The Wrong Side of my Car
The blog that wants to go obsolete
Decarbonising Te Atatū
I’ve got my share of sad posts about Auckland, but I’ll never match Bike Auckland.
Note to Auckland: when I wrote “Not getting cyclists killed is not a priority”, I thought it sounded sad enough. But sometimes even I forget how literally true this is.
Three Long Years: doing right by John Bonner
The death in 2017 of a person on a bike at a notoriously dangerous location on Te Atatū Road, near Cellarmans Street, should have prompted action by Auckland Transport.
It didn’t. Nearly three years on, pedestrians and cyclists are still having to use an unprotected median strip, between four lanes of fast, constant traffic when trying to cross Te Atatū Road.
(…)
Go read the article. All of it.
Or maybe not if you’re planning to live in Auckland for the foreseeable future. It’s depressing.
Nicholas Street
The CBD, at least the part where all the people of more average means live, looks like a cheap-ass dystopian B movie. Dilapidated footpaths. Huge roadways everywhere. Large buildings, often with blank façades facing the street. As a human you tend to feel like an interloper in such environments.
As a former resident of this area, I have a big pile of photos that urbanists may describe as demotivational.
Today, Nicholas Street. They’re pictures from last year but I’d be surprised (pleasantly) if anything changed by now.
Decarbonising St Heliers
Well, I called it:
So what is the catch with cycling for JAFA like me?
- Horrible cultural taboo, among people but especially within transport planning.
- Not getting cyclists killed is not a priority. Did I mention taboos? Here’s another one: decreasing the amount of on-street parking.
The ink is barely dry yet, and here we go: St Heliers village safety improvements — note the first two ‘improvements’ over the previous design:
The proposed improvements include:
- No loss of car parking.
- A new car parking area on Goldie Street.
Decarbonising transport
One of the standard woke concerns today is decarbonizing transport. Get around without putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere. This has good reasons, cars are big energy users in households, comparable to space heating and hot water *1.
But how? Many solutions are proposed, but most boil down to stop wasting so much energy with driving cars around all the time.