a lot of money,” he said. “I don’t think you can justify that investment.”
As we now know Labor bombed, and the Liberals increased their majority.
I see the Auckland public transport people are slashing their wrists because the use of the rail system is DROPPING. Their solution is to
subsidise it some more…
Auckland Transport have provided a multitude of excuses for the patronage dip over the past few months – some more plausible than others (they blamed the World Cup for some of the declines in August and November, even though the World Cup was only in September & October 2011). Read more »
The first train line in Sydney to be paid for and built under the Rudd and Gillard governments opened on Monday, $700 million over budget and three years after it was promised to be finished.
The 36km Southern Sydney Freight Line will allow extra freight trains to run between Macarthur and Chullora in the city’s south west and will increase rail freight capacity along the entire Australian east coast.
But the project ended up being vastly more expensive to build than when it was first promised by the federal Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, in 2009. Read more »
Labour has said they have spoken to Len Brown about their vision for more affordable homes.
Len Brown wants more people living in shoe box apartments near rail corridors…so people can “live, work and play in the world’s most liveable city”.
Wr know this works elsewhere…and thanks tot he wonders of Youtube we can see Len Brown’s vision in action…where communities, relaxed urban planning rules and having commuters and businesses near rail corridors works well:
The Hillside engineering workshops are a national asset and their future must be secured to protect skilled jobs and flow-on economic benefits to dozens of other businesses, Labour Leader David Shearer says.
“It’s time we got patriotic about our manufacturing industry. It is one of the pillars of our economy and it’s an area where we can shine in terms of innovation and building a clever, modern economy.
“It also keeps New Zealanders working here rather than heading across the Tasman looking for jobs and better opportunities.
Unfortunately that isn’t the view that David Shearer shared in this interview in December 2010 with rail cheerleader Mike Lee, and activist Jeremy Harris from the Campaign for Better Transport.
Here is the short clip of his statement:
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The key parts of the interviews are:
SHEARER: (laughing) Maybe we should be maybe we should be looking looking at the Taiwanese to come and do it for us. I can imagine that ah that with the same sort of problems that the the same sort of issues that came up with the ah trying to build the the electric trains here in in in down in Dunedin anyway that there was a um you know a bit of a a bit of a fuss of that I mean I think I think Auckland while everybody would like to see that this expertise is resides in New Zealand I think Auckland is saying gee how long is this really going to take to be able to do this.”
SHEARER: No I think I think Aucklanders would would sort of I mean I was ahh sort of looked at that at that prospect and sort of thought oh no no don’t tell us it’s going to take even longer much as everyone was very sympathetic about them being build built um in in in in New Zealand.
Imagine being Clare Curran and Trevor Mallard. Clare was proudly showing Shearer off to the Hillside workers yesterday and now she finds out that her Boss actually believes the rail workshops at Hillside and in Woburn (Mallard’s electorate) really aren’t up to it, contradicting the spin Labour is currently running on behalf of the union sponsors.
This is an own goal of the highest order.
Coincidentally, the interview recently appears to have been disabled. Does this mean Shearer’s team knew he’d said he thinks the trains should be built overseas… and they tried to ‘reframe’ the issue by removing any evidence of his previous view? Luckily nothing is ever lost online. From about 9 mins some of NZs biggest rail advocates (including David Shearer) suggest how much quicker rail can be built overseas.
With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the measure lost 63% to 37%. This 26% margin of loss was nearly three times the margin shown in most recent poll by the Journal-Constitution. Proponents had claimed on the weekend that the measure was “dead even” three days before the election.
The tax issue failed in all 10 counties. The defeats were modest in Fulton County (the core county, which includes most of the city of Atlanta) and DeKalb County (which contains the rest of Atlanta). Huge “no” vote margins were recorded in the largest suburban counties. In Gwinnett County, the no votes prevailed by a margin of 71% to 29%. In adjacent Cobb County, the margin was 69% to 31%.
