I still have plans to restart this blog as a personal one, to complement my Auckland Transport Blog. I am still working on bringing the archives across into WordPress, and then also eventually ensuring that all the other information that was buried deep in my Angelfire site is also brought across (to as much of an extent as is possible). It may still take some time.
In any case, there is some pretty big news in my life and that is that I have got a new job.
I’m looking to revive this blog as “Realistic Surreality”, so it can be a person blog to go with my Transport Blog. I am cross-posting my enormous archive from my Angelfire site (so I can eventually close that site down), which is a pretty enormous task.
Eventually I will try to get www.jarbury.net to point to here too.
This site may disappear for a while over the next day or so as I change the hosting away from WordPress.com and to a proper host.
Everything should be cleared up and working in the next day or so.
I certainly had an interesting evening last night, at the Backbenches Mt Albert by-election special in Kingsland. I hadn’t gone along to anything like this before, but it was pretty obvious even when I first arrived (quite a few hours early, somewhat by mistake as it was easier to find where it was than I had expected) that it would be interesting, and quite crowded. It was like someone had dumped together all the political media and bloggers from around the country into one place together.
After disappearing off to Handmade Burgers for a very nice dinner we came back and met up with a few friends. Rather strangely, I managed to end up live-blogging for The Standard on the whole event, which was an interesting and fun experience – although it was quite difficult to actually hear much of what was being said.
The show was pretty rowdy and the crowd really got into it, which certainly made for a fun evening.
I had another fun time yesterday doing an interview about Auckland’s transport situation on bFM. In particular, on rail electrification, PPPs, the regional fuel tax (RIP) and the Waterview Connection.
You can listen to the interview here: http://www.95bfm.com/default,191492.sm
I’ve been slowly putting together a fantasy city for a couple of years now, hand-drawn with the help of Photoshop to stitch it all together. It’s now a 361 MB photoshop document, on a canvas that’s now 5.8m wide and 3.0m high – so I’m probably never going to be able to post much of it on here.
Nevertheless, one of the most fun parts of designing that city has been coming up with a rail system to serve it. At a guess there are probably around 5 million people living in my city – and considering it doesn’t have many motorways at all, the place is pretty reliant upon its rail system to shift people around. So here it is:
For a closer look, and I do strongly suggest that you have a closer look at it to make any sense of it all, click here (11mb PDF document).
The city has 12 Metro Lines and a great pile of other commuter rail lines. The metro lines are the coloured ones and the commuter rail are the black lines that spread out from three main railway terminals.
Some (slightly out of date) details on the Metro System are included below:
I’m not really sure how I would calculate the daily usage of each line, or whether I’ve got the average speeds of each line at a realistic level (they seem quite slow).
Auckland really does seem to be the wrong city for me to live in when I look at all this! We can’t even sort out electrification.
What a fantastic day for Auckland! After 50 years of having the Auckland Harbour Bridge locked off to all those not in cars, today Aucklanders took back Our Bridge. I was right there at the front of the rally – impressed by the speeches (particularly that of Christine Rose) and heckling abuse at Wayne McDonald of NZTA. There were certainly a LOT of people there, perhaps more than the 2000 quoted by most newspapers.
For a while I thought we weren’t going to get across, as Wayne said “no” as we asked him nicely. But then we shifted down to the Curran Street onramp, found our way through a the trees and onto the onramp itself. The police were there but didn’t really try to stop us – the crowd was just too great. First NZTA blocked off the clip-on lanes and then, perhaps because they were afraid of having so many people on the clip-ons, they blocked traffic off from the centre lanes too. So we had the entire northbound side of the bridge to ourselves. Everyone was jumping and yelling, absolutely exhilirated in what we’d achieved. It was a huge egg on Mr McDonald’s face in the end, as I’m sure traffic was absolutely screwed throughout the city. If NZTA had avoided being such idiots they could have easily managed it, but in the end it was their stupidity that led to the entire northbound side of the bridge having to be closed.
Leila and I walked across and back, seeing heaps of people of all ages, with kid, dogs and push-chairs. It was a day when we all celebrated being Aucklanders and celebrated the bridge as linking the city, not dividing it. This is just the start of things to come I hope – a day when the tide turned against our automobile-centric thinking.
As Christine Rose from the ARC said: “Let’s burn fat, not oil!”
What a fantastic day weather-wise for us, and also thanks to all the Aucklanders who turned up to celebrate Our Bridge. And to NZTA, shame on you for being such narrow-minded fools, it is your fault that the whole motorway got shut off, you could have organised this to run smoothly. Shame on you.
Following on from yesterday’s post about a possible future Metro system for Auckland, I had an interseting chat with Jose Barbosa on bFM today.
The link to the interview mp3 is here.
I never quite realised that my vent about being ignored by the RMA Amendment Bill hearings organisers would become such a big issue. First, it caused a bit of a stir in online discussions at Frog Blog, then it made the NZ Herald, where I was quoted quite extensively in an article last Thursday. But now, we must have the holy grail - I was even mentioned in parliament! Unfortunately the records have messed up the spelling of my name (though I have emailed them to correct it), but it’s still pretty amazing.
Dr Russel Norman: Were all submitters from places near Auckland and Christchurch given the option to be heard at hearings in those places, rather then by teleconference to Wellington?
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: The best way to answer this question is to give to members the committee’s agreement on the hearing of all oral submissions: allocating individuals 5 to 20 minutes, depending on how substantive their submission was; allocating organisations 10 to 25 minutes, depending on how substantive their submission was; allocating form submitters a single time slot, and asking them to appear as part of a group; grouping submitters with like-minded views; and holding hearings in Auckland on 2 days, Christchurch on 1 day, and Wellington on 4 days. A total of 66.5 hours will be spent on hearing oral submissions. Staff advised that oral submitters who could not be fitted into the Auckland hearings would be scheduled for the Wellington meetings and offered video and teleconferencing if they were unable to travel there in person.
Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table an email from Joshua Arbury of Auckland, a submitter who was not notified of the Auckland hearings and only by virtue of contacting the committee and complaining was granted a hearing by teleconference.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection.
So I got a whole email that I sent to Russel Norman tabled in parliament. Here’s what it said:
Hi Russel,
I made a submission on the RMA Amendment bill and asked to be heard in person when the select committee was in Auckland. In the newspaper yesterday I read that the committee was hearing people yesterday and today. I was not contacted at all about this, which seems very odd.
To ensure that my voice was heard, I subsequently emailed the select committee organiser to complain. I have been given a teleconferencing time next Thursday evening to present my submission, and that’s great.
However, my concern is that if I hadn’t contacted parliament it is likely that I would not have been contacted about this. A lot of people who may wish to make presentations – either in person or via teleconferencing – appear to have not been contacted at all (I know of at least a couple).
I am sure that this “silencing of opinion” will concern you and I hope that you can bring it up. Everyone who made a submission and said they wanted to appear in person should be notified of their opportunity to do so. Having only two days of hearings in Auckland is a complete joke, I imagine you agree.
Kind Regards,
Joshua Arbury
Wow I really have opened a can of worms on this issue… I hope the select committee isn’t too grumpy with me when I actually get around to talking to them on Thursday evening.
I had a feeling that my concerns relating to the RMA Amendment Bill would be considered fairly important. So it’s quite cool to find myself extensively quoted in today’s NZ Herald.
Anger as critics of RMA rejig miss out
4:00AM Thursday Apr 30, 2009
Joseph Barratt
Anger is building among Auckland groups over what they see as a lack of public input into reforms of the Resource Management Act.
The past two days have seen a range of submissions to Parliament’s local government and environment select committee sitting in Auckland on proposed changes to the act.
The problem, say interested groups, is no one contacted them to let them know when or where the hearings were to be held, or when their submissions were scheduled to be heard.
Some groups missed their opportunity because of the lack of notice, and the committee has promised to hold tele-conferences so they can put their views.
The groups also claim that up to eight unrelated groups have been required to share one 20-minute slot.
The two days of hearings compare with four days in Wellington and one in Christchurch. That decision was made by the committee.
Sigrid Shayer, chairwoman of the Tree Council, believes the MPs are under too much pressure.
“We were told by the select committee that they are having trouble fitting everybody in. In some cases they are putting eight unrelated people together to share a 20-minute time slot.
“So now they are only taking people who think of calling up [to find out when their presence is scheduled]. Thankfully we did last week so we managed to get in.”Joshua Arbury, a planning consultant, filed a submission requesting to address the committee but never heard back. Last Tuesday he phoned Parliament to find when he would be able to have his say and was told he was too late.
“They managed to arrange a teleconference call for me to talk to them next week but until I called them there had been no contact.
“It’s worrying when you think around 90 per cent of submitters would have said: ‘Yes, I want to be heard.’
“Normally when you make a submission and say you want to be heard, the select committee contacts you to arrange a time to meet with them.
“I’m lucky I still get to make one through the teleconference. But my concern is for the 800 or so people who made submissions and then have not contacted Parliament and miss out.”
Eden-Albert Community Board chairman Christopher Dempsey says he knows of several organisations that have missed out, including the New Zealand Planning Institute. “They [the committee] just don’t seem to be bothering to tell anyone.”
Committee clerk Pavan Sharma admits there was one instance of eight people having to share a 20-minute slot but says it was because they all submitted similar scheduling requests.
He says it is not too late for people who made submissions to make a case to the committee. “We will be contacting the people who missed out to arrange teleconferences.”
The committee is looking at more than 100 changes to the act and is expected to report by June 19.
PROPOSALS SEEK TO:
* Streamline and simplify consent procedures.
* Provide priority (90-day) consenting of major projects.
* Reduce costs and delays.
* Speed up plan-making processes.
* Restrict anti-trade competition, vexatious and frivolous objections.
Now I just have to get my act together and make the most of the time I have next week.
