Over at Auckland Trains Jon C notes: “the Western Line performance stats for January were 36.1% punctionality. Southern was only 73%.”
In other words on the Western Line 2 in every 3 trains is late. And on the Southern it is better but still 1 in every 4 trains is late. How can this be even remotely acceptable performance?
I did a quick check of the Sydney train performance stats, for January they had a 97.4% on time performance. 1 train in every 40 is late. That is 10x better performance than the best that Auckland can deliver. And yet people in Sydney are constantly moaning about the poor performance of the rail network.
A major shakeup needs to happen with Auckland’s rail network. Being electrified by 2013 is too far away, by then no one will be left to use the service.
I was surprised to learn that NZ Bus has decided to reject the Athiest Bus Ads that were to run on the buses in Auckland.
The ads were to read “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
However Auckland bus operator NZ Bus is not going to run the ads because of complaints.
I find this move odd and think in the long run that it is sets a bad prescient. The ads are not worded offensively and they are not provocative either.
If christians and other religious folk are willing to scream when prayers are removed form school, parliament, and other places etc, then surely they should be willing to stand beside the athiests when they are expressing their views with the same freedoms that they demand at other times.
Overall this is a bad move and look for the religious folk.
Got to love the logic of Auckland politicians sometimes.
Mayor of Auckland City, John Banks today on the release of a report that suggests that Auckland’s Public Transport will not cope with the Rugby World Cup:
“$58 million was being spent on the Eden Park precinct and thousands were expected to walk from the central city well ahead of game kick-offs.” – NZ Herald
Google Maps suggests this is a 3.6km or 47 minute walk (see here). This is quite a long way, not to mention it is up a massive hill to the top of Queen Street, then over a series of major intersections that are not predistrian friendly then down a number of suburban roads. Quite basically the roads are not designed for the foot traffic that Mayor Banks suggests they could handle.
But coming back to the title of this post, walking is not public transport. What is more shocking is that the article where Mayor Banks is quoted also suggests that:
Nearly 2km of roadside parking had to be found around Eden Park for 130 buses and the entire fleet of 38 Auckland trains would be needed on match days.
If all the trains are being pressed into service to get people to Eden Park then how is any going about their daily lives meant to get about. Surely this should have been seen well in advance and more trains be ordered or borrowed or something!
It seems that now a year out from the Cup that there is a sudden realisation that Auckland is not ready for the cup. That either the waterfront stadium should have been built (at least there would be more and easier public transport to it), or North Harbour stadium should have been used. Sure North Harbour does not have train access but it has a dedicated bus way, and plenty of car parking. The closer that you get to the cup the more you realise that what a disaster it will be using Eden Park as the main game venue.
Who wants to start a little wager on how many days into the cup it will be before there is a signal failure at Newmarket or a massive meltdown with the train system that sees many hundreds late for a match?
I am a few days behind in blogging this as I have around 400 blog posts to work through as I get back up to speed after 4 days with no internet.
The video below shows the intersection of Wellington and Union streets in central Auckland when the power was out a little over a week ago. It is impressive just how much better the traffic flows with no traffic lights:
I find this video particularly interesting as it mirrors the results of my honours level research which showed the traffic lights performed poorly compared to Give Way intersections or Roundabouts unless traffic was extremely congested. It is nice to see the results of a simulation also play out in real life.
This boat was moored near Westhaven Marina this afternoon on my way home from work. The photos have been taken from my cellphone and struggle to show the size of the mast. From my own guess it was around 50m in height. It would be one of the biggest yachts I have ever seen.
The sole power line to the entire Auckland region failed again this afternoon cutting power to around one million people. The only operating power station north of Hamilton is the Huntly coal fired station which cannot supply power to all of Auckland so Transpower cut power to all of Auckland except for essential services like hospitals, sewage and water supply.
However the reporting on both NZ Herald and Stuff reads quite funny:
Police say power has been restored to many of the 5000 Auckland homes left in the dark after a fire underneath power lines prompted mass power cuts from the Waikato to Northland and throughout Auckland this afternoon.
Now I am sure that there are more than 5000 homes in these areas:
Among the Auckland suburbs affected were Remuera, Ponsonby, Epsom, East Tamaki, Freemans Bay, Manukau, Mt Wellington, Newmarket, Onehunga, Birkdale, Beachhaven, Northcote, Glenfield, Manly, Helensville, Hauraki, Forest Hill, East Coast Road, Albany and Belmont.
In fact this image was posted on stuff.co.nz showing the extend of the outage:
This morning, despite the rain, I headed out with a friend to do the Okura Bush Walkway just north of Auckland. By the time that we started the 3 hour return walk the rain stopped and gave way to first an overcast, then sunny day. The walk was a little tougher than I was expecting and I was glad I took my tramping boots and not trail runners as the rain had made parts of the track slightly muddy. We had lunch on the beach at Dacre Cottage before walking back.
Crossing the ditch took on a different meaning today:
After the following photo was taken I did jump in to cries of “euu now your all wet”
David Farrar at Kiwiblog this morning posts that under the new structure for the Auckland council the total number of elected representatives drops from 258 to 147 and then proceeds to say “I’d say 111 less Councillors etc is a good start!”.
How is it that less representation is good?
Currently with 258 democratically elected representatives across the region there is one representative for every 5,426 people (from a population of 1,400,000 people). With only 147 elected representatives this drops to one representative for every 9,523 people.
However, what is worse is the drop in the number of councilors from 109 to 20. In other words from one councilor per 12,844 people to one per 70,000 people.
That is a massive drop in representation.
Community boards simply do not cut the mustard when it comes to representation. The reality is community boards are designed to feed a majority view into the council. However it is only a view, and only a majority one. They are essentially nothing more than people with good intentions who unfortunately will have the majority of their good views railroaded by the superiority of the much more powerful council. This is hardly good democracy.
The call for one united Auckland council was primarily focused around reducing bureaucracy rather than mucking about with the representative democracy. It is unfortunate that the National Government has overrun this process and turned it into a farce by playing politics with the biggest city in New Zealand. Pathetic.
Okay the power has just been restored to my flat on Auckland’s North Shore after a cut lasting around exactly an hour and a half.
I am not grumpy about the cut, they are a fact of life.
What I am grumpy about is the fact that it is not a storm so the reasoning for the cut seems to be a little odd. At first my flatmates thought a car had hit a local power pole. But as we have found out the cut is to 280,000 customers in West Auckland, North Shore, and Northland. Which would mean upwards of 500,000+ people would be without power this morning. So why is the power out:
“Just after 8.00am this morning a circuit on the Otahuhu to Henderson 220 kV line tripped while the other circuit was out for maintenance, causing loss of supply for North Auckland and Northland.” – stuff.co.nz
Sound familar?
Lets think back to 2006:
“The 2006 Auckland Blackout refers to the massive electrical blackout in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, on 12 June 2006. It started at 8:30 am local time, with most areas of Auckland regaining power by 2:45 pm local time. It affected some 230,000 customers had an impact on at least 700,000 people in and around the city.
The immediate cause of the blackout was determined to be a grounding cable falling across a 110kV transmission line at the Otahuhu sub-station. This was caused by the failure of a corroded shackle, as the result of unusually high winds.[1] This equipment is part of the national grid, owned and operated by Transpower.
Investigation of this incident found that maintenance of the electricity transmission system was not adequate and that this substation had major and minor design deficiencies.” – 2006 Auckland Blackout
Which in turn sounds very familar to this:
The 1998 Auckland power crisis was a five-week-long power outage.
Almost all of downtown Auckland in New Zealand was supplied electricity by Mercury Energy via four power cables, two of them 40-year-old oil-filled cables that were past their replacement date. One of the cables failed on 20 January, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, another on 9 February. Due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, the remaining two failed on 19 and 20 February, leaving about 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) without power. - 1998 Auckland power crisis
So in eleven years have we learnt or done anything to stop these incidents repeating? It seems not.
The lockout followed the drivers issuing the company with a work-to-rule notice.
It is important to note that the Bus Drivers are not on strike, they have been locked out because they gave a work to rule notice which is perfectly legal.
“The drivers have given the unions instruction that we are not to withdraw the work to rule notice unless there is a settlement.”
He said that meant the ball was in the company’s court.
“They will find it very hard to get the drivers back to work now that they have locked them out.”
Yup pretty good way to piss off all your workers, playing hardball is not a good approach in industrial relations.
He also accused the unions of having no interest in resolving the issue responsibly.
He said it could be resolved very simply by the unions lifting their notice of strike action.
Mr Froggatt said the drivers were not on strike as a notice of a work to rule was not strike action.
NZ Bus are clearly in the wrong here. Work to rule would see the buses still running.
Auckland Regional Council said yesterday it may impose a financial penalty on NZ Bus for withdrawing services.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee said the approximate figure of $150,000 should not be paid to the company today.
“This is equivalent to a boss’s strike. When workers go on strike, they don’t get paid and neither should NZ Bus when it deliberately locks out workers and therefore the travelling public,” Mr Lee said.
Perfect way to put it. It is the boss’s who have created the “strike” not the employees so good response from the regional council.
I picked up a High Def Video Camera duty free when I came back into NZ on Saturday.
So on Sunday I took it for a test run walking from Long Bay to the Okura River and back.
The great thing about the camera is it is full 1080 HD. The bad thing is it stores the videos in AVCHD format which is near impossible to edit with free editors at the moment.
The video below has been edited in Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Trial, it is USD $40 ($55 NZD) so I will probably buy it so I can edit movies in the future. The footage itself is pretty rushed together, I have pretty much cut each clip into 2 – 6sec chunks and put them together, it was a test of the camera rather than trying to film anything spectacular. The best thing about the video though is the penguins up at the Okura River.
Western Bay community board chairman Bruce Kilmister is keen to change the spelling Wanganui Ave in Herne Bay. He says a poll of residents would be a good start.
Mr Kilmister says if the street has been incorrectly named for the last one hundred years, now is the time to put it right.
Auckland City mayor John Banks says he has not considered a change of spelling for Wanganui Ave but supports the poll idea.
2 thoughts on this:
a) The council which campaigned on cutting ridiculous spending is spending ridiculously.
b) Surely there are much more pressing things in the city then the spelling of a street name, that may or may not be spelt correctly.
Just leave it as it is, and stop trying to create an issue where there isn’t one.
Great news announced this morning. The Louis Vuitton series is coming back to Auckland in Feb and March 2010. But bigger than better than ever. Last year it was a one off Pacific series, now it is a 4 leg World series where Auckland will be the second leg.
The rules are essentially the same as this year 10 teams, identical boats.
Last year the people of Auckland really got behind the racing, I certainly enjoyed it. I hope for more of the same this year.
