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Patrick Reynolds is very much a PT advocate. His solution would be to throw billions at the rail line now. He is very anti-car pro cycling. So he's not against Te Huia but the fact that it is done on the cheap.
I often disagree with Reynolds' positioning but in this instance I agree that this is a pilot set up to fail.
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
Patrick Reynolds is very much a PT advocate. His solution would be to throw billions at the rail line now. He is very anti-car pro cycling. So he's not against Te Huia but the fact that it is done on the cheap.
I often disagree with Reynolds' positioning but in this instance I agree that this is a pilot set up to fail.
I never understood how this got past the sniff test. I would have gone along with the idea of the pilot (build it and they will come) but insisted that it would only go ahead if the service went all the way to the city. Schedules/stops/speed all things that could be refined later. A 2 hour train to Auckland would be the tipping point I reckon.
As for the tweets most employment contracts or employee expectations these days have something about not making public comments that could appear to be on behalf of the business.
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@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:
I often disagree with Reynolds' positioning but in this instance I agree that this is a pilot set up to fail.
Yep, and $90M down the drain. This is an ideologically driven political boondoggle.
@crucial said in NZ Politics:
As for the tweets most employment contracts or employee expectations these days have something about not making public comments that could appear to be on behalf of the business.
If you're on a board, criticising the Board decisions is a short term move. He was an interesting choice, with little (no) governance experience
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@nzzp said in NZ Politics:
If you're on a board, criticising the Board decisions is a short term move. He was an interesting choice, with little (no) governance experience
but, but Twyford said "Patrick Reynolds brings much needed expertise in urban and public transport to the NZTA Board".
Based on Twyfords criteria we should all be shoo in's for everything from AB coach to Minister of Finance. Reynold's expertise starts and finishes with being an avid self-promoter and busy poster on the Greater Auckland blog site.
Memo to Mark Robinson - I'm still available!!!!!
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I'm laughing except not laughing cos nzta is such a permanent clusterfuck, but seriously, who in their right mind would opt for a three hour diesel train with baggage cart switcheroo included commute. And only twice a day. It's bloody 2021. We are supposedly a green and innovative nation, but are several decades behind everyone else in rail transport. It should not be this hard or this slow to get people from Hamilton to Auckland.
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@paekakboyz said in NZ Politics:
@mokey so what you're saying is they are doing it on purpose
The application to put gates at the bottom of the Bombays to DNA test for inbreeding was disallowed.
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@paekakboyz masochism 101
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@paekakboyz said in NZ Politics:
@mokey so what you're saying is they are doing it on purpose
The classic NZ planning approach to transport (and some other things), do such a half pie job of something so that it "proves" that it was the idea itself that was bad.
Sometimes it feels like 'do anything to avoid doing something well'...
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@donsteppa said in NZ Politics:
@paekakboyz said in NZ Politics:
@mokey so what you're saying is they are doing it on purpose
The classic NZ planning approach to transport (and some other things), do such a half pie job of something so that it "proves" that it was the idea itself that was bad.
Sometimes it feels like 'do anything to avoid doing something well'...
there's the other approach, which is if uptake isn't what was expected, it's because we didn't do enough, or spend enough. Ideology trumps pragmatism and real world testing of ideas.
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@donsteppa said in NZ Politics:
@paekakboyz said in NZ Politics:
@mokey so what you're saying is they are doing it on purpose
The classic NZ planning approach to transport (and some other things), do such a half pie job of something so that it "proves" that it was the idea itself that was bad.
Sometimes it feels like 'do anything to avoid doing something well'...
I'm reminded of a saying of an old colleague of mine: it's not an Engineering problem, it's a money problem. You can fix any problem by throwing enough money at it
We don't want to spend the money to do it properly, so end up wasting what we do spend by not doing it properly.
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@booboo said in NZ Politics:
@donsteppa said in NZ Politics:
@paekakboyz said in NZ Politics:
@mokey so what you're saying is they are doing it on purpose
The classic NZ planning approach to transport (and some other things), do such a half pie job of something so that it "proves" that it was the idea itself that was bad.
Sometimes it feels like 'do anything to avoid doing something well'...
I'm reminded of a saying of an old colleague of mine: it's not an Engineering problem, it's a money problem. You can fix any problem by throwing enough money at it
We don't want to spend the money to do it properly, so end up wasting what we do spend by not doing it properly.
We should be pound wise. But we are penny foolish. For a country renowned for innovations we just fail to see the big picture on major infrastructure more often than not
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@mokey said in NZ Politics:
@canefan yep. We are the country who goes ooooh, can't spend 200 million, that sounds like too much. So we end up budgeting 50 million, get a turkey, then spend 500 million fixing various turkey issues for the next 20 years.
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@canefan said in NZ Politics:
we just fail to see the big picture on major infrastructure more often than not
A throw back to "think big" or "sink big" depending on your politics maybe, and the subsequent wage freezes and anti inflationary measures. I was too young at the time to fully see what was going on but I remember carless days and all the talk from the adults and have read about it all since.
Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson had plans for a proper AKL rail system as well. 40 years ago (that they are now doing). Couldn't get the funding then, but it probably would have saved billions in terms of time, traffic, roading, etc. for the whole region over the last 4 decades.
Looking back at the list of the Muldoon projects it was quite successful (in terms of infrastructure) and we are still getting the benefits, but the debt was horrendous and was a massive overspend that took years to get over economically. Had the energy crisis of the 70's continued, as was expected, it probably would have been more accepted at the time. Climate change wasn't an issue and it was economics that held the floor, but having green energy and not being dependent on imported fossil fuels was another win even now.
One of the projects was electrification of railways and and power to supply them (along with the rest of the country).
Then we run a train from AKL to Hamilton using diesel 40 years later. Sigh.
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@snowy said in NZ Politics:
@canefan said in NZ Politics:
we just fail to see the big picture on major infrastructure more often than not
A throw back to "think big" or "sink big" depending on your politics maybe, and the subsequent wage freezes and anti inflationary measures. I was too young at the time to fully see what was going on but I remember carless days and all the talk from the adults and have read about it all since.
Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson had plans for a proper AKL rail system as well. 40 years ago (that they are now doing). Couldn't get the funding then, but it probably would have saved billions in terms of time, traffic, roading, etc. for the whole region over the last 4 decades.
Looking back at the list of the Muldoon projects it was quite successful (in terms of infrastructure) and we are still getting the benefits, but the debt was horrendous and was a massive overspend that took years to get over economically. Had the energy crisis of the 70's continued, as was expected, it probably would have been more accepted at the time. Climate change wasn't an issue and it was economics that held the floor, but having green energy and not being dependent on imported fossil fuels was another win even now.
One of the projects was electrification of railways and and power to supply them (along with the rest of the country).
Then we run a train from AKL to Hamilton using diesel 40 years later. Sigh.
Be thankful it's not steam
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@snowy said in NZ Politics:
@canefan said in NZ Politics:
Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson had plans for a proper AKL rail system as well. 40 years ago (that they are now doing). Couldn't get the funding then, but it probably would have saved billions in terms of time, traffic, roading, etc. for the whole region over the last 4 decades.
There are a handful of buildings in central Auckland that were constructed at the time with the ability to have a rail platform underneath them I believe.
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@mokey said in NZ Politics:
@canefan yep. We are the country who goes ooooh, can't spend 200 million, that sounds like too much. So we end up budgeting 50 million, get a turkey, then spend 500 million fixing various turkey issues for the next 20 years.
We could be like London where an intial GBP15B project (Crossrail) had all the money it needed but still blew out by another 4 billion and will be 4 years late.
We aren't the only screwups.
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