Gov- General Talks Up PT

 

Great to find a public transport advocate in the Governor-General, even though he must remain non-political.

Today he opened the new New Lynn transport hub along with transport minister Steven Joyce, Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey and ARTA chairman Rabin Rabindran.

This was the last such function for ARTA before it goes out of operation as part of the local body reform changes.

Sir Anand Satyanand spoke about Auckland’s traffic woes which lead to frustrations and time lost along with the effect of vehicle fumes on the environment.

The Governor-General quoted from former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan who had said at a conference:

‘The future of humanity lies in cities: in good urban governance and sustainable urban development. We need to make the urban revolution work for people, not against them.’

The Governor-General said as part of a plan to widen the transport options for Auckland, the new transport hub was a further step towards that vision. It was also a further step towards providing people with “the modern 21st century public transport network that they deserve and have long anticipated.”

He said it was good to see the upwards trends in public transport use in Auckland which was taking cars off the road and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“All of this has been a dead weight on the productivity of Auckland,”he said.

He added that “given Auckland’s built upon landscape,adding additional rail lines even with existing rail corridors is not easy as the double tracking on the Western Line has shown and that is why transport hubs such as this one is so important.

“By connecting buses and trains. this is a further step towards what pundits call seamless public transport where moving from one type of public transport to another becomes simple and easy.”

He talked nostalgically about how as a young student he used Auckland rail to get to the Westfield freezing work for summer work and how different the trains were now -and the service.

Transport minister Steven Joyce said getting things right in Auckland was crucially important and there was nothing more important than transport.
He said the motorway improvements such as the Western Ring Route would also provide improvements for the people of Waitakere.
“Now the reality is that with this city projected to grow to 2m people over the next few years, we need all the modes to get this city moving and keep it moving . It’s crucially important.
“That’s why I’m excited about these sort of projects and the roading projects we’ve been opening as well.”
He said the urban development side of the new New Lynn transport hub was also exciting.

Exciting day for New Lynn and Waitakere

More than anyone, this was Bob Harvey’s day as the person who has driven this project.

He backgrounded the long process to get to where they were today.

Bob Harvey is not standing for the supercouncil but has scored a job running Auckland’s waterfront CCO and if he can do miracles with Auckland’s waterfront as he has for New Lynn, that’s a very promising thing for the city.

NEW LYNN OPENING FULL COVERAGE CONTINUES

Video- Old bus depot demolished

Labour hijacks Steven Joyce transport hub opening ceremony

How new transport hub looks

What next for New Lynn?

New Lynn construction in photos - series starts here

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5 Comments

 
  1. rtc says:

    Joyce sounds exactly like Banks did when he opened all those train stations in the early 2000′s and just rattled on about how important the Eastern Motorway was, we really do have some dinosaurs running NZ.

  2. Matt L says:

    I don’t think that Joyce has opened a train station yet without mentioning a stack of roading projects.

  3. Matt L says:

    Oh look, the Herald actually did a story on it. Likely only because of the GG’s comments than anything. Also couldn’t they have got a photo of the station or something.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/local-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=250&objectid=10675949

  4. Cam says:

    Ha i love the way Joyce talks about “all modes” which is just shorthand for motorways. His empty rhetoric and claiming of other government’s achievments in PT is beginning to wear thin.

  5. Tony James says:

    I see the Governor-General’s speech is on his website here: http://www.gg.govt.nz/node/3253

 

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