Great regular reads: transport
What’s neat to read? A few go-to sources for great thinking about urban transport stuff (and to direct your civic action). A sister post to: landuse, infrastructure, housing, other neat things
In no particular order… places we go to get thought leadership on transport stuff! Please add your own hot tips in the comments.
GreaterAuckland and Greater Ōtautahi are great on so much transport stuff! While they’re city-centric at heart, they both cover things national, and both are good at regional comparisons (e.g. how the government’s funding transport around the motu). Perpetually useful: search “walking” and dive in.
All Aboard are amazing on vehicle-transport matters. And while Auckland-centric, we can learn heaps from them because Tāmaki’s Transport Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP) is strong and being fiercely fought (unlike the Wellington region’s limper, messier efforts)
The Future Is Rail – great on all things inter-regional rail and also some within-region stuff – a first stop for any rail consultation.
For local rail stuff, Scoop Wellington can be a surprisingly good place. On Wellington rail press releases or articles, look past the dorks (automatic hating on council / rates, “know the price of everything, know the value of nothing” etc etc etc) and find Regional Council chair Daran Ponter patiently bringing the facts. Commenter Dave B is also a great source of well-communicated knowledge, particularly on the more technical aspects (e.g. why trains are speed-restricted due to heat during Wellington autumn when you need a cardigan to be comfortable).
For local public transport stuff, Regional Councillor Thomas Nash is also good for layperson-friendly summaries of key data (which otherwise are usually embedded in scanned PDFs of council papers). Same health warning re trolls.
Climate Club are good for nerdy submission guides and given transport is our emissions profile’s “low hanging fruit/many cobenefits” champion, much of their guidance is about transport.
Strong Towns, while American, is a fantastic go-to resource for understanding heaps of the structural forces that shaped (and still shape) NZ transport. Mostly because in the last 60-70 years – i.e. the boom age of our urban and population growth – Niu Zillund has breathlessly followed the US approach to urban form and transport, so they’re dealing with exactly the same messed-up stuff we are.
Better Things Are Possible – nerdy and positive! Covering all things urban but strong on many systemic and market-related transport issues. And (we understand) being read in some very high places right now.
Local streets and roads stuff: NACTO (more engineer-y) and the Global Designing Cities Institute (more civilian-y) are great nerdy sources for good practice on how to make transport decent, with very good specifics and loads of nicely-done diagrams. In particular the Global Street Design Guide is a super handy resource with a humanist perspective. So, you want to figure out if a street or road can (or should) have lots of pedestrian crossings, parking, bus lanes etc etc? Go here first. Shoutout also to Roundabout, the quarterly magazine of Engineering NZ’s Transportation Group – it’s total treasure-trove of stuff being done around NZ including things people are really proud of, like good street projects, and plenty of dad jokes.
How to make change in local streets and roads
Check out all the great tactical urbanism resources on Waka Kotahi’s website from the magnificent Streets For People programme. (If you can’t get a response from emailing “please send me the Handbook”, just google its title – it’s in lots of other places around the web).
Play streets! Play Streets FTW! Lots of great advice from the top-down from Waka Kotahi but also googling “play street” with a word like “takaro” or “families” or “play trailer” or “popup” will get you many great things, many of them from around the Wellington region. Healthy Families are a great resource for thinking about playable neighbourhoods and other characteristics of a place that’s just good to live – highly recommended.
We also recommend Transport For London’s Small Change Big Impact [3.9MB PDF].
Talking with kids
Parents For Climate Aotearoa are amazing for your person-to-person, in-your-circles civics. They’re a godsend for help with how to talk with kids (actually anyone) about all this terrifying climate stuff. Like while our everyday transport systems mean “we’re all climate hypocrites now“, there’s good meaningful stuff you can do that eases the anxiety.
What are your go-to’s for illumination on transport issues? Especially for talking with kids and younger people (or indeed much older people)?
Tell us in the comments!
Banner Image credit: Vedantu
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