Subscribe to RSSAuckland Transport Year 2009 In Photos: Key Events
We had a Mt Albert by-election which, thanks to the SH20 tunnel row, public transport and transport became the big issue, enabling us to discuss it with politicians:
Labour's David Shearer discusses the SH20 issue
Green's Russel Norman at an election rally as a cardboard Melissa watched
On a public open day before the SH20 motorway opened, protestors continued to fight unsuccessfully for the tunnel option:
The world battled a recession with local retail especially suffering, and we wondered if funding for public transport would be affected but the government came through with the electric rail funding:
There was mass civil disobedience when protestors, including ARC’s chairman (and me!) walked the bridge in protest at the refusal to consider walk and cycleways:
We had to endure a long bus dispute, which resulted in buses being off the road:
Bus union protest | NDU
We realised we were vulnerable when using public transport centres after a bomb hoax stopped trains and closed Britomart during one morning rush hour:
We had some frustrating signal failures, announced in true Britomart professional style:
Mayor John Banks officially declared buses had priority over Grafton Bridge when he re-opened it:
A shooting on Auckland’s northwestern motorway gave us the rare spectacle of no traffic on the motorway and we wondered if that might be the view in decades to come if climate change and fossil fuel predictions came true:
We had a few hours to swan around the flash new Newmarket station on a public open day, prior to its opening on January 18:
We got inside Queen’s Wharf’s red gates for the first time in nearly 100 years, just for a few hours. But the design contest was the usual Auckland development shambles and effectively got axed. At least we got to inspect at close hand the dreadful old building on the wharf under the eye of security guards:
And we finally got an announcement confirming ARTA’s preferred integrated ticketing tender , despite frantic last- minute lobbying from Wellington’s Snapper card which is bringing it to its Auckland buses mid - next year anyway.
2009 In Photos: Part 1
4 Comments
Nice overview!
The ‘professional’ sign suggested Waka Pacific buses for Western Line passengers? Surely that should be GO West or am I missing something here?
@James Pole: I think that was mentioned at the time in comments and the intention was for people to catch any WP bus as far as newmarket to then meet a train.
@rtc: Hear-hear, nice work and congratulations Jon on an interesting 12 months.
Another thing to mention might be the electric trains funding 114-28metre EMUs from 2013, though its harder to photograph them at this stage! Quite amazing though looking at earlier indications of maybe 30 electric units would be enough.
@James: Yes that makes sense. However why were South pax told to catch Link and West pax told to catch WP when either services would have taken them to Newmarket. I know there is two stations but both services stop near both stations!