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 […]