Just when you couldn’t despise Auckland Transport or Corrections or anymore than you currently do, look at these obscenities to good taste and decency.
Corrections were going to stop the Quakers delivering flowers to Prisoners at Christmas time. This bullshit petty and spiteful decision was reversed two days ago after the public outcry but doesn’t it give insight to the way Corrections view and treat their prisoners? The meanness of it surprised even muddle Bu Zilinders so Corrections backed down. Could we as a nation possibly have reached as point where we will start to challenge redneck get tough on crime bullshit?
Looking at Labour’s new 3 election platforms one of which is pro-Police, probably not.
The second petty and spiteful thing is Auckland Transport’s decision to drop people off at bloody Manukau instead of the central city. As someone who catches this service occasionally there is a world of difference between being dropped off in the central city to being dropped off in Manukau.
It’s just another nasty little stab by Auckland Transport to the long suffering public transport travelling public announced the week before Christmas so no one notices.
Expect a slew of information to be released this week that no one wants anyone else to notice.
I presume the airport buses will also be included in dropping off and picking up outgoing/incoming flight passengers at Manukau – I can see the airport executive putting up with that – its a stupid idea. We need a proper central city bus hub like we used to have before Council/Britomart designers bulldozed it into the ground. We have never done city planning well in this country – central Auckland is a mess and not attractive to walk around in – Auckland city planners lack vision and have no idea of symmetry and design.
I remember doing inter-city busrides in the USA with Greyhound (it’s fun, but get ready to meet crackheads). The station was nearly always placed just out of range of convenience. I suspect similar reasons in each case – only rif-raff use inter-city buses, so they must at all costs be kept away from Nigel Morrison’s renovated dining precinct, as too with Britomart. You can’t enjoy shopping for a new blazer at Paul Smith with poor people crawling in and out of the Foodtown outlet across the road with their pies and fizzy drinks.
Man, I gotta go listen to some Dead Kennedys now.
Honestly, I’m a good person who wouldn’t sully the Convention zone on the times I travel from Northland on the InterCity. Actually though, let’s just get rid of poor people who have to travel by bus.
It’s not always poor people who want to travel by bus, some people like to kick back and enjoy the ride without having to run the gauntlet of our highways in their cars with maniacs riding the centre line or seriously crazy overtaking. Its such a bind getting out to the airport for out-bound passengers and often missing their flights. Equally its a nightmare struggling to get on the airport bus and into the central city. A really up-market central city bus terminal would be a real asset to Auckland. As I said at the start, why does it have to be druffs and layabouts who travel by bus – they wouldn’t be able to afford the fares and the ones I have met and known always hitch hike between cities. Get some security on board for the bus terminal, if we ever get one and that would keep it safe.
As an aside I know a couple going by train to Wellington because they didn’t want to ride the mine field of our Highway 1 – who would blame them and as I said there are lots of people who do not like flying.
You have got it!
Okay, I read the link.
Send Brett O’Riley, Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development chief executive, to Wellington to do the same job there.
Let him, with all his brilliance, decide that if you want a bus to Wellington from the north you get off in Paraparaumu.
Nomination for fuckwit of the year.
FYI – Auckland Transport hasn’t “announced” anything. While this may be news to the Daily Blog, the issue has been bubbling around since 2014.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11248556
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11247034
The Intercity buses have to be relocated because of a little thing called the new Convention Centre. AT has been working with operators to try and find a suitable site, but that just hasn’t been possible in and around the CBD due to the high cost of prime city real estate and space constraints. The Manukau Bus Interchange currently being built has been offered as a possibility as it has capacity for more buses, and is close to motorways, arterial and rail links. But in the end it’s over to the bus operators themselves as to where they want to pick up/drop off. These are fully commercial operations (i.e. do not receive ratepayer or taxpayer subsidy) and any suggestions of an alternative location would be welcome.
Wally Thomas
Auckland Transport
” new Convention Centre”
Which despite being yet another white elephant in the making, is considered so precious that it cannot accommodate the continuation of a service for people that are not “conventional”.
The convention centre itself is an indication of bad planning. Don’t use it to justify bad transport planning.
Gen Zero on the AT blog today/convinced the Spinoff it’s ok…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8zhNb8ANe8
Wannabe elite of tomorrow, hiding behind “environmental lobby group” image.
“AT has been working with operators to try and find a suitable site, but that just hasn’t been possible in and around the CBD due to the high cost of prime city real estate and space constraints.”
“Prime real estate”, come on, that is part of the agenda, of redesigning society, a more expensive pad for the better off, a cheap alternative away from them, to keep the “riff raff” out.
We know the agenda, in “the world’s most liveable city” (that is for tourists from cruise ships and rick pricks), “most liveable” has a different meaning to differing clientele.
So, the new Convention Centre (the one back-door-dealt-by-John-Key), is the culprit here?
Is this the reason John Key left, because in his hastiness to give Skycity the nod for the new Convention Centre, he didn’t read the fine print, that Skycity didn’t want grubby bus travelers turning up outside their carpark, sullying the neighbourhood and using their carpark?
Yes, yes Mr Key, we will pay for the Convention Centre, just sign here and we promise we’ll let an Intercity Bus Terminal be placed here. Nudge, nudge wink wink say no more…nod’s as good as a three-way handshake to a blind bat…
Sam Peate, InterCity general manager, said the terminal was in the way of convention centre plans.
“SkyCity is working through options for the convention centre and one of them is potentially making use of the space where the InterCity terminal is currently,” he said, wondering where in Britomart there would be room for such a facility.
Auckland Transport communications manager Sharon Hunter said: “The bus terminal was a condition of the resource consent for the existing SkyCity and its removal would require a change of condition under the Resource Management Act.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11247034.
Not to worry though, I’m sure the Resource Management Act and SkyCity’s honouring a signed back-door deal, will save the day for the Intercity Bus Travelers to Auckland eh bro’? …cough…splutter….
Labour’s having more police on the beat, after National culled their numbers, is way better than building more prisons, wouldnt you say?
I also see that Kiwirail has done the unthinkable again as they have decided against common sense and finally said they are ditching electric locomotives also right on Xmas when no ones noticing but they will be in for a rough ride with this stupidity now!!!!!
http://fw.to/SRiEY9h
Kiwirail to dump electric trains and replace with diesel on North Island main trunk line
Opposition parties call replacing electric trains with diesel a massive step backwards.
As part of SkyCity resource consent to build the SkyTower they swapped land with the Auckland City Council who were going to build a bus station on Federal St. The skytower was going to be in Symonds St. Part of the resource consent for the casino building was to provide a bus terminal. It is up to SkyCity to build a new terminal in town if they want to remove the current one.
I use this service frequently from Hamilton and it is very convenient to being picked up from motorway connections via Hobson and Nelson Sts.
The new “Auckland Unitary Plan” probably changes the whole rules set, so they may not be bound by that anymore, given new rules for Federal Street and surrounding areas.
I have used Intercity Buses on many occasions – to Hamilton, Tauranga, Whakatane, Wellington, New Plymouth (for WOMAD) and it has been hard enough to lug my baggage from St James Queen St AT stop up the hill to Sky City. I am NOT riff-raff by the way. Manukau is miles from central city and is indeed a place I wouldn’t want to be hanging round or walking, definitely not at night
It is not the flash and better off catching these buses, so the ulterior motive may be to simply shift the undesired “low class” people off and away from the front doors at Sky City, so the rich and rolling gambling and other tourists from overseas do not get a sight of them.
Let them start their journeys and end their journeys in Manukau, where many of them may live already, may be the thought.
It is like moving Auckland’s Domestic Air Terminal from the present location to Dargaville, I reckon.
As for Auckland Transport, I wonder where their promised “improvements” are under the New Network they praised so much. I was going to catch a bus from Onehunga to the city the other day, and had to wait nearly 45 minutes, late Friday afternoon, for then suddenly two buses to arrive at the same time, while in the other direction at least five buses traveled past.
Nothing has improved, traffic is still choking bus movements, and commuting takes as long as it ever has, or even longer now, also due to needs to change buses more often.
Un-f*&*ing believable!
How inconvenient do they want public transport to be?
AT and others really want to drive (pun intended) people to public transport as a LAST resort for the desperate and keep everyone else in their car while pocketing their 1 billion dollars of ratepayer money and this is the ‘brains’ of the organisation. MY GOD we’re Fucked with these Bovine Twits of incompetence at the helm.
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