Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown have announced a major shake-up to the transport policy decision-making powers for the region.
The Council-Controlled Organisation (CCO) of Auckland Transport (AT) will be turned into a service delivery agency by transferring strategy, policy and planning functions to the control of Auckland Council, under new Government reforms.
Simeon Brown, who is also the Minister for Auckland, announced the changes at a joint media conference in the central city at 3.30pm today.
Brown said the Government was “restoring democratic accountability” to transport decision-making in Auckland, ensuring voters could hold their elected representatives responsible for the city’s transport policies.
“Aucklanders have become increasingly frustrated with how transport decisions are made and how little their views are taken into account,” the minister said.
NO! NO! NO!
As a long suffering Auckland public Transport User, what we fucking want is a functioning public transport system so that Auckland can be a=n actual proper grown up City!
None of what Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb have suggested here will do a fucking thing towards a functioning public transport system!
It will just allow Shop Owners to complain about fucking cycle ways and stop the little progress that is being done.
It is a recipe for gridlock.
Look, Idiot 1 thinks lifting speed limits around schools will lead to efficiencies while Idiot 2 thinks selling off our Airport is prudent.
They are entrenching car privilege, they are abandoning everything else.
I pray a new Auckland Volcano will erupt under Mayor Brown’s house while Simeon is over having dinner.
A curse on them both.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that Auckland Transport is being ripped to pieces!
Like a chump I did what I was supposed to do.
I rented near transport routes and didn’t buy a car.
Like a chump.
Dear Auckland Transport – Auckland hates you.
Like a chump, I moved near a train station so my Daughter could catch the train to school.
Then you shut down the Station for 4 years – hilariously my Daughter will graduate before the fucking Train Station opens.
Like a chump.
Then you cut services…
City Rail Link: Aucklanders warned of disruption as near 100-day rail network closure revealed
…raised fares…
Auckland public transport fares to increase by 5.2% on average from February
…all while casually fucking over the entire public transport users of Auckland.
But while I cheer their hanging in the public square, I know it won’t make anything better.
The disgusting under funding of public transport in this city is a hate crime wrapped in a question shat out by a paradox.
I don’t believe I will live to see a functioning public transport network in this city ever.
Bring on the Volcano!
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
The car dealership s will happily pay more tax to fund public transportation. It’s just that nothing will get built.
… and decades of neocolonial over migration.. *crickets chirping*
Nz is a nation of gas lit hobbits .We have been told for 50 years we cant afford this or that but have been encouraged to go on a retail spending binge and to buy as many houses as we can .
The result is government $100 billion?
Private debt $5.4 BILLION .
Maybe half of the $5.4 should have been invested in schools and hospitals instead of houses .The end result would have been houses costing half of what they do today and great health care and education and a happier nz
Auckland’s under funded because it produces nothing while spending everything and as our primary industry farmers sink below the Remuera slime the Slime itself will start to feel the pinch. Aye Boys?
Didn’t Rodney Hide apply the ACY party magic pixie dust and fix Auckland two decades ago?
WTF is car privilege?
What about those cyclists? They don’t pay vehichle rego or road user ACC or or petrol tax to build roads or road user charges or or any direct money for cycleway building or get fined for wearing pink lycra. Bunch of Free Riders! 🙂
and they are all rate payers using a 500 mm wide strip of road compared to 3 mtr for a car so who are the free loaders .And while they are using that bloody bike you have more space to crawl along at 20 kph blowing cash out the exhaust pipe
Drivers pay rates just like everyone. Cyclists are not levied any direct user pays taxes. Then when they get the special cycle lanes they use them for recreation not commuting. Well they might bike commute on a sunny day but not on the more than 50 percent of the days it rains. Why are the cycle tracks almost always empty? Cycling is an inconvenient mode of transport. Just observing.
Many cyclists own a car as well so they are contributing something. Would it really make you happier if they all took their car to work and increased the traffic congestion? Before you moan about never seeing many of them that is because they silently get where they are going without any fuss while you are looking at the back window of the vehicle in front of you and wishing there was an easy way to avoid traffic queues.
Dear Sir,
What about pedestrians, bastards don’t pay vehichle [sic] rego or road user ACC or or [sic] petrol tax to build roads or road user charges or or [sic] any direct money for cycleway building or get fined for holding up automobiles at zebra crossings?
-Yours etc
Disgusted,
St Heliers.
Yeah everyone has the right to walk free, no special privilege required. Have you seen how the cyclists and ebikers are also on the footpath and zebra crossings endangering pedestrians. Just observing.
I have used public transport in Auckland(a city I now refer to as the Shitty of Fails)for nigh on 4 to 5 decades.
One time there was the Auckland Bus Company with its buses that had a habit of breaking down or losing a wheel whilst in motion. I recall being told by one commuter of seeing a wheel having fallen off an ABC bus continue rolling down a hill ahead of the bus.
As time went by we had a variety of name changes to some buses eg Stagecoach, The Yellow Bus Company, Urban Express, Hobsonville Buses, Howick and Eastern Beach and Birkenhead Buses.
Overall I got the impression the bus services in particular were a Run for Profit series of organisations with shareholders who had no interest in providing a reliable public transport service but a Exist for Profit entity.
Today in late 2024 I still use public transport but it has become an abysmal failure just like the aforementioned Shitty of Fails.
I work in a busy industrial area of Auckland where the bus service has kind of become Hit and Miss. One looks at the time-table at a bus stop whilst waiting for a bus and whilst a bus may be expected at say 4.11pm on a weekday it may not arrive till 25 to 30 minutes later if at all. If the weather isn’t too good and it’s in the winter time I could be waiting up to 50 minutes for a bus at a bus stop with no shelter.
I can only guess with the increasingly congested traffic on roads and motorways that is reason for the buses not being reliable.
It is kind of a catch 22 situation in that whilst there is that advertising to use public transport there is NOT the reliable public transport that the commuting public would depend upon. It’s all good in theory by the heads that be in AT, AC and this government but the problem has been placed into the Too Hard Basket for many decades due to Deliberate Underfunding by the Powers-that-Be.
And in reference to the trains. Sometime next year alot of the trains in Auckland will not be working because of the CRL etc.etc.etc. That will ONLY add to more road congestion and probably Frazzled Nerves of Commuters. So when this happens I think AC and the government if they possess any iota of consideration(which I very much doubt they do when all things considered that involved Profit and Money)they would make public transport around Auckland free. This has worked in other countries so why can It Not Happen here in the Shitty of Fails?????!!!!
Some commuting Aucklanders use two to three buses or trains to get to their destination even to a workplace. Many live in one part of Auckland and the commute could be Bus, Train, Bus and vice versa on the way back home. That sort of travel takes a huge hit on their pocket if they are like me a Low Income NZer in deliberately Kept Low Income NZ with a prime minister who calls us Bottom Feeders.
Now whilst the Wealthy and Sorted Selfish Luxon will say that NZers should shift elsewhere to where there there is work that is not as easy as he makes it sound like it is. It just shows how Out of Touch with Reality he is.
But I doubt we would ever see a National, ACT, NZ First or even Wayne Brown catching public transport from one part of this Failure of a City to the other. Lets face it but Luxon used a Limo to ‘commute’ not too much away from his ‘office’ in Wellington to parliament when he became leader of national. And so I would say the Lazy Attitude of the Browns Et Al” will provide public commuting around this city.
Just be prepared Luxon, the Browns etc will be seeking their Staged Photo-opportunities whenever the CRL is officially opened supposed next year.
Oops. An amendment on my part. I doubt the Lazy Attitude of the Browns i.e the sycophantic MP that is Simeon and Wayne Brown will provide any answer to a Decades Old Problem that has become Auckland public transport commuting.
They will of course Blame someone else because that is about All that they are Supposedly ‘good at’.
Where we live we have gone from a good reliable bus service that provided buses one every 20 or so minutes to one an hour. That is One Bus to say a Major Transport Centre and One Bus back home. If we miss the one an hour bus to or from say home we have to wait an hour for the next bus. That is pretty well dreadful in the winter as there isn’t much one can do at the major transport centre.
One can walk home in the pouring rain in the winter or if having done a load of shopping having to carry a huge heavy load home. Taxis and Uber is out of the question.
And so I don’t think AC, Simeon Brown, Wayne Brown or this government will give a toss about us Bottom Feeders who depend upon public transport. We may as well hire a limo and send Luxon the bill. Not that he WOULD ever pay it.
Like a chump doesn’t quite have the ring to it that “Like a Virgin” did. Worse, you can lose the latter but once a chump for “public X and the State”….