The street causing most grief to Aucklanders
Is there any place in Auckland more likely to make people angry than Quay St? In the last few weeks I've been shouted at by four different people about it. The roadworks are interminable. No one gets told anything. They're just digging holes and filling them in again. Who asked for this anyway? Mostly, it comes down to one thing: why does it now take so long to drive across town? I went down to ask Auckland Transport (AT) about all this, and we did a walk around. The construction work on Quay St itself is an AT project, but the big Commercial Bay retail/office development, a private venture, is also highly disruptive. Ports of Auckland (POAL) is building a new multideck "car-handling facility" at the head of Bledisloe Wharf and the Auckland Design Office, a council agency, has a hand in things too. New hotels and other high-rise buildings are under construction, and the CRL is massively disruptive all down Albert St and especially at the intersection with Customs St. It's a problem, for sure. But it's a good problem. Auckland is booming: growing the economy, fixing infrastructure problems, making itself a better city. And it's not just Auckland. This is the condition of living in any thriving city now: road cones are with us always. Quay St was reduced to two lanes just after Christmas. It was done with a non-notifiable consent, which angered some of the affected parties. But it's hard to blame AT, if you ask me. They needed to get moving, because the America's Cup in early 2021 imposes a real deadline on all construction in the area, the seawall work needed to be done anyway, and any other approach would have caused extensive delays. That's what happens with the city's development projects. Some companies and groups of individuals have genuine fears for their own livelihood or wellbeing, and they lodge objections. That's good. It's what should happen. But others get in on the act too. Some of them simply want to stuff up the work. Others are after leverage: they want something out of it. Perhaps a payoff so they go away. Perhaps a special thing built for them as part of the project. If they're a developer, perhaps they want council support for their own project somewhere else, in return for withdrawing their objection to this one. It's a failure of vision, of courage, of leadership. And the crowds for the America's Cup are coming.
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Poll: If we want to reduce speeding, what do you think actually changes driver behaviour? 🛻🚨🚓
In the Post's article on speeding penalties, the question is asked whether speeding fines are truly about road safety, or are they just a way to boost revenue for the Crown?
What do you think? Should speeding motorists receive speeding fines or demerit points?
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37.1% The sting of a fine (Money talks!)
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62.9% The threat of demerit points (Nobody wants to lose their license!)
Energy Resilience & Security
“India is facing a highly precarious situation for its energy security if the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s most critical oil shipping chokepoint – remains closed amidst the escalating Middle East crisis.”
Can you imagine how easy it is to choke New Zealand’s supply of oil & gas if it ever found itself in a conflict situation? How easy it is to blow up a 1 Billion Dollar LNG facility? Evan as a non-combatant like India you can be badly effected.
How about distributed solar installations on tens of thousands of roofs? Supported by distributed wind and tidal power?
Alternative energy won’t make companies rich - but it beats coal, oil, gas on not only price but security, resilience (just ask Ukraine), job creation, and the environment hands down.
It’s a no-brainer - unless you are a profit-oriented used car salesman … how did NZ ever end up with him? Nearly as bad as Trump.
Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
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