Whilst I have many problems with Auckland's public transport: frequencies, reliability (especially the trains), ticketing and so forth - I think perhaps the biggest issue, and one which doesn't seem to get the attention that it should, is simply the fact that it's so darn slow. In most other cities around the world catching public transport is faster than driving, particularly at peak hour. This is somewhat because, contrary to popular belief, Auckland's motorways aren't actually particularly congested by international standards, and are actually incredibly comprehensive by international standards. While a lot of focus goes on the unreliability and lateness of many services, I think a significant deterrent for people using public transport actually happens after they're on the bus/train.

A couple of examples. From my work in Avondale there is a bus stop just a couple of minutes walk down the road. The service is reasonably frequent during the day, at 15 minute intervals (although I'm sure there used to be a 10 minute service a few years back along New North Road). Whilst some of the routes are inevitably late (the 224 which I have a personal vendetta against), the 211 and 212 services are generally very reliable. However, it's a minimum 40 minute bus trip into town from here. A couple of times it has stretched out to 50 minutes if I'm unlucky and end up on a 224 which goes via a slight detour to St Lukes or the bus is particularly heavily loaded. This is off-peak, and as there are no bus lanes along New North Road until you get to Kingsland (about 2/3rds of the way in along this route) I can only imagine that at peak hour the trip takes even longer. By comparison, at off-peak times I can probably drive into town from here in 15 minutes maximum. My boss and I, when we do need to take trips into the city for meetings and the like, really do want to catch the bus so that we're acting more environmentally sustainable and supporting Auckland's public transport, but a lot of the time it's just a no-brainer when you compare the length of time the trip takes.

A second example comes from yesterday actually. After many attempts, I finally managed to meet up with a friend from the Skyscraper City forums. He lives out in Meadowlands, which to be fair is a heck of a long way from the city. Meadowlands forms a part of East Auckland that has grown like topsy throughout the last 10-20 years into the most horrific part of the city in my opinion (no offence to people who live there, it's not your fault). It is the most classic example of urban sprawl you'll ever come across - massive houses, cul-de-sacs everywhere, completely residential neighbourhoods and an utter belief that everyone will drive everywhere. I met up with my friend (Marcus) at just before 6pm yesterday afternoon, after he'd caught a bus into the city from Meadowlands. The trip down Symonds Street was so slow (although this is because they're constructing 24 hour bus lanes, so council don't incur my wrath for this) that he got off at the university and walked down to where I met up with him. Now the scary part is to come, he got on his bus at 4.10! That means it took almost two hours for him to get from Meadowlands to central Auckland, two hours! That's to cover a trip which I've measured to be (approximately) 23km long. That's an average speed of not much more than 10 kph - you could almost walk that distance faster!

Now perhaps that was an unusually slow trip, and it did coincide somewhat with the evening peak (even though he was going counter-flow), but to me it truly shows why that part of Auckland has the lowest levels of public transport use in the whole of Auckland. Who would be crazy enough to put themselves through that each and every day? Clearly, it's criminal that such a large part of Auckland was developed without provision being made for a railway line. It is also criminal that there aren't even bus lanes along the two main routes out that way: Pakuranga Road and Ti Rakau Drive. Yet there are no real plans to do much about it. ARTA does plan some sort of RTN (rapid transit network) to go up Te Irirangi Drive and then along Ti Rakau Drive, but who knows how they'd ever be able to build it? An RTN should be either a rail line or a proper busway (very different to bus lanes) so unless ARTA magically is going to end up with hundreds of millions of dollars to buy an enormous number of houses to build a proper transit line through the area, the best it seems we can ever hope for are top-quality bus lanes. Great job planners of the area in the 1970s-1990s. NOT.

But anyway, bringing this back to the main topic of this post. Why is public transport so slow and what can be done about it? I guess for a start buses are inherently a slow form of public transport, and as about 80% of Auckland's public transport trips rely upon buses, it's no wonder PT can't compare with the car when it comes to the speed of trips. It's interesting to note that along the very limited number of corridors where decent bus lanes have been constructed and there is significant traffic congestion (Onewa Road and Dominion Road), public transport is actually enormously popular. Apparently 50% of people travelling along the Dominion Road corridor in the morning peak use public transport, and I would imagine Onewa Road would be fairly similar. This clearly shows that speed is a huge issue for people commuting: make public transport faster and people will definitely use it. Other areas where public transport is probably the fastest method of getting to the city would be along the Eastern Line railway, which once again is enormously popular by Auckland standards. This situation was identified as horribly intolerable by John Banks a few years ago, who proposed to build a massive motorway along the railway route to ensure that the normal situation of ensuring the car was the fastest way to travel, was restored. Fortunately that project has been shelved.

So why so slow? Clearly the first reason is the lack of bus lanes. Where buses have to intermingle with traffic they will always end up slower than someone driving along the same road - simply because they need to stop and pick up passengers. However, even on roads with bus lanes often the bus stops aren't actually indented towards the footpath, which means that any bus coming up behind another bus that has already stopped has to either stop itself, or pull into the general traffic lane/lanes, thereby negating much of the advantage a bus lane creates. While Auckand City and North Shore City have done a good job over the past few years expanding their bus/transit lanes, there is still a long way to go. Why doesn't Manukau Road have bus lanes? How about New North Road? Ellerslie-Panmure Highway? Lagoon Drive? The list goes on. And that's not to even mention the lack of action by Manukau City and - somewhat surprisingly given their eco-city image - Waitakere City. The second reason is the often circuitous routes that many buses travel along. Sure, this is useful in terms of maximising the number of people who are close to a bus stop, but it certainly comes at a cost. Another clear reason why buses travel so slow is that they're often forced to do right-turns at very busy intersections at peak hour, which when they're stuck behind a line of traffic can add up to 5 minutes to a journey. There's a classic example of this just up the road from me, where the 233, 007 & 008 bus routes are forced to make right-turns onto Mt Albert Road that I wouldn't even consider making at any time close to peak hour. Somewhat fortunately the bus drivers take a "might is right" attitude and edge out onto the main road making the other drivers stop for them. However, that's not much help if they're stuck behind a slightly timid driver for 5 minutes waiting to make a right-turn. Surely, the location of traffic lights should be matched up better with bus routes, or alternatively the bus routes be modified to avoid situations like these.

Finally, and most significantly I think, buses are slow because they're so incredibly slow to board. I have gone on about this before, but I think it's an utterly critical point. By requiring the driver to interact with everyone getting on board a bus, it just takes forever for the bus to load if there's more than 5 people waiting. This becomes particularly obvious on Symonds Street in the evening peak when all the university students load up the buses through a procedure that takes just as long as actually driving up this highly congested road. While I understand that some people won't have a bus pass (which one would hope can be solved once integrated ticketing occurs - as I would personally send everyone in Auckland a transport pass to encourage usage) and therefore have to pay cash, it seems nonsensical that someone with a bus pass can't just validate it at another machine on the bus and find their seat all while the bus driver is digging around for change to give the original person. However, at the moment no, the bus pass holder must wait in line themselves along with everyone else, while those already on the bus tear their hair out and vow to drive to work from now on.

Projects like the Northern Busway have shown that Aucklanders will most definitely catch public transport. However, it is utterly critical that everything possible is done to improve the speed of services. I strongly believe that is the only way we're ever going to get more than 7% of the population catching public transport. Which is a rather embarrassing statistic to be honest.

A few months ago the idea was first floated to add a walking/cycling lane (or both preferably) to the sides of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. I think the idea formed out of the cycling lobby initially, but made a lot of sense as the NZTA (who own the bridge) were spending $40 million or so to upgrade the clip-ons so they didn't fall off. It seemed that with all this work going on anyway, a few extra million to add a bit of extra width wouldn't be too much of a problem. Furthermore, it would finally address an utterly horrific issue that I have with the Harbour Bridge, that bus and car are the only ways in which to get across it. In Sydney you can catch a train across their bridge, or walk across it, or cycle across it - but here in Auckland you were forced to jump into some sort of road vehicle in order to make your way across. I guess it shows Auckland's attitude to transportation most clearly.

The idea of adding on a walking and/or cycling lane got a mixed reception. The Auckland Regional Council were really keen, as was the North Shore City Council. The car-lovers at Auckland City Council couldn't understand the concept as they were probably hoping for another lane of traffic. There was a significant push for the idea from the cycling lobby, but at the same time Brian Rudman - who I usually agree with on most urban matters he writes about in the Herald - strongly opposed the idea for reasons I am still trying to get my head around. However, it still seemed to me like almost everyone was missing the point, as they became fixated on how many cyclists would use the bridge to commute to work on weekdays. Right from the start I saw the best part of the idea as simply making it possible for people to walk across the bridge, particularly on a nice sunny day at the weekend. The view from the Harbour Bridge - particularly looking east - is utterly spectacular. I've been across it thousands and thousands of times yet I'm still impressed. However, it is a little frustrating that you have to be driving at 80 kph to actually enjoy what is probably the best view in Auckland. A few weeks back I caught a bus up to Albany along the Northern Busway, and it was actually amazingly nice to head across the bridge for once and not have to be concentrating on driving, although once again the view did pretty much zip by.

So I think that making it possibly for people to walk and cycle across the bridge would have its biggest benefit in much broader ways than just allowing people to commute via cycling from the North Shore. It would be one hell of a good tourist attraction for the city to market, and a great way of celebrating our beautiful harbour. Furthermore, it would also be a clear sign that the city does give a damn about more than just cars and is actually concered about providing for people.

Unfortunately, it does seem like the NZTA can't quite get their head around the wider benefits of this project, and has not included it in their list of project priorities for the next year. It is a pity that our transportation agencies continue to be so narrow minded.

After the craziness of the pre-election weeks in October and the very start of November, more recently it seems like everything is in a giant post-excitement vaccum. There were of course the somewhat interesting (and eventually depressing) moments while we waited to see what the government would end up exactly looking like, but really in the past week it seems like there's been little if anything particularly exciting going on in the world. Oh, an obvious exception to that can be the awesomeness of the New Zealand Rugby League team winning the world cup, a feat that has evaded our (supposedly) superior rugby union team for the last 20-odd years. That was definitely a bright spot, which nicely disguised the disappointment of another thrashing in the cricket.

So, in the absence of any particularly exciting news in the world of Auckland's transportation, I think I'll just describe what I got up to this weekend.

It was a fairly interesting weekend I suppose, if for the utterly weird weather as much as anything else. Saturday felt like summer, Sunday it was windy as hell and extremely rainy. I guess both days also had everything in between - typically Auckland perhaps. I think the heat on Saturday ended up giving me a headache and making me feel utterly exhausted, to the point where just after 9pm I felt like crawling into bed. Other than Amalia's usual swimming lesson on Saturday morning, it was a fairly uneventful day I suppose. Sunday was a bit more interesting, as we went to the Elam Fine Arts open day at Auckland University - largely to check out the final version of Amber's work which we've seen evolve in our lounge over the past few months (and it was awesome to see the finished product), but also to check out the wide variety of stuff that other people had come up with. Overall I found the quality of everything incredibly impressive, although I'm not a particular expert on modern art. However, I have visited the Tate Modern and the Pompidou Museum, so I do have some idea about what is considered "exceptional", and it certainly felt like I was in the middle of an awesome modern art museum as we wandered around the place. I think that Amalia found it all quite interesting too, particularly some of the more complex 'installation' spaces.

Through some clever swapping around of Leila's A Zone bus pass, which I used after dropping her off at Elam, Amalia and I managed three trips on the bus. She was really getting into it at the end and actually signalled down the bus driver on the final trip that we took. It's pretty cool considering when I think back to my childhood I only really remember one bus trip I took that wasn't related to a school trip - when my Dad and I caught a bus back home from town after going to Rangitoto for the day. Interestingly I was 4 at the time and still remember it pretty clearly.

Auckland's public transport ticketing system probably annoys me more than most other things in life. In fact, there's little good to be said about it at all. Let's run through the problems:

•  It's slow. A lot of interaction with the bus driver or train clippie is necessary. This doesn't hold up the operation of the train as much as it does for a bus, but can make it difficult for the clippies to collect each and every ticket on a busy train ride.
• It's confusing. For example, a trip from the CBD to Glen Innes is 2 stages on the train, 3 stages on some bus routes and 4 stages on other bus routes. This is crazy. There are also just too many ticket-types: cash, multi-journey, stored value, monthly pass etc.
• It's outdated. On the train the main ticketing system still involves someone wandering around the train clipping tickets, it still involves little paper tickets that a guy has to take off his collection, clip with his clipper and then hand to you - oh and that's in addition to having to stash away the money you give him and also for him to give you change. Same for Birkenhead Transport, who still clip your 10-ride cardboard tickets.
• It's incompatible. This is my big annoyance, and I will write more on it below.

So yes, there isn't really much good to say about our ticketing system at all. While the slowness, confusion and outdatedness of the ticketing system are somewhat bearable most of the time, the lack of integration is what totally kills our public transport system. Train tickets aren't valid on the bus, some bus companies tickets aren't valid with others, nor with ferry tickets and so on. Some bus companies have unlimited travel tickets, some don't - it's enough to make you tear your hair out. For years our public transport agencies have gone on and on about "working towards integrated ticketing", but apart from a horrifically overpriced Discovery Pass, there's absolutely nothing to show for this "working towards".

I propose a solution, which is a whole new ticketing system for the Auckland Region. It is composed of six zones, which I will show the boundaries for on maps of Auckland's four main areas (North, West, Central and South) in a minute. There is probably a 7th zone for all other areas not covered by the original six zones, but anyway that's not a major as it would only cover areas such as Pukekohe and Helensville which generally require a special fare in any case for the trains and buses that serve them. The idea behind this new system is that it's completely based on the simple notion of how many zones will one be travelling in. Although it's CBD focused, that doesn't at all mean that zone 1 is the zone around the CBD and central area, and that each zone further out is zone 2, 3, 4 and so on. I envisage the zones as not being hierarchical at all. So, a travellers works our how many zones they want their public transport ticket to take them through, and then they buy the appropriate ticket. Tickets can be for two hours (single-trip with transfers), one day, one week or one month of travel.

By giving people more unlimited travel options with their passes, hopefully a greater proportion of users would choose to buy weekly or monthly passes. I consider this to be an important part of increasing the use of public transport in evenings and at weekends, generally on services that aren't particularly busy at the moment. The current monthly pass system is only really useful if you travel 3 stages ten times a week, or close to that.

So my new ticketing options would be as follows:

1. 2 hour pass across 1-6 zones. Fare would vary from $1.60 to $7.50, the current prices for a 1 stage ride and a 6 stage ride.
2. Day pass across 1-6 zones. Fare would vary from $5 within just one zone for the day, and maybe $12 for unlimited daily travel anywhere on the network. Importantly, one would be able to buy a day-pass for travel within two or three zones, depending on necessity, allowing better value to be had (as at the moment there are relatively few day-pass options).
3. Weekly pass across 1-6 zones. These give unlimited travel for one week within the specified number of zones. The pricing would probably give a 15% discount on 10 two-hour passes for that number of zones (eg. $14 approx for a 1 zone weekly pass). I would probably cap the cost of a weekly pass at around $40, a quarter the price of the current all zones monthly pass, so that people are no worse off under the proposed system than they are under the existing system.
4. Monthly pass across 1-6 zones. These give unlimited travel for a whole month within the specified number of zones. The price might be a slightly discount on the equivalent number of weekly passes to encourage people to use a monthly pass. Price would be capped at around the current price of an all-zones pass ($160).

I envisage using a smart-card system to allow this ticketing to be introduced. A stored-value pay-as-you-go system would also be included, generally giving 10% off the price of a 2 hour pass for irregular users. Potentially there could also be a similar system to what London's Oyster Card uses, whereby they get charged at pay-as-you-go rates until they reach the amount of a day-pass, and then each subsequent trip is free. That system ensures that Oyster Card users are always getting the best value, and is a great idea. Cards could also be topped up online, avoiding the horrific queues that many university bus users face, and the annoyance of having to find a ticket agency that many other users face (plus avoid bus drivers having to sell the passes too).

If this all sounds a bit confusing, it starts to make sense once we have a few maps up. Here's a map of Auckland City, where I would have three zones.

The current Auckland City area is split into three zones, with each of them kind of radiating out from the CBD. As explained earlier, anyone travelling within this area would purchase a 2 hour, day, week or monthly pass relating to the number of zones they want to travel across. In my case, I live within the Green Zone, work in the Blue zone and often travel into the Red Zone. If all my trips originated from home then I'd probably be OK with a two zone pass, as I'd never be catching a trip that took me across three zones. However, as it happens I do often catch buses from work into town, so at times a three zone trip would be necessary. Pay-as-you-go would possibly work best for me as my trips vary in length and are a bit all over the place. It would mean that a trip to Parnell or Ponsonby would be greatly simplified, as the Link bus would become a free-transfer under the "2 hour trip" window. A ticket would be printed off that would show the zone I entered and the number of zones that my pass covers - so either a ticket inspector or a suspicious bus driver could tell if I had over-travelled.

Below are my zone boundaries for North Shore City, Waitakere City and Manukau/Papakura. I imagine that the Whangaparaoa Peninsula would be in Zone 6, like Papakura is.

North Shore City:

Waitakere City:

Manukau/Papakura:

I have a strange combination of methods by which I get myself to and from work during the week. In fact, I don't think any two days of the week are exactly the same, which is quite interesting. I suppose that the down-side of this is that there isn't a nice comfortable pattern to sink myself into, although at the same time I could think that the up-side is that there isn't a comfy pattern to get bored by.

There are bits of my commuting cycle that I find nicer than others, unsurprisingly I suppose. I always quite enjoy the way that Leila and I catch a bus into town together on Monday mornings. It's nice having the opportunity to chat with her on the bus, and I think that I enjoy catching a bus during the morning commute because the public transport system actually feels half-decent for once. The buses come every 2-3 minutes, they actually travel faster than the cars (when they're not picking up passengers) because there are bus lanes and so on. On the down-side, we often find ourselves on the same bus as a million Auckland Girls Grammar students, who can make one hell of a loud racket when they really try to. Or at other times we're worrying about how long the bus will take and whether there will be time for a coffee in town before Leila needs to catch the Link bus over to her work - generally we are fine though. Perhaps I am interested in morning-peak bus trips because generally I haven't taken too many over my years of bus catching. Especially not when I compare it with the number of later-morning buses that I've caught, or even with the number of evening peak buses that I've caught. I guess it's a novelty factor that will probably wear off once I get a job working in the CBD and find myself catching morning peak buses to work each and every day.

Another aspect of my commuting habits that I enjoy is the local 008 bus which I catch directly to my normal work (ie. if I'm not heading into town on this particular day). This usually ends up being Tuesday and Thursday mornings. While it's super-annoying that this bus is operated by Urban Express and not NZ Bus, which means that I have to pay cash each time as my GoRider card isn't accepted (gah bring on integrated ticketing), because this is a fairly infrequent bus route I find myself on the bus with the same people just about every morning I catch it. There are the two kids that get off the bus at a particular stop each day so they can wander down to their school, the other two kids who get on at the same stop - sometimes puffing like crazy after sprinting along Richardson Road to catch up to the bus, and so on. I guess I kind of enjoy the familiarity of it all, even if I feel like a bit of an outsider still (as I only catch that bus 2 mornings a week).

Of course all my public transport experiences in Auckland aren't positive. I particularly find myself getting annoyed by things that could fairly easily be fixed up. Like bus drivers paying a bit more attention to when you're trying to signal them, or not going through red lights when you're trying to walk across the road, or ARTA actually replacing bus timetables, or buses actually showing up on time. OK, so I guess that the whole "late bus syndrome" has probably been around for just as long as buses have been. Generally in Auckland it's a result of having stupidly windy and overly long bus routes. The 224 route is a classic example, and I have developed a person vendetta against that route because whenever I need to catch a bus along it into town, the bus is inevitably about 15 minutes late. This solely happens because the route is stupidly long, originating in Henderson (even though a million other routes serve Henderson to New Lynn). I've written a letter to ARTA about cutting it back to the route of the old 223 (which started at New Lynn) so that the 224's punctuality can be improved. I wonder if that'll have an effect.

I really want to actually commute by train. It's so much nicer than on the bus. Perhaps after 2013 when we have electric trains I'll make sure where I live is close to a train station.

There has been a reasonably large bundle of transportation news in the last week or so to come out. I definitely don't see this blog as being a news source, as personally I find that a little boring, but I probably should at least keep somewhat up to date with what's going on.

Probably the big piece of news in the last couple of days has been confirmation that Auckland City Council is slashing projects left, right and centre in order to keep rate increases under control. Whilst this was rather inevitable, subsequent to John Banks' election as mayor last year and his accompanying Citizens and Ratepayers council, it's still a rather major kick in the guts for Auckland's future. It's pretty much universally accepted that transportation is a huge issue in Auckland, and that our transport system is horrifically lop-sided in its dependence upon the private vehicle. A few days ago John Banks seemed in agreement with this view, arguing like crazy for the incoming government to invest heavily in Auckland's infrastructure. Yet when it comes to Auckland City doing its bit, he's off running in the opposite direction like crazy. Having the cycling and walkway budget being slashed from $27 million to $4 million over the next 10 years is utter insanity, when most of our transportation policies commit to further encouraging walking and cycling - not only for their important effect on reducing traffic flows, but also for their health benefits. $4 million over 10 years is practically little more than paying council staff members, so we certainly won't see any improvements over that time. Even some of the cuts to roading projects are nonsensical, with an upgrade to Tiverton Road and Wolverton Street getting the boot, even though a motorway (due to open in April next year) is about to feed a significant amount of traffic onto an arterial route that already struggles big time at peak hour. $400 million has also been sliced off the AMETI project (which is a huge roadsfest, so I have no problems there).

So much, it seems, for trying to drag Auckland into the 21st century. So much for trying to make us a world class city. While I do understand that councils are in a pretty unenviable situation with regards to having to be funded by rates dollars alone, the prioritisation of funding is certainly annoying. In the end I think the big hope is that Auckland City Council won't actually survive as an entity for the next 10 years. The Royal Commission for reorganising Auckland's local government is due to report back in March next year, and will hopefully lead to a significant revamp of how local government operates in Auckland. I would hope that we'll end up with a significantly more powerful regional council supported by about 20 small community councils. Issues such as planning and transportation will end up in the hands of the regional council, which will hopefully lead to far better integration and consistency across the region. With the extra power hopefully Auckland will have a better chance at ensuring it gets it fair share of the 'pie', and has a bit more money to spend on important projects such as public transportation, walking and cycle routes.

Another interesting news story that emerged this week was the possiblity of extending the Northern Busway from its current terminus at Constellation Drive all the way up to Orewa. This would be a very significant extension, potentially quadrupling the length of the current busway, at a significant cost of $700 million to $1.2 billion. I have kind of mixed feelings about this proposal. To start with the positive, I can see the point of extending the busway at least to Albany. Although I've never been on the busway at peak hour, I imagine that the trip is fairly severely slowed down between Constellation Drive and Greville Road in particular by the need for buses to share motorway space with general traffic along what is actually a fairly congested stretch of road. Having to cut across Constellation Drive when heading northbound also is probably non-ideal, especially at evening peak. So this stretch of the busway would be particularly useful in my opinion. Unfortunately, this bit of the busway would also be fairly difficult to construct, as the Constellation Station and the existing busway is on the eastern side of State Highway 1, while the Albany Station (and the easier gradients for construction) are on the western side of the motorway. Cue expensive bridges and tunnels. Regarding what happens further north than Albany, in reality that bit of motorway doesn't really get congested particularly badly and I don't see what advantage a busway would have over buses running along existing lanes of the motorway. Perhaps as a long term project where the alignment could become a railway it would make more sense.

In any case, just because a project isn't justifiable at the moment it shouldn't mean that future planning for it disappears. The Transport Agency should proceed with designating all the necessary space for the whole future busway as soon as possible, so that it is at the very least future proofed. The last thing they want is for someone to go and build a new apartment building right in the way of where the busway would eventually end up going. But as for construction, I definitely think additional busways out east should happen before this project. That's where the real problems are.

I have had this idea for a while now. It seems a strange one at first, a kind of weird overkill that originally doesn't seem particularly feasible, but I reckon it could work. The idea takes a lot from San Francisco, where the F-Line has operated enormously successfully for the last 15 or so years. Basically, it involves bringing trams back to Auckland. In particular, for them to run along Queen Street and Tamaki Drive, providing both a commuter service for people living in the eastern suburbs (which is a reasonably popular series of bus routes, although I've never caught any because it's not that obvious where the route starts and finishes) and also a great tourist attraction.

Now there's actually nothing particularly new about the idea of running trams along Queen Street. In fact, Auckland's suburban development was largely dependent on the tram system - which first opened in 1900. Most of the bus routes that link the CBD with parts of the isthmus are the remnants of tram routes that used to run throughout the city. While we never had a system approaching the complexity and vastness of American cities such as Boston and New York, for Auckland's size the tram system was fairly significant. It reached as far as Onehunga, Avondale and Ellerslie. The layout of streets in areas served by trams was largely a result of their presence, with a semi-grid format allowing quick access to the main arterial routes for as many people as possible. Most of these routes fed into Queen Street, which truly was the tram hub of the city, as a photo from 1919 below shows:

Auckland's transportation heritage isn't particularly well celebrated. Sure, we have MOTAT (the Museum of Transport and Technology), and a tourist tram line running between the two halves of this museum, but apart from that our general attitude towards transportation has been 'out with the old, in with the new'. Classic examples of this include having an incredibly grand railway station which has been neglected to the point where it can't even be used as student accommodation any longer as it was pretty much falling apart, the removal of the whole tram system in the 1950s, and the way the Newmarket train station building has been 'hidden somewhere'. Bringing back trams to Auckland's CBD would be a great way to celebrate our transportation heritage in my opinion. MOTAT continues to have a large number of old heritage trams, while I am sure there are many others out there somewhere just awaiting a reason to be restored to their former glory. San Francisco uses restored trams from all around the USA, and also some that have been imported from Milan in Italy, to fulfil its demand. I'm sure that Auckland could pull off something similar.

However, although the heritage reasons for this idea are important, in the end it should be mainly looked at as a way to improve transportation access in and around the parts of Auckland where it would travel. In my opinion, Queen Street does suffer from having too many buses run along it. Until we have all our buses being quiet and non-polluting, they are somewhat of a blight on what should be a predominantly pedestrian focused street. Whilst it is obvious that many buses will need to continue to use Queen Street, hopefully a tram route which travels along its entire length would mean that routes which begin and end on Queen Street might not have to run along its entire length. Secondly, the route along Tamaki Drive out to Mission Bay and St Heliers is one of Auckland's most scenic. Driving along there certainly makes me happy to live in this city, particularly on a nice sunny day. On weekends there is significant congestion trying to get through Mission Bay, simply because there are so many people there. I haven't yet caught a bus along Tamaki Drive on the weekend, but I am guessing that they would be pretty popular. During the week I also imagine that it's a fairly popular bus route for commuters, and also for tourists visiting Kelly Tarlton's, Mission Bay or St Helier's Beach.

The map below shows the route of my proposed tram line:

But why a tram? Isn't it going to be super-expensive? Yes I certainly agree there will be a reasonably significant cost in establishing this line. Tracks would need to be laid, the roads might need widening in areas (particularly along Tamaki Drive) and there would need to be overhead wires too. However, in my opinion the success of this route is dependent on it being a tram and not just another bus route. Riding the tram would be part of the experience, and therefore it would capture a LOT of tourists, and also Aucklanders travelling around their city for play on weekends, or to get to work during the week. Because a tram has fixed infrastructure, people have some faith in knowing where the tram they get on is going to go - the simplicity of the single route would attract a lot of people who would normally not be bothered with public transport and just take their car. In fact, if there has been a problem with the F Line in San Francisco, it is that the line has been FAR too popular. The operators of the line, MUNI, are scrambling to ensure they have enough streetcars, as the line has been enormously popular with tourists and local alike.

Well it was definitely to be expected, but the election result was still disappointing and depressing. All the potential ways in which Labour could have at least made things close (picking up huge votes in South Auckland again, having New Zealand First crack 5%, having the Greens get up around 10% and so on) didn't eventuate. I always knew that National were going to end up with more votes than Labour, but I didn't quite expect the margin to be as big as it's turned out to be. This means that National can form a government without needing the Maori Party - and therefore my big hope of that being hugely problematic and opening the door for Labour - has disappeared.

OK, let's (try to) look for some positives first. The Greens did increase their vote from the last election and they'll end up with two additional seats (possibly even three if the special votes go their way as they have a habit of doing). However, I think the Greens will be disappointed in many ways. A lot of polls had them up around 8 or 9%, so 6.5% is a bit disappointing. Maybe a lot of potential Greens voters switched to Labour at the last minute, or just didn't bother voting at all. It's hard to say, I guess maybe the polls were just out. Any more positives... ummm... nope.

The negatives are almost too numerous to mention. Labour lost the West Auckland vote to National - which is almost unbelievable. They lost every electorate outside Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, except for Palmerston North. They lost Auckland Central, and electorate that National has NEVER won before. Act won five seats, which means that they'll have a reasonable say in the next government - a scary thought if I've ever come across one. Winston Peters disappeared, which in some ways I guess is a positive as he annoys the hell out of me, but if New Zealand First had managed to get up to 5% Labour might have had a chance of forming a government.

Helen Clark stepped down as leader of the Labour Party, sad but I think definitely something that was expected to happen. The last thing I would want to see is her party turning against her, like what has happened to every leader of the National Party in my living memory. I'm pretty sure she is the longest serving leader of the Labour Party ever (since 1993!) and did a damn good job as Prime Minister. The fact that John Key had to drag National well into the political centre in order to defeat her at this election says an awful lot for the success of Helen as Prime Minister and also of the success of the Labour Party as our government throughout the past nine years. As much as Act, along with the right-wing branch of the National Party, would like to deny it, it surely seems like the neo-liberalism of the 1980s and 1990s is finally dead. In a way that is an enormous relief to me and to the whole country. Whilst I'm still gutted that Labour lost, it is a relief that I'm getting a National government that will hopefully not be too different to what I've enjoyed throughout the past nine years.

So where to from here I wonder? For National, they seem interested in forming a pretty big 'super government' involving everyone possible from Act to the Maori Party. I'm a bit sceptical about how this will work out, as they only really NEED the support of Act to govern. However, if some agreement with the Maori Party can be hammered out it would be useful for National to have an alternative option to Act when it comes to passing legislation. If the Maori Party, along with Peter Dunne, can pull National in the opposite way to how Act will be pulling them, then hopefully we won't see too many extreme-right policies. For Labour, there is definitely going to be a time of change happening. Phil Goff and Annette King seem to be the most likely leadership team to replace Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. They're not exactly "fresh-faced" in terms of their age and their political experience, but I think they'll do and OK job. It will be hard for Labour to come back from this hammering, especially after losing their two best assets in Clark and Cullen. I strongly believe they will need to work with the Greens a lot more over the next three years to provide a good, united opposition and to hold National to the promises they have made in the past few months regarding issues such as asset sales, keeping Working for Families, keeping the emissions trading scheme and so forth. Regarding the Greens, I also think they'll need to get closer to Labour and work hard to help Labour as well as themselves. Realistically, the Greens are only ever going to be part of a Labour government, so it's certainly in their best interests to help them out.

I have battled with my decision about who to vote for over a fairly lengthy period of time throughout the past few months. At the last two elections I have proudly given both my two ticks to Labour, and quite thankfully too at the last election in particular. At the 2002 election I was fairly unimpressed by the Greens throwing their mental about genetic engineering and the whole moratorium issue. In 2005 I was happy that Labour and the Greens seemed to have sorted out their differences, but because the threat of Don Brash was so great I felt compelled to vote Labour once again. However, I was greatly saddened that in the end the Greens were only a little bit short of what they needed for one more seat, especially when that one additional seat could have meant that them and Labour would have been able to form a government, rather than Labour relying upon New Zealand First and United Future.

I think throughout the last couple of years everyone has woken up a lot more to the environmental issues facing the world. 2006 was the big 'Climate Change Awareness" year in my opinion, where a huge shift from scepticism to acceptance seemed to happen across society. Rising petrol prices hammered home the concept of peak oil, rising food prices hammered home worries about sustainability and that was reflected in political changes in New Zealand and many other countries. Australia finally joined the Kyoto Protocol last year, the government came up with an emissions trading scheme at long last that should hopefully do something to reduce our carbon emissions, even National finally accepted that climate change is real and environmental issues in general can't actually be ignored anymore. In many ways perhaps this took some wind out of the Greens' sails as they initially seemed to lose their point of difference from other parties. As I'll mention later, this hasn't actually happened as most other parties (particularly Labour, unfortunately) are great with the rhetoric on environmental improvements, but are yet to walk the walk.

For quite a few months I have found myself tossing up between Labour and the Greens. Transportation is a really important issue to me (as obvious from this blog) and it is one area where the Greens have always been vastly superior in their ideas than any other party, including Labour. Yes, Labour did buy back the railway network and they have invested a lot of money in upgrading Auckland's rail system. They have also cleared the path for Auckland's rail electrification to be possible, and this is great. I certainly am thankful for all that. However, for every dollar they've invested in public transport it appears as though they've put three dollars into roading. I can't even keep track of how many motorway projects are either underway or about to get underway, even in Auckland alone. While it's excellent that Auckland's finally getting the infrastructure investment that it so desperately needs, we are talking about hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent on roads that - in all honesty - we don't know will have more than a 15-20 year life-span. Although petrol prices have decreased significantly in recent times, this is ONLY because of the financial crisis. Perhaps the reduction in petrol use will mean that prices take a little bit longer to go through the roof than previously thought, but that does not mean it won't happen.

Peak oil is not a theory, it's a certainty. The only debate is when it will happen, or whether it has already happened. A lot of evidence points towards it actually already having occurred, otherwise why didn't oil-producing countries increase their output when prices were so high in the middle of the year? The simple answer is that they didn't because they couldn't. In the space of 3-4 years we saw petrol prices increase from around a dollar a litre to almost $2.20 a litre. I remember as a child having petrol prices of around 90c a litre, which clearly shows how sudden this increase of the last few years has happened. In this situation, when even your own transportation agency has projected lower numbers of car-trips on the roading network over the next 8 years at least, I cannot understand Labour's continuing obsession with funding roads, roads and more roads. But don't think this is just a critique of Labour, as National are far far worse with their transportation policies. I'm not sure if they even know what a train is, with their attitudes towards building more roads no matter what coming across as absolutely reckless.

This is not to say that I'm 100% in agreement with all the policies of the Greens. While their economic policies are justifiable, they do come across as fairly radical. Shifting the tax burden from earners to polluters is a great idea, however there is no other country in the world embarking upon something quite so radical, and I worry the Greens can frighten just too many people. It was hard enough for Labour to convince businesses that it could manage to economy when they first came to power in 1999.  I'm also in disagreement with aspects of their foreign policy - particularly their opposition to free-trade agreements and New Zealand "doing our bit" in Afghanistan. I'm definitely no war-mongerer, but because we're such a small country and will never be able to defend ourselves if need be, it is important for us to do our bit on the international scene where it is justified. I think Labour have done extremely well in maintaining an excellent international reputation for our country, particularly by not getting involved in the Iraq war.

However, being the strategist that I am, I have worked out that a vote for Green is effectively two votes - one for the Greens and also one for Labour. In recent weeks just about all the minor parties have sided one way or another. In the case of New Zealand First they didn't really have a choice, but United Future and Act have stated they'll only support National, while Jim Anderton's Progressives and the Greens have stated they'll only support Labour. The Maori Party remains as the only party that could "swing either way", although because their supporters have strong historic links with the Labour party I would be surprised to see them go with National. Not only surprised, but logically I just can't see National and the Maori Party being able to work together. Their ideologies come from widely different ends of the spectrum, and even if they did stitch together a deal I don't know if it would last (NZ First post-1996 election ringing any bells?) This means that there aren't any parties out there obsessed with supporting the party with the most votes first (not that I'd have an issue with them if they did, as it seems the fairest way to decide which party to support if you're thinking of swinging either way). Therefore, unlike last time it is not essential for Labour to get more votes than National from my perspective. In fact, I highly doubt they will get more votes than National when one considers that they haven't led in any polls since some time last year.

This means that one is essentially voting for one group of parties or another group of parties: the 'centre-left' or the 'centre-right'. Which party you vote for within that group only really effects what voices within that group you wish to be heard the loudest, not which group you'd prefer. Clearly if the Greens and Labour are in the same group of parties, then whether one or the other gets my vote is irrelevant: it only affects the balance of power within that particular group. In my general assessment of the Labour government since 1999, and in my general assessment of the policies of the parties within the 'centre-left' group that I support, I do think there is a need to shift the balance of power within that group further towards what is proposed by the Greens. We need to strengthen our efforts to battle climate change; we need to 'walk the walk' in becoming a world-leading sustainable country; we need to improve even further our efforts to eliminate poverty; we need to do more to prevent health problems and crime and we need to shift our transportation system away from a reliance on oil. I am a big fan of Helen Clark, and I believe that she (and much of the Labour party) would agree with me on all these issues. In the past Labour have been hamstrung by a reliance upon New Zealand First and United Future to form a government and haven't been able to achieve these issues. With strong input from the Greens I think Labour will be able to achieve many more of their aspirational goals.

I haven't talked much about the financial crisis I know, and it is worth addressing because it will play a lot on people's minds tomorrow when they do go to vote. My take is that as a country we're in a reasonable position to weather this storm, thanks to pretty careful budgeting by Labour over the past nine years. We will get through this, and policies put forward by both Labour and National seem to respond to this crisis fairly well. A few jobs will be lost, but our unemployment is still extremely low by international standards thanks to an effective Labour government. In other words, we will get through this, especially if we turn the crisis into an opportunity to strongly invest in public housing, rail projects and other important pieces of infrastructure. The people who will suffer most are probably those who have been least cautious with their borrowing and spending over the past few years, and I would hope they will learn from the experience and realise that there is not such thing as a free lunch, and if something seems too good to be true (such as forever rising house prices) then it most probably is.

I am more worried about our long-term future. I am worried that we simply won't have invested in the necessary transportation infrastructure to cope with higher oil prices in years to come. I am worried that one of the three-hundred people per year in Auckland alone who die prematurely because of our air pollution might be me in the long-term. I am worried that when Amalia's my age we really will be up shit creek regarding climate change, environmental sustainability, biodiversity loss and so forth; that she will have to tell her kids about "the good old days" when we had such things as Polar Bears. I am worried that we don't have a plan for the huge problems the world will face in the next few decades. However, the Greens do have a plan, the Greens are not living with their heads in the sand. Many of their policies may come across as unpalatable now, but when compared with what our long-term alternatives might be, I think we all need to have some short-term pain for a long-term gain. I have to vote Greens, for my sake, for my friends and family's sake, for the planet's sake and for Amalia's sake.

You do too.

Well what a great day yesterday was. I feel like I'm still buzzing from the excitement of it actually. The morning seemed to take forever, waiting until 1pm when the results from the US presidential election would start rolling in. Unlike our New Zealand election, I actually felt reasonably confident of a good outcome in the USA. However, I was probably also a bit more nervous about that result as I had expected Obama to win, and any other result would have been a huge disappointment. In contrast, while I give Labour/Greens a better chance on Saturday than they seem to be getting in the media I've certainly got lower expectations.

So after 1pm the results did start rolling in from the USA, and they were reasonably good. The first few states went as expected: Kentucky for the republicans, Vermont for the democrats. No real surprises there. I had about three different election pages running, with a good live feed from BBC world being the most useful. When Obama was confirmed to have won Pennsylvania I felt pretty damn confident things weren't going to go wrong from then on. Florida and Ohio looked good for him as well, even Indiana where Bush had won by 20% or so back in 2004 was extremely close. Obama was winning his safe states easily, and challenging McCain in a lot of states that had been pretty safely republican for decades. Once Ohio had been confirmed for Obama everyone knew it was only a matter of time before he hit the magic 270 electoral college votes. At 5pm New Zealand time the results for California and Washington State were confirmed, which pushed Obama over the threshold. Cue wild celebrations.

I got home in time to watch a decent chunk of his acceptance speech. Whilst I've heard a number of amazing speeches by Obama before, I think this one really topped the lot. The moment felt historic, like we were all witnessing history. Which I guess makes perfect sense as indeed we were. The happiness on the faces of so many people was truly moving, while the messages of hope and change that Obama stated may have been mainly directed at people within the USA, but his standing internationally makes me truly confident that this is a giant step in the right direction for the world as a whole. Whilst the challenges facing Obama are clearly huge, and seemingly impossible, I really strongly believe that he can make a huge difference simply by his inclusive attitude, the huge support that he's received, the way that so many previously alienated people can now truly believe in their president, and because he is just awesome.

So I would very much like to thank America for finally coming to its senses again. I would like to thank the American people for putting racial insecurities behind them, for finally rejecting the divisiveness of the republican party and for electing an incredibly charismatic, intelligent president.

This is the day of the American election, although because of the time difference results won't start rolling in until tomorrow New Zealand time. It is rather exciting actually, with the USA on the brink of a momentous shift in their history. I first heard of Barack Obama early last year, largely because he came out so clearly in opposition to the Iraq war - whereas everyone else was either mumbling about some sort of honourable withdrawal or saying that they needed to stick there right through. That impressed me right away, that he's someone with their eye on the most important job in the world who isn't afraid to stick up for what he really believed in, and then had the ability to back it up as well. Someone able to go "we shouldn't have gone in there, we need to get out as soon as possible" really impressed me.

Over the last year or so his momentum has grown enormously, heading off a pretty strong opponent to even become the Democrat candidate. His message of change has been so strong and delivered in such an awesome manner that it really does give me hope that our days of thinking of the USA as a pariah of the international community could be nearing an end. Imagine a situation where the USA is actively involved in extending the Kyoto Protocol and its successors. Imagine a situation where a US president is greeted enthusiastically overseas, where people go out to cheer him rather than protest against him. Obama has continued to impress me - I've read through his detailed energy and environmental policies and found them to be realistic yet also involving significant change for the better. His plans to actually address poverty in the USA and to improve their horrific health system are terribly overdue, but obviously necessary.

It is exciting though, as Obama seems to be well ahead in the polls. It really feels like nothing can stop him now (touch wood). Are we one day away from an absolutely critical moment in American history? Sure, everyone's avoided the race issue in the lead-up to the election, but if indeed we end up with him being elected tomorrow it will surely be a great moment of racial conciliation for that country.

Continuing our rather recent tradition of exploring random parts of Auckland's public transport system, Leila and I resolved to check out the northern busway on Sunday. The busway has been open since February I think, allowing buses to bypass the traffic nightmare of the Northern Motorway, and get from Albany into the city in about 20-25 minutes. Often by car it takes twice as long if the traffic is bad, so unsurprisingly the busway has been pretty popular. A whole selection of North Shore bus routes use at least part of the busway, while the Northern Express service offers a "core spine" service to the whole network, only stopping at the busway stations between Britomart in the city, and Albany.

We started our adventure in Ponsonby, after a very nice breakfast at Cezanne Cafe. Our link bus into the city was quite an adventure in itself. The link buses do feel like the one 'world class' bit of Auckland's public transport system, with nice new buses, information screens showing snippets about the areas the bus passes through and so on. However, apparently our bus way running late so we all got turfed onto another bus. The next bus hung around for a while itself until the driver helped a drunk old man off the previous bus. I think he'd fallen asleep, as he promptly fell asleep once again on the new bus. But anyway, it was more amusing than annoying as we weren't in any particular hurry. The bus eventually made it to Britomart, and we hopped off and waited for our Northern Express bus. After a bit longer than should have been the case, the bus showed up. I had seen the Northern Express buses many times driving over the Harbour Bridge (they're quite distinctive) but had never actually been on one before. It seemed as though ARTA had been quite careful in the selection of the Northern Express bus, as they're pretty damn huge - with the ability to cope with what is (hopefully) at peak hour pretty heavy loads.

It was actually quite nice to head across the Harbour Bridge and check out the view properly for once. Although I make my way across the harbour bridge around four times a week, I'm always driving so don't get much of a chance to admire the awesome view for more than a few seconds at a time (to avoid crashing the car!) However, of course the busway doesn't actually get going until a reasonable distance north of the harbour bridge itself. Perhaps this is a bit of a weakness, but my general experience is that traffic congestion in the evening doesn't really get too bad until after the Onewa Road off-ramp, so perhaps it'll be OK. After getting off the motorway at Akoranga Drive, we slipped into the Akoranga Station quickly. I was impressed. The station looked much more like a modern train station that one would find in a European country than a typical Auckland bus stop. You could even wait inside, buy your ticket at an electronic machine and so on. We didn't get off there though, but continued further up the busway proper - passing through Westlake, Sunnynook and Constellation Stations on the way. The busway itself gave an interesting perspective at cars on the motorway, as they zipped past on your left rather than on the right as per usual. The grade of the road itself made it pretty obvious to me that if/when the decision is eventually made to turn it into a railway line there will need to be some pretty serious earthworks to smooth out the ups and downs.

In pretty short-time was arrived at Albany Station. The station itself was just as flash as all the others, and with quite a few different platforms clearly has room to grow in the future. Perhaps this is what the New Lynn bus depot looked like when it was brand new back in the 70s or 80s? However, the station's biggest disadvantage became immediately clear as soon as we left it and embarked on the final leg of our journey to the Albany Westfield - it's basically in the middle of nowhere. I suppose that's not really the fault of ARTA, the council or anyone else involved in the construction of the station. Albany Town Centre is planned to grow like topsy over the next decade, but at the moment it still feels strangely ghostly. There are big four-lane roads with traffic lights, roundabouts and everything else, but no buildings, no people and hardly any vehicles either. Just the most expensive grassy fields in Auckland I imagine. To be fair, it is a work in progress, and I certainly hope that eventually there is either a good pedestrian connection from the busway to the future Albany Town Centre or (even better) buses actually continue through the bus station before terminating bang in the middle of the town centre. After all, not many people want to catch a bus to a grassy field, but a lot would want to catch one to a shopping mall.

Leila and I had a pleasant enough afternoon reading books at Borders and generally checking out the Albany Mall. In many ways it does feel quite similar to Sylvia Park - Auckland's other fairly recently opened Megamall. I was impressed by how it interacts better with its surroundings - particularly to the north with a row of cafes and restaurants looking out over what will be a nice lake and park area in the not-too-distant future. Sylvia Park does have a train station located almost inside the mall though, so that's hard to beat.

The trip back was fairly non-eventful. Once again the walk to the bus station was a tad annoying - more because of how bare and exposed it all felt, rather than its distance. I do hope that the economic downturn doesn't put any further development on the back-burner forever, because the whole 'half-built' feeling is a bit spooky. Southbound on the busway works better than northbound, as the busway stretches significantly further south. This is particularly useful as it bypasses pretty much all the congestion on the Northern Motorway (not that there was much on a Sunday).

Wow the weather has been really nice the last couple of days, it almost feels like summer!

Almost all of Auckland's buses serving the inner-city make their way into the city along either Fanshawe Street (for North Shore buses), Albert Street (for West Auckland buses) or Symonds Street (for South, East and Central Auckland buses). I would guess that Symonds Street would definitely have the greatest number of buses out of any of these streets - and is a particularly popular location for people getting on and off the bus as it runs right through the middle of the University. However, until very recently, there was no real priority for buses along this utterly critical corridor. As I spent a reasonable number of my university years catching buses home along Symonds Street, I learned what a mess this situation had created. At least half the length of the bus trip was taken up simply getting up Symonds Street in the evening peak: buses would not have enough room to all load passengers at the same time so sometimes would end up stopping in the middle of the road as they couldn't fit in the bus stop, at other times it just seemed like the traffic lights with K Rd and Grafton Bridge (near the top of Symonds St) would take forever, creating utter gridlock further down the street.

Fortunately, Auckland City Council have finally got their act together and are doing something about this, in creating the Central Connector. While this project is supposedly designed to create a 'busway' linking Britomart with Newmarket, in reality all its generally doing is turning the outside lanes along its course into bus lanes. The map below shows its route and where the bus stops will be located.

Whilst I was originally sceptical of the project, largely because it duplicates the route of a train line from Newmarket to Britomart, I think the main effect it will have is (hopefully) improving the flow of buses up Symonds Street. I had a think about it last night, and by my estimates around half of the buses that go up Symonds Street aren't even ones that continue to Newmarket. These buses continue up Symonds Street, eventually branching off onto Mt Eden Rd, Dominion Rd, Sandringham Rd or New North Rd. With peak hour frequencies along each of these routes generally meaning a bus every 2-3 minutes, you can see there will be a lot of people who benefit from the project.

However, as with any project there's always the down-side of the construction period. While there aren't too many heavy earthworks needed along Symonds Street, it seems like there is quite a lot going on which has required a narrowing of the street. Last night I caught a bus back home from the city and got caught up in the mayhem this has created. It probably took twice as long for my bus to get from the central city up to the top of Symonds Street than it did for it to do the rest of the journey. Hopefully this situation doesn't continue for the duration of the Symonds Street roadworks (which are meant to finish by June next year). Perhaps it was just a particularly bad day? Or perhaps whoever does traffic management on the project needs to get more stuff out of the way by peak hour.

Auckland has always had fragmented ownership of its bus companies. Howick and Eastern have been operating as an independent private company since 1939, Birkenhead Transport for not much less than that. Plus back a few years before I started catching buses there was the Whenuapai bus company. Urban Express have appeared in recent times too, although the major player has remained as (until very recently) Stagecoach. As far as I know, Stagecoach came into being when our stupid city council sold off the buses in the early 1990s. A couple of years ago Stagecoach (a Scottish company actually) sold their business to NZ Bus, a branch of Infratil (an New Zealand company, thankfully. So we're in a situation where there are five bus companies operating across Auckland.

Now this wouldn't necessarily have to be a problem, as overseas you also find highly fragmented ownership of bus service operators. Ideally, it would be great for the ARC to just buy out the lot of them, considering it spends a huge chunk of its money subsidising these companies anyway. However, in reality the situation has turned into a bit of a nightmare, which seems to have actually got worse in recent times (as I'll mention soon). Each bus company has its own ticketing system, and each ticketing system is largely incompatible with everything else. There is an all-ecompassing ticket for monthly and daily unlimited travel across any of the bus companies (and also the train & ferries). However, this ticket is prohibitively expensive for most people and as a result is hardly used. This situation is particularly annoying for me, as it just so happens that Urban Express operate the route between home and work for me, however all routes from either of these two places to the city are operated by NZ Bus. This means I generally have to worry about ensuring I have change for the bus, a right pain in the ass.

Integrated ticketing, the solution for this mess, seems to have been on the radar as a goal for those trying to hammer our public transport system into shape for a long time now. I think just about every ARTA report includes some sort of reference to "exploring integrated ticketing options" or "advocating for integrated ticketing." This seems to have been the case for about 10 years now, as before ARTA was coming up with these broad goals, other agencies were also harping on about it. For a long time I couldn't get my head around why on earth this was so difficult. I mean how hard is it to get the bus (and train for that matter) companies to sort out something that will surely benefit them all through increasing the ease of use for the system and therefore its attractiveness to users? The lack of progress had me beating my head against a wall. Grand plans for "electronic smart-card ticketing" began to emerge, although it really seemed like an overly gold-plated solution to a problem that surely could be solved tomorrow through adopting a simple paper ticket system.

Interestingly, in recent times I have got my head around why ARTA just wasn't achieving anything with regards to integrated ticketing. Furthermore, the main impediment seems to have finally been solved due to Public Transport Management Bill. In effect, when public transport was deregulated in the early 90s (geez we have the early 90s to blame for a lot) the laws which governed how public transport would operate split routes into commercial one and subsidized ones. Commercial routes (generally peak hour ones) were operated by whatever bus company got in first, the operator wouldn't be subsidised at all for operating this route and would be able to do whatever they liked with it (regarding the quality of bus etc.). ARTA (and its predecessors) would be required to subsidise the routes operators deemed non-profitable. ARTA has more say in what goes on as it's basically paying the bus company to run the service. This system has ended up being utterly hopeless, most typified by Auckland's enormous drop-off in per-capita use of public transport since the early 90s when the original legislation came into being. Even in recent years as bus patronage has increased again, this increase has generally been less than the rate of population growth. Most patronage increase on public transport in the last few years has been on the rail system.

Bringing this back to ticketing, what the previously legislation appeared to do was make it impossible for ARTA to force the bus companies into doing anything on the commercial routes. The bus companies were more keen on protecting "their patch" than actually growing the system through integrated ticketing, and so weren't keen on allowing integrated ticketing on the commercial routes. My understanding is that ARTA could have forced them into accepting integrated ticketing on subsidised routes - but what's the point of having a situation where an integrated ticket is OK on the 9.20am bus, but not OK on the 9.10am bus - even though both are operated by the same company and also along the same route. Although the effects of the Public Transport Management Bill won't be fully felt for a while yet, as contracts will need to expire and be renewed before ARTA really has more power, but my general understanding is that ARTA now has as much power over commercial routes as it does over subsidised routes. And, in general, it has more power over both types of routes than it did before. To simplify, without the Public Transport Management Bill ARTA could have never had the power to make integrated ticketing happen, but with the new laws it can.

It seems that these extra powers are coming just in the nick of time too. Until fairly recently, although NZ Bus had bought out Stagecoach they had continued to use their brand and logos on all their buses. I think there was some agreement in the sale that this could happen for a few years. However, instead of just renaming all the buses "Bus Auckland" or something logical like that, NZ Bus has decided to split things into four, and create GoWest for West Auckland buses, NorthStar for buses on the North Shore, MetroLink for buses that operate within the isthmus area, and the soon to be launched Waka Pacific buses for South Auckland. Now some of these buses look pretty cool, but geez we've gone from having five bus companies to what seems like eight. Without proper integrated ticketing, a traveller needs to know that NorthStar tickets are OK on Metrolink services but not OK on Urban Express, GoWest tickets are OK on Waka Pacific but not OK on Ritches... the whole thing is insane! I can't quite comprehend myself why NZ Bus has done this. The official reason is that they wanted the bus companies to connect to their local communities a bit better. Maybe they saw that Birkenhead Transport and Howick and Eastern buses have been fairly successful by sticking to their patch over the years. Maybe they wanted to create confusion, so that people use cash fares (more expensive than pre-paid fares) more often so they make more money? It just seems illogical really.

I suppose that once integrated ticketing actually happens then this won't matter anymore. If any pre-paid ticket can be used on any bus service then it won't matter how many different coloured buses are out there. But for now, I think it's just stupid.

I hadn't travellled on the Eastern Line for about four years, so I thought I'd better check it out. The new Sylvia Park station, located right next to the giant shopping mall, meant a pretty good excuse for checking out the railway line existed too. A nice chance to hang in Borders for a few hours too, which is a rather favourite occupation for Leila and me. However, actually travelling on Auckland's train system at the weekend is a bit of a mission (even if you're really keen to do so), and probably the length of time it took for us to catch a bus into town (necessary because no Western Line trains were running today because of track work) plus the cost (the down-side of not having integrated ticketing and having to go via the city) means that 99% of people would probably still choose to drive to the mall unfortunately.

However, even though it was more expensive and less convenient than driving, armed with a makeshift version of a timetable (scribbled down on a piece of paper), an umbrella which got blown to bits crossing New North Road in Kingsland, and after an excellent breakfast feed at the Roasted Addiqtion cafe, we embarked upon our mission. First step was catching a bus into town. I had considered the merits of trying to coincide with a rail replacement bus so we would have been able to buy rail day passes, but the saving was only about 80c compared to paying cash fares for the whole trip, so it wasn't really worth the hassle of waiting 20 minutes for that particular bus. Furthermore, the rail bus would have had to undertake a pretty random route via Newmarket, a stupid way to make your way into town from Kingsland on anything except a proper train. After waiting at the bus stop for a fairly decent length of time, as after all it is a Sunday and buses have horrific frequencies on Sundays in Auckland, our bus finally arrived and slowly made its way into the city. With 10 minutes to get to the Britomart train station, we didn't bother running, but figured it'd make more sense to catch the next train, which was "only" another 30 minutes away. Half hour frequencies for trains in Auckland on Sundays I guess isn't TOO bad, especially considering no trains ran on Sundays until a few years ago.

But anyway, we finally did reach Britomart, and even though we couldn't buy tickets at the station (because the one person selling them was on their lunch break) we made our way down to the trains a few minutes before our train, the only services that were actually running today, arrived. Quite differently from the train we'd caught out to New Lynn on Thursday evening, this was one of Auckland's particularly crappy old DMUs - bought off Perth in the early 90s when Perth electrified its rail system. The irony is that Perth decided to electrify its rail system because their rolling stock were getting so old they needed to upgrade anyway and figured it made more sense to shift to electric than to buy new diesel trains. Gosh how they must laugh that their crappy old trains are still running 17 years later in Auckland.

However, interestingly as soon as we were actually on the train and moving, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the ride. Compared to the Western Line service that we'd caught a few days ago, the train seemed much quieter, the ride smoother and also significantly faster. I suppose on the Western Line there are a lot of bends, a pretty significant hill and quite frequent stations, but the whole trip out to New Lynn felt incredibly frustrating as though we were idling along in 2nd gear the whole time. I'm sure with decent trains and a few kinks removed from the line that half hour trip could be cut down to 20 minutes maximum! But anyway, the trip on the Eastern Line seemed so damn quick by comparison. Most of the stations we travelled through on our way to Sylvia Park looked like they'd been upgraded recently, the gaps between the stations were large enough for our train to actually pick up a decent amount of speed, and as we cut across Hobson Bay and Orakei Basin, as well as passing through quite a few nice forested gullies, the trip was also surprisingly scenic.

Apart from Glen Innes and Panmure though, it really did feel like all the stations were in pretty random locations, and only had seemingly very limited appeal to users. On the city side of Glen Innes in particular, there were grassy fields with horses grazing in them - quite nice from a scenic perspective but seemingly a bit of a waste of land that could be used for intensification built in close proximity to train services. At Meadowbank station it seemed like one would be surprised to actually realise there was a station, as it's tucked down the back end of a pretty random corner of Auckland. The same with Orakei, although apparently the park n ride there is quite popular (and there's also some pretty amazing plans to intensify directly around the station). The best way to encourage use of the train system is to increase the number of people living in close proximity to train stations. I guess it means there is plenty of opportunity to enhance the attractiveness of rail in these areas through transit-oriented developments in the future.

The trip back was pretty normal, and we timed our bus back to Kingsland fairly well. So all in all a pretty interesting experience with a different part of Auckland's transport system for me. My overall impression was surprisingly good actually, particularly in comparison with the painfully slow Western Line rail services that I'm used to.

A few nights ago I had an interesting dream that somehow included trips to both Sydney and London. Since I got back from Europe a few months ago it has been fairly common for me to have dreams about some new overseas trip that I find myself on. Nothing particularly new or exciting there. However, it seems that with increasing regularity I'm finding that the dreams seem to particularly involve the ways in which I'm getting around those cities.

It's always interesting to see the similarities and differences between real places and how they appear in my dreams. I know that throughout the course of many hundreds of different dreams over the years I've managed to almost create an 'alternative Auckland' in my mind. In particular, the central motorway junction area is highly modified in my mind, and yet at the same time it's reasonably consistent throughout different dreams, often ones that I've had years apart. For example, where Morningside Drive crosses the railway line (a railway crossing I went across a lot as a kid because it was near my primary school) my dreams have that as the start of a motorway that pretty quickly turns into a fairly giant interchange - which although complex seems reasonably surprising consistent and easy to remember. However, in recent times times those motorway dreams have seemed to end up being replaced by new railway dreams. I guess a sign of how my subconscious has changed with relation to transportation.

However, these dreams are almost always linked to overseas trips (probably because the only decent transit systems I've come across overseas). The other night I managed to experience both the Sydney rail system (although it was a rather strange version of it) and then also the London Underground. I don't remember much from the Sydney part of the dream (or in fact even how I got there, or got from there to London), but once I was in London I distinctly remember from the dream that Leila and I were going to the Victoria and Albert Museum (I must have a subconscious sense of guilt that we never got there even though I know Leila really wanted to). We had to get on the District Line to go to South Kensington station (which is actually quite correct as South Kensington is probably the best tube station to access the Victoria and Albert Museum and it is also on the District Line), although the District Line on the map in my dream looked very very different to how it actually looks in reality. Once again I guess it's my subconscious being fascinated by rail maps, but is not quite able to transfer my actual knowledge of the London Underground map (which is probably unhealthily extensive for someone who's only been in that city for 8 days) into my actual dreams.

Perhaps I'll be having dreams about what an electrified Auckland rail system will look like eventually.

It felt a bit of a relief to get my dream rail system out of the way yesterday. Something that was interesting to write about, but the need to finish it seemed to be blocking me from getting on with writing in this blog about other issues. This post doesn't really have a set agenda in the way that others have so far, so I'm not quite sure how it'll turn out.

Firstly, it's hard to get away from talking about the upcoming election at the moment. After all, it's less than three weeks away now I suppose. My analysis of the transportation policies of different parties will probably come at some point, but for now I am just going to say "Vote Greens". Labour has disappointed me in not really having much of a public transportation plan, and continuing the funnel money into motorways like there's no tomorrow. National's attitude towards public transportation probably freaks me out more than their attitude towards anything else - as it seems likely that if we end up with Maurice Williamson as our Minister of Transport we will be lucky to get a couple more bus lanes.

I'm not sure whether my mind has become totally sick of the election, or whether National's lead in the polls just depresses me when I think about politics at the moment. It's probably something, as the whole election campaign palaver it already starting to be annoying. Perhaps it is just a general frustration with how ignorant a huge number of people seem to be about issues... it's hard to say for sure. Of course there's still curiosity to see if anything major happens in the next while, but other than that I just want the next couple of weeks to disappear as quickly as possible so that I don't need to endure more shots of John Key playing play-dough with nice middle class kids at some preschool.

I've managed to avoid using my car since the weekend, which is quite nice. A fairly good pattern of catching buses to and from work has settled down, and usually I'm able to bus on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I could probably do Wednesdays too but it's Leila's day off work and it's quite nice to have lunch at home with her. On Fridays I need to pick Amalia up after work which makes bus catching rather difficult, although interestingly I think the last couple of Fridays I have ended up on the bus, as it's been necessary for me to go into town for work. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but I definitely do feel better about life since I've switched to bus commuting. The better feeling probably started a little earlier than the last month or so - and was undoubtedly influenced greatly by more interesting work-related stuff of late - but I do certainly believe that decreasing my reliance upon the car, experiencing the local area more through catching a bus and enjoying Leila's company for a bit longer than usual as we both wander up to the bus stop and wait for it (or sometimes catch it together if I'm going into town) has made me feel better about my life.

In the first couple of months after we returned from Europe I did feel really really trapped in a rather mundane feeling life. Being at home, driving to work, being at work, driving home, being at home.... after the experiences of Europe I couldn't believe how depressing and boring Auckland felt. Sure, it was probably one of the wettest winters ever, which definitely didn't help. However,  I just felt so unattached to the city. I was forever just seeing it through my work-office window or through the window of the car, or merely from the window of my freezing cold house. Getting back into the CBD and wandering around streets with people again felt so liberating, even catching a bus seemed interesting again. Feeling like I was once again "engaging" with the city just felt so good - like I was once again part of a greater thing, I wasn't isolated in one box after the next, really has seemed like such a positive experience for me.

It's an interesting case study really, and I wonder how many other people feel the same. In the public v private transportation argument, general comfort and enjoyment of the ride seems to often favour the private car over catching a bus or train. I wonder whether this is a bit of a misguided belief? Perhaps people's potential like for public transport is not being fully recognised? I definitely think this might be the case for a decent train system, which in my opinion is far nicer for travelling than driving your car. Sure I'm a bit of a public transport freak, but I enjoyed travelling on the Metro systems of Europe an awful lot, and they were indeed one of the highlights of the trip for me.

To continue on from my previous post, we now take a step into a bit of the unknown. I will probably continue to change my mind about the best way for Auckland's rail future versus the most realistic way to actually get change in my head for a fair while yet, but I guess this is a bit of a mixture: somewhat ideal, somewhat realistic.

The first stage is probably about 10 years down the track. In my opinion, planning for these improvements need to either start (in the case of the CBD loop) or be refined (in the case of rail to the airport) now. I've talked a lot about the CBD loop in previous posts, so I think it's fairly obvious why this is such a crucial project. The airport loop is obviously also important (Mike Lee enjoys saying that we're not a true international city until we have trains to the airport), but I think it's less important than the CBD loop, and would have to happen after the loop to ensure the existing system doesn't grind to a complete halt.

In this system we see the Onehunga Line being extended all the way to Manukau City, via the airport. This would be a pretty big project, but I think access from the airport to both Onehunga and Manukau City is pretty important. It means that trains don't have to "turn around" at the airport too. This line has been studied quite a bit in recent times by ARTA, which confirms heavy rail as the preferred method of providing public transport to the airport. The study also proposes that the airport line be extended from Onehunga through to Avondale - but I think it's a pretty unnecessary extension as passenger numbers wouldn't justify it. The Avondale-Southdown line (as it's known) will probably be built for freight at some point (so it can bypass Newmarket), in which case the line might as well also be used for some passenger services, but it's not needed nearly as much as other projects.

The other main project at this stage would be the CBD loop - which after electrification is THE MOST IMPORTANT PROJECT FOR AUCKLAND. I would run the three existing lines in loops, returning them to where they came from and therefore offering great access to the CBD. Lines might vary as to whether they go clockwise around the loop or anti-clockwise, although the eastern line would HAVE to go anti-clockwise, while the southern line would probably also go that way (so people don't have to go the LONG way around to get to Britomart). More on the CBD loop another time.

OK, so next we have the 'ultimate stage', which is realistically 20 years away. This involves two major projects (I probably can't emphasise how much they'd be enough): the North Shore Line and an East Tamaki Line.

The North Shore Line would involve converting the current busway so that it could cater for heavy rail. This would mean quite a lot of earthworks to ensure that the gradients weren't too steep, and also would obviously involve digging a tunnel under the Waitemata Harbour to link the converted busway with Britomart. This has been costed at around $1.5 billion I think.

The East Tamaki Line is only really a dream at the moment. It represents fixing what I think is Auckland's greatest failure: allowing so much development east of the Tamaki River without building a railway line to serve the area. There is no designation for rail through here, so it would be enormously disruptive putting a line through. Light-rail or busway options may be more realistic. It's a nice dream though.

OK I have to say that I do love doing this, pontificating about what Auckland's railway system might look like in the future. A few posts back I wrote in quite detail why I thought Auckland's railway system has a bright future, and how that would absolutely result in a need for future expansion of the system, particularly through building the CBD Rail Loop. I've put together a few images to more clearly show how I think Auckland's rail system could/should develop over the next 15 years. This post will be part 1 of that process, which details the current system and also improvements to it that are already under construction, or are due to have construction begin in the near future. There is probably about 10 billion worth of work to be done in order to complete the whole system, but it's easy to think that if we don't embark upon at least some of the extensions I propose, we're really going to be up shit creek without a paddle in a few years time when high oil prices REALLY start to bite.

OK for a start, let's have a look at the current system:

The Green Line is the Western Line, which has been around in some form or another since the 1880s, but has been pretty rubbish for most of that time. Only in the last few years has the line actually been double-tracked. This project is ongoing, with the last couple of bits (between Newmarket and Boston Road, and between Avondale and New Lynn) due for completion some time in the next couple of years. Once it's been fully double-tracked, the Western Line will be able to run a train every 10 minutes each way at peak hour.

The Red Line is the Southern Line. Between Westfield and Newmarket it runs on its own, otherwise it doubles up with either the Western Line or the Eastern Line. I haven't really used this line particularly much, but apparently there's pretty strong demand from its more southern parts (Ellerslie and then stations south of Papatoetoe). The line is double-tracked throughout, while the current Newmarket station upgrade is going to ease congestion through that junction on the network. The Onehunga branch (which will be talked about reasonably soon) will link in with this line.

The Yellow Line is the Eastern Line. I think this was built significantly more recently than the Southern and Western Lines, at least originally. It is a bit of a higher standard than those, with most crossings grade-separated. Whilst some stations such as Orakei and Meadowbank aren't particularly well located, others such as Glen Innes, Panmure and the new station at Sylvia Park are very busy apparently. South of Westfield it shares with the Southern Line. I think the main development proposed with regards to this line is the Manukau spur, which would possibly form a future terminus for this line (meaning that all trains that continue south of Manukau City would come through Newmarket, which has debatable merits). Manukau City Council hate public transport with a passion, and are doing everything they can to make the Manukau spur a failure. It might be complete around 2011.

OK, the next imagine is a "near future" snapshot of Auckland's rail system. By near future I probably do mean 2011, as nothing ever particularly happens quickly here.

There are only really two main changes here. The Onehunga Branch is supposed to be opening some time next year I think, which should be a pretty big boost to that suburb. The railway line had been sitting there abandoned for a heck of a long time, until a good amount of pressure was put on various politicians to open this line up again. I can't imagine it's going to be serviced particularly much, due to rolling stock shortages, but perhaps a few peak hour services and hourly off-peak services is realistic?

The other change is the Manukau Spur. This is a pretty important link in my opinion, as Manukau City is the centre of one of the largest "cities" in New Zealand, and certainly one of the fastest growing. Whilst the 'city centre' remains basically a mall and a carpark at the moment, there have been a few apartment buildings constructed here in recent years, and it's certainly a pretty major centre in terms of offices as well. Current plans for the Manukau spur (which may or may not be under construction in conjunction with the motorway development going on down there, it's hard to find out any information about it) unfortunately only show it linking with the main line in a northwards direction, meaning it's utterly useless for people living south of Manukau wanting to catch a train there. Once again, a pretty stupid decision as I imagine there are a lot of people who live in Papakura, Manurewa & Homai who may want to catch a train to Manukau when they do their shopping (or if they work there). When one considers that Manukau is a predominantly business area, and therefore is likely to be more of an endpoint for journeys than a start-point, it does seem stupid that it can only be an endpoint for journeys starting to the north of it. The other annoying thing about the Manukau spur is that the City Council (who seriously hate anything but cars, I'm not joking here) has refused to spend any money on the line to bring it closer into the actual shopping area. Instead, the proposed railway station is now a reasonable walk from anywhere particularly useful, and is located in a park. Not quite the safest location in a part of Auckland not exactly known for its lack of crime.

Well anyway, I have heard plans that the Eastern Line would start at Manukau, while all other stations south of Manukau would be served by the Southern Line. This does seem a little strange, but once again seems to result from not having a south-facing link. Stations south of Manukau (Homai, Manurewa, Te Mahia, Takanini, Papakura & Pukekohe) represent a pretty significant chunk of users of the railway system - particularly from Manurewa and Papakura, where good transport interchanges with park n ride facilities now exist. These station are current served by both the Southern and the Eastern Lines, which provides pretty good frequencies at peak hour. For those frequencies to be at least maintained (they will need to be improved over time actually), you're going to need a heck of a lot of trains running on the southern line alone. I think the real solution is to have Manukau City operate as the spur it's supposed to be, with links to both the north and south. Apart for express trains, every train would make a slight detour into Manukau City, whether it came from the north or the south. This would provide a much improved situation I think.

Of course one would have had to be living under a rock to not realise that election time has rolled around again. The first leader's debate (well..... of the two main parties) was last night, and probably didn't prove much except reasserting my annoyance that those who dumb themselves down the most generally are seen as "connecting" the best. Sticking with the new theme of this blog, there really wasn't much said about transportation, which was a pity. I guess the closest we got to it was with Helen Clark talking about "bringing infrastructure development forwards" if necessary. I'm not quite sure exactly what that means, but finance minister Michael Cullen gave hints that might eventually mean an electrified rail link to the North Shore - a pretty fantastic project that I've always thought was probably in the 20 years away basket. If we end up getting something like that brought forward, then hell bring on the economic recession!

So anyway, what's my take on the 2008 election? Well, I guess the natural starting point for looking at this election is to analyse the results of the 2005 election. I went into detail on that at the time, but essentially National did recover from a disastrous 2002 election to post a pretty good result, only being narrowly edged out by Labour. Then a while later Don Brash was replaced by John Key as leader, after a series of complete and utter messes, and it seems like ever since John Key took over as leader National have been way ahead in the polls. I guess it's not necessarily particularly surprising for this to be the case. Only one New Zealand government has enjoyed four terms in office since World War II, and it really does seem like the country has either a 6 year level of patience or a 9 year level of patience with a government. National governed from 1975 to 1984, Labour from 1984-1990, National again from 1990 to 1999. The typical New Zealander who doesn't really care that much about politics probably just gets sick of seeing the same faces on TV over and over again, or thinks that every little thing that is going not quite perfect in their lives could be fixed by a different government.

So basically, my viewpoint over the past two and a bit years has generally been that, while Labour has done a great job since 1999 and has been our best and most effective government for a heck of a long time, the general populace seems like they're just getting a bit bored of them, and want someone new. It does seem a bit of a stupid reason to toss out a government, particularly one that has managed the country damn well, but then my faith in the average New Zealand isn't particularly high unfortunately. This situation led to my own indecisiveness about whether to vote Labour or Greens. Obviously I prefer a Labour led government to a National led government, so the easiest way of ensuring that happens would be to vote Labour. However, throughout the last couple of years the Greens seem to have come up with some really fantastic ideas - particularly relating to public transport - even though I'm still a bit wary of the extremeness of their economic policies (not quite sure how you could do away with income tax and replace it with resource taxes for example). I suppose that a vote for the Greens would be my way of saying "hey, well actually I'm not particularly happy with the way the world's going at the moment, and you guys are the only ones who seem to truly understand the long-term problems we face, and the only ones who really have some ideas about how to do something about them."

Interestingly, in the last week or so the financial crisis that seems to have finally reached New Zealand (even though we didn't really play much of a part in causing it) seems to have given Labour a fresh opportunity. A couple of polls last week showed it was closer to National than at any stage of the last couple of years. It seems like the 'average New Zealander's' appetite for change may be rather reduced in a situation where there is so much uncertainty. Maybe people are starting to realise that Labour have done a pretty decent job handling the economy over the past nine years. While National continue to criticise a lack of economic growth yadda yadda yadda,  maybe people are realising that National hasn't really offered much in the way of doing things better - except for the same old mantra of tax cuts. Interestingly, National's final announcement of their proposed tax cuts last week was met with a pretty average response: people finally realising that in order to keep the much improved social services they had enjoyed throughout the past nine years, including important policies like working for families (which has apparently lifted 130,000 children out of poverty, a pretty amazing achievement in the space of 4 years), you couldn't actually make huge tax cuts without ending up needing to borrow masses of money.

So it's interesting to see where things go from here. There have been a lot of policy announcements for the country to digest - and on top of that nobody really knows whether the economic crisis is just starting, already as bad as it'll get, or even that it hasn't really started yet.