Transport and climate action
Road transport is the greatest single source of greenhouse gas emissions
With every fibre and electrified-transit solution
Aucklanders once took an average of more than 400 public-transport trips per year. In 1945, with a sixth of the population, Aucklanders were taking nearly 120 million trips, compared to today’s paltry 90 million boardings. Not that all Aucklanders should be…
read more
Future Mahurangi transport network feedback
Mahurangi Action’s feedback pro forma on Warkworth’s future transport network is good to go. Members, and readers generally, are warmly encouraged to use the pro forma as-is or as a starting point for their own feedback, and to put their oars in…
read more
This might have been one more for the roads
September’s town-hall talk is now cancelled, and possibly the balance of this year’s. The September slot was pencilled in for the topic of paedophilia awareness—apparently paedophile networks operate locally—but no subsequent response was…
read more
Reimagining the roads of Mahurangi
Roads, historically, were not about cars. They were not even about private vehicles, until the last 100 of human civilisation’s 5500-year existence. So perhaps the Labour Party’s pandering to Penlink is understandable, as it seeks to wrest more of the...
read more
Climate-reaction rubber meets the road
New Zealanders have just demonstrated the perfect problem, perfectly. After three decades of denial and procrastination, including nine years of Clark-led Labour government inaction, Jacinda Ardern has announced transport policy timidly…
read more
Triggering automatic change to green
Most Warkworthians are unhappy that their town is now a satellite growth centre. Had a concerted campaign been waged against it, and unlimited funds spent fighting it, Auckland Council may have been forced to rethink. But that would not have…
read more
Tidal-river power and grid electricity
Most public transport in Aotearoa is fossil-fuel powered. But that would not excuse the key component of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail, the ferry, being fossil-fuelled. Fortuitously, as described in Minimum Impact 100% River-Powered, a fossil-fuel-free…
read more
Democratise coalitions and lists now
Half voted for change, and half for the status quo. The 44.4% who voted for the New Zealand National Party, and the 0.5% who voted for what remains of ex-Labour-finance-minister Roger Douglas’ rebel act party, are now represented by 57 opposition…
read more
Urgent need for nonpartisan Brown transport plan
There are mandates, and mandates. The mandate fairly claimed by the newly created Auckland Council’s inaugural mayor, Len Brown, was for building the city rail link. However, since Len Brown’s election, a National-led government has been…
read more
Prime Minister asking for it but oblivious to criticism
New Zealanders have been told to put up or shut up: “Show me how you’d go faster? Show me how you’d do anything different?” Told by their Prime Minister, John Key, no less—in response to widespread incredulity that a ship with 1700 tonnes of…
read more
Shweeb and/or trail-with-rail saving rail
Aotearoa must urgently re-invent its tourism model. Currently it is heavily dependent upon air travel, which will increasingly become cripplingly expensive thanks to peaked oil and user-pays for greenhouse gases. Aside from the obvious need for more…
read more
Time to submit to better transport
It can be done online, up until midnight Friday 28 January. Feedback is sought by the New Zealand Transport Agency regarding the indicative route of the Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway. Submissions that a motorway should not be built…
read more
Rodney seat shapes up as green transport battleground
Possibly not panning out exactly as the National Party planned. By freeing up the Rodney seat, Lockwood Smith stated he was facilitating more firepower to be directed to the defence of the planned Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway—his position as…
read more
Future of Aotearoa is nuclear visits
Blanket-banned for nearly all the right reasons. In 1984, when nuclear warships were banned from visiting Aotearoa, the French military was to continue testing nuclear weapons beneath Moruroa and Fangatafoa for more than 11 years. And the…
read more
Google and the Shweeb sounds of success
The first section would run to the Wilson Cement Works. In time, it could run between Snells Beach and the Mahurangi College. And then form a coastal ‘walkway’ from Waiwera to Warkworth. Largely unnoticed by New Zealanders, the Shweeb is set to…
read more
Smarter agency models gagging for it
The New Zealand Transport Agency must be immensely bemused. A community reacts in outrage to the prospect of being denied direct access to a proposed motorway, when it should be erupting in righteous indignation at the absurdity of…
read more
Energy and the dammed Mahurangi
Dam the Mahurangi River and generate electricity. Such a proposal would face fierce opposition. But what if the dam was already in place; built more than a century since. The dam, otherwise known as the Wilson cement works weir, is located almost…
read more
Sustainable energy without the hot air
Bill Gates puts it as well as anyone: “If someone wants an overall view of how energy gets used, where it comes from, and the challenges in switching to new sources, this is the book to read.” Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air was written by physicist…
read more
Well-spotted that big riverboat wheel
Master mariner Melvyn Bowen warmed up his audience with a quiz: ”Where am I?” he asked of the dozen or so who turned out on Friday evening to hear from the commercial sail aficionado. The first image of the presentation was of Melvyn stood…
read more
Commercial sail – the way it could be
After thousands of years powered by sail, commercial navigation switched over completely to fossil fuels. Since then, the revival of commercial sail has proved to be a curiously elusive goal. But the same reason electric cars are making a stampeding…
read more
Low impact design that’s got to (be) smart
In a perfect world, economic drivers would be indistinguishable from environmental drivers. Readers of the Mahurangi Magazine will no doubt range from climate-change sceptics, all the way through to those in the we’re-already-dog-tucker…
read more
Some capping and trading but an electric redemption
This piece was going to be titled: Too Little, Too Slowly—Pray it’s Not Too Late. But then it would have been doing the Labour government’s announcement on climate action a huge disservice. And it wouldn’t be doing any better than the New…
read more