The Campaign For Better Transport

Brian Rudman writes in today’s New Zealand Herald:

The Government’s antipathy to embracing new Auckland public transport projects has made the debate over a rail link to Auckland International Airport rather academic.

Which makes it rather surprising that the airport company should be so sensitive about a recent Metro article’s passing mention that it opposed such a link.

New Wellington EMU Matangi

KiwiRail’s staff newsletter, The Express (not online sorry), has a series of pictures of the new EMUs for Wellington’s electrified urban rail system. The 149-seat units are under construction at Changwon in South Korea. More details here.

Rudman pretty much sums it up in today’s Herald:

Mr Joyce now seems to be deliberately taunting Aucklanders, promising all will be well, while slowly and publicly plucking the wheels off the trains, one by one.

He seemed to be deliberately mischievous last weekend when, while enthusing about roads, he told the Weekend Herald that “rail projects are [important] as well, but with the urban ones we need to know the impact on land-use planning in Auckland.”

He complained “there’s no business case or plans which says, ‘here’s where we’re going to put the two million people we’re told are going to live in Auckland in 22 years’.”

Whatever else Auckland local government can be criticised for, a failure to prepare reports is not one of them.

Read the rest of the article here.