The Wrong Side of my Car
The blog that wants to go obsolete
A stroll on Hobson Street, in 2025
A recurring theme around here is walking in places where you’d not normally walk as a tourist, and today we revisit Hobson Street, which is basically the origin story of this blog.
It is always interesting to see if anything changed. Is it still all just parking? Well it is not Antwerpen so it must be, right?
First, Vogel lane, which we visited back in 2018.
Uh, well, the parking lot degraded a bit — contrary to popular belief parking is not cheap, and I suspect many commercial body corporates are painfully aware of that.
But if we keep walking on Hobson Street we do find a change.
On progress in Auckland in 2025
Ray Delahanty, aka Citynerd, did a video about Auckland, and wow, it has electric trains and a new underground rail tunnel. And actual bike lanes.
Yeah I liked that video. When watching it, I got a distinct feeling of nostalgia.
The vibe in the video reflects quite well the sentiment among urbanists in Auckland — up until around 2018. Even me — me — I was still writing optimistic blog posts about Auckland. And for good reason. When I arrived here in 2011, we still had diesel trains. The rails weren’t even electrified. *1 By 2015 we had modern electric trains.
City or kids?
There is one stage in your life where this urbanist stuff makes complete sense. Back when you were Young, perhaps Unmarried, and definitely still without kids.
This was once my life. I was a yuppie in Milford. All this urbanism stuff made sense. I could walk to the town centre, or to the bus station if I wanted to go to the city, and I could ride my bicycle to work. If I would have had access to car rentals or car share, I would perhaps have sold my car.
And you can probably still do this in Auckland, today. If you’re a single, or a couple without kids.