Thing is though the anti-pedestrians care not a dot. My favourite local example is the one tiny bit of the Hastings CBD that has been cut off from cars between Market St & Russell St:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/39°38’29.2"S+176°50’33.9"E/@-39.641439,176.8420221,439m/

Its been closed to cars for ages; but even though there’s apparently not been any accidents from the way the rail travels through that park because the track is not blocked off it needs redevelopment to add a fence protecting people from trains.

And as soon as that was mooted some of the retailers in that one little block, despite being surrounded by parking every other side but that 75m stretch of Heretaunga St, started campaigning to allow cars back down it again. Because apparently having full blown parking lots 50m away from them its the lack of cars outside their door that’s impacted their trading (not global trading down turns, cost of living crises and covid pandemics).

If anything the parking behind the retail sections of Hastings is way better than the street parking anyway, there’s more spaces for differently abled people, and its way easier to get in & out of the masses of actual parking lots. If you travel further east along Heretaunga St there’s a section from Russell St to Hastings St that could also easily be pedestrianised too.

Its got loads of hospitality outlets, a fair bit of retail and crucially - is surrounded with car parking. Particularly in summer in the height of the fun seasons it would be a wonderful place to allow more al fresco dining and entertaining and events* but the naysayers will never let it happen.

*They run a few night festivals through summer with temporary road closures and they are very well attended.

Its double destruction, trash the environment, and throw away a bunch of capital on dead assets.

Lots of the various provider’s networks have central routing in Akl, Wgn & (sometimes) Chc. So everything lower north island hauling back to Courtney Place doesn’t surprise me. For a fault like this one to impact i’d guess that either some redundancy had already been lost prior to this failure, or for some other reason it didn’t failover in a predictable & non-impacting way. It happens.

It would make sense in the long run but a cost of billions would cover doing something rad like making a new line running something north though Linwood, Wainoni, North New Brighton, Marshland before joining back up around Belfast. A lot of that isn’t as unfeasible as it once was due to the emptying out from the earthquake near where it would need to link through.

I found an old article I read ages ago that talks more about the network:

https://talkingtransport.com/2018/11/22/flashback-when-christchurch-had-commuter-trains/

It looks like more of the paltforms have been removed than i’d hoped, but as I say they’re not particularly complicated bits of engineering if you have the land.

Why do you think this would be billions? The track is already there, though probably not enough is double tracked so over time that would have to be done, but the proposal is really just reinstating the passenger network that was slowly downgraded & then eventually cancelled from the early 50s to the mid 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Christchurch

There were a lot of stations, and i’d wager most of these the land & surrounds are still in Kiwirail’s ownership, they may only be platforms now or not even that but looking at satellite imagery some still exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christchurch_railway_stations

Christchurch’s rail network is probably more extensive than people think, because it is where the Main North & Main South lines join and the latter goes all the way through to Lyttleton. Its almost exclusively freight of course but the rails are all still there & are still being used.

So you’re looking at a new operational company to setup, some DE units, staff and then access rights to coordinate with freight & the other passenger services and building platforms; the latter don’t need to be fancy - most of Wellington’s are just concrete at the level of the carriage and a couple of shelters.

Its the same reason its not ludicrous to suggest passenger rail in Hawkes Bay as well - even though there hasn’t been passenger trains for a couple of decades most of the old stuff is still there in some form - and most importantly is still part of the rail corridor. You just need car parking, bike racks and some larger-than-bus shelters and then figure out a vehicle type you can run frequently enough with low enough staff costs.

External costs to the general populace while all the benefits are internalised? Almost like all the dairy farming coops reaming us on butter while shitting & pissing in our rivers so much you can’t swim without getting a rash.

Just a completely moronic take. Someone should explain to Jones that Tourism is worth nearly 5x to NZ GDP than mining is. Just like chicken farmers who did the bare minimum then got burnt when supermarket customers didn’t want their shitty eggs anymore if we trash our environmental reputation we might find that mining grows at the expense of tourism.

Its hard to say, typically takes a wee while for Kiwis to admit the mistake, or experience the buyers remorse of a National government. Plus with the trend amongst western liberal democracy towards authoritarianism, the massive funding gap between the two major parties and the inevitable disinformation shitstorm ramping up even more around election time on Facebook where seemingly so many morons learn about the world its very much a 50/50 even if this lot get even more unpopular.

Its been interesting reading some of the blow-back Vance took for her language. Willis herself was not happy with the “c word” being used, nor the depiction of her “girl-maths” as a derogatory assessment of her abilities as a finance minister.

Setting aside the language used, the intent of the assessment rings true to someone who knew of Willis when she was at University (and knows people who knew her well). She wasn’t a deep thinker then, and got ahead on connection and socialising with the right people more than anything else as far as we could see.

Nobody I know from back then has seen anything since that would change their opinion either. It seems pretty obvious to me that she’s in a position of decision making far in excess of her ability to reason and understand what she is doing, or the long term implications of it.

But like most of her prior “work” experience she’s ballooned in on the recommendation of well connected others, and mostly because she can be relied upon to unleash the magical thinking of the Atlas aligned fundamentalists.

Yes, and! From me on that.* There are a lot of perhaps temporary voters who swung away from Labour as part of the hangover from the Covid times. But there’s also a large voting block made up predominantly of white, male, historically middle-class folks who have also swung right.

When i’ve engaged with them they tend to be rabidly anti-green; quite chauvinist and have a simmering racist resentment as they experience their once privileged position being eroded away. They work fairly hard, but due to high house prices and cost of goods in general are finding that they can’t get ahead in life like their parents did.

They have legitimate complaints but as is often the case are easily led to blaming the folks suffering even worse than they for their problems rather than the dominant agenda’s since the 80s that are the real problem.

*For the most part anyway, a lot of my parents generation are old fashioned Nats mostly because I come from a farming background.

I suspect it was thrown out to distract from the (removal of) pay equity bill being rushed through in 24 hours and the Regulatory Standards Bill with 0.3% of support from select committee submitters being rammed through as well.

This is one of the most deeply undemocratic NZ governments of recent time, but given Act are in it, and Willis et al are Atlas network aligned neo-liberal fundamentalists that’s no surprise as that’s the whole point of neo-liberalism.

Yeah, I am one of those who has been confused by legal tender & payment options.

https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/education/explainers/what-is-legal-tender

So it seems like that’s only a thing if its paying a debt. So as long as retailers, and/or anybody else flags clearly in advance that they don’t take cash they can refuse it.

But each transaction is still significantly more expensive in processor (and thus electricity) and slower than a normal database is right? Don’t get me wrong alternatives to VISA & MasterCard are more than welcome, I just don’t think crypto is it.

Seemingly large doesn’t necessarily mean well run. A long time ago I worked for an outfit that had around a dozen shops in one city and near half a dozen or so in others and given some of the things going on I can’t imagine they bothered getting legal advice for much other than loans :)

Its a very poor, and overtime increasingly inefficient database.

Is it still the case in NZ that you have to accept cash as payment as well? If so, even if you have VISA as well you’d still have some overhead for balancing up the till etc anyway.

Simplifying design is exactly what should be the answer to a housing crisis IMO. Nowadays we build too many houses with upper middle-class designs (and costs) because they’re the only people who can actually afford houses.

But go back to the sorts of builds from the 70s & 80s. Typically around 100-120m2, 3 bedroom, rectangular. Yeah they’re not architectural delights, but they kept families dry and warm.

Nowadays in a lot of places we’re building in-fill town houses with a similar aesthetic and I know a lot of people don’t like it but I think overall its probably a good idea. Even in smaller centres like Hastings it can work so long as we get the community spaces right as well.

Compared to a lot of builds $335k is low cost, but in terms of affordability its still stupidly expensive - and my gut feel is that the benefit of smaller, pre-fab, self-assembled, lower-quality panels here isn’t turning being passed through to the final cost. Also, is a CLT just a newfangled SIP? I wonder if a better option is a pre-assembled deliver & drop house, if Brittons etc can move around 120m2 Villas surely we can design 2-4 part new houses that can be built off site, under cover and then driven and fit together on site?

My first house was a 2 bed 84m2 ex state house built in the 40s. It was fine for a couple and a dog but being a 40s design there was a lot of space utilised in a way that modern houses don’t do. We had a large kitchen/dining, which was separated from the lounge - nowadays open plan gives the illusion of more space at the expense of cooking sounds & smells being enjoyed by whomever is watching TV :) But the advantage is they could fit a 3rd bedroom into a small home which makes it an option for families.

OK, found various sites with various estimates, but all of them suggest that this pre-fab and build yourself is probably overly expensive.

2022 - $2460 / m2 (https://www.moneyhub.co.nz/building-costs-per-square-metre.html) 2023 - $3145 / m2 (https://mortgages.co.nz/what-does-it-cost-to-build-a-house-in-nz/) 202? - $3500 / m2 (https://www.buildingguide.co.nz/planning/building-costs/)

That last one is an estimate for the very basic level, which I think is pretty close to being better than this pre-fab option.

Yeah that’s what I was looking at, its nearly $4k / m2 which is kinda crazy.

I’m trying to find papers showing cost of building over time but so far only got to this one where it was demonstrated back in 2008 (by a now merged Department of Building and Housing) that a starter house could be done for less than 1.5k/m2 - and that included labour.