Wellington Bus Review

This has been cross-pos­ted to Sus­tain­able Wel­ling­ton Trans­port. Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil is cur­rently con­sult­ing on the Wel­ling­ton City Bus Review. This is man­dated by the Region­al Pub­lic Trans­port Plan, which requires a review of trans­port ser­vices at least once every five years. The cur­rent shape of the net­work has exis­ted for dec­ades and the city […]

Public Transport Spine survey, last days

Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil and Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil have partnered with NZTA to invest­ig­ate the pub­lic trans­port cor­ridor that runs through the Wel­ling­ton CBD, between the rail­way sta­tion and the region­al hos­pit­al in New­town. The study is reas­on­ably com­pre­hens­ive: instead of look­ing at quick fixes, it’s ask­ing what we should be doing in the long […]

Hands around the Basin – a protest

A guest post from Alex Braae The Basin Reserve is for many Wel­ling­to­ni­ans a spe­cial place, and for many dif­fer­ent reas­ons. The Basin is a place where memor­ies are cre­ated, and I know from exper­i­ence what an amaz­ing spot it is for kids to play. It’s part of our her­it­age, and part of the life […]

Going slowly for maximum pleasure

It was a beau­ti­ful Sunday in Wel­ling­ton today. The air was crisp and cool but the sun was bright and the first signs of spring were vis­ible. For example, as I wheeled along the water­front prom­en­ade this after­noon, a few brave young men and women were in sleeve­less tops or short shorts, anti­cip­at­ing tem­per­at­ures that […]

Overpass My Ass

We’re sorry it’s taken the Wel­ling­tonista so long to weigh in on The Over­pass. If truth be told we’ve all been kind of dumb­foun­ded by the hor­ror of it all. We’ll have more on the whole thing soon, but if you’re as appalled as we are (and if you aren’t, you might want to read […]

Notional Significance: Gorge

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] The stretch of Hutt Rd from Kaiwarawhara to Ngaur­anga is a long, dry slog through an arti­fi­cial val­ley. The west­ern side is almost nat­ur­al, covered by ten­a­cious regen­er­a­tion, but often cut, but­tressed and battered to keep the slope from fail­ing, occa­sion­ally sliced by gul­lies and roads that scrabble up to […]

Notional Significance: Reclamation

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] Kaiwhar­awhara is a node, a knot, a tangle of paths and his­tor­ies. It’s where the eponym­ous stream meets the har­bour, though quakes and reclam­a­tions have long since nudged the mouth sea­wards from its ori­gin­al pos­i­tion at the fault line, engulf­ing fore­shore, ship­wrecks and shell­fish beds in the pro­cess. It’s where […]

Notional Significance: Skyway

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] The stretch of motor­way that leaps out from the bluff was known in the Six­ties as the “Kaiwarra-Thorndon Sky­way”, incon­gru­ously com­bin­ing the Jet­so­ni­an optim­ism of the term “sky­way” with a mangled con­trac­tion of “Kaiwhar­awhara” that today would only be used by Pakeha blokes of a cer­tain age. Both the sky­way […]

You can’t trust the new real-time bus system; don’t

Earli­er this month Alan her­al­ded the begin­ning of the roll-out of the Region­al Coun­cil’s new Real Time Pas­sen­ger Inform­a­tion pro­ject. So far, though, I’m not happy. Just as numer­ous pieces of pub­li­city in loc­al and com­munity news­pa­pers have failed to alle­vi­ate my sus­pi­cion that the sys­tem is not all it is cracked up to be, […]

How we could actually improve our roads

If you’ve ever driv­en from New­town to Kil­birnie, you’ll know how godaw­ful the inter­sec­tion with State High­way One is. The prob­lem is that in order to cross the con­stant stream of traffic, you are forced to rely on the kind­ness of strangers giv­ing way to you of their own accord. One enter­pris­ing young man had […]