Skip to main content

The blog that's changing Auckland and what you can learn from it



I recently interviewed Patrick Reynolds and Matt Lowrie who are two of the bloggers on the Greater Auckland blog in New Zealand’s largest city.  It was a wide ranging conversation which will eventually become two Reinventing Transport episodes and one Reinventing Parking episode.

Auckland is a striking example of a rather car dependent city that has actually been changing some of its key trends and taking some remarkable steps towards becoming a different kind of city in which other transport options are steadily improving. This story will be the focus of anther episode.

Today's episode focuses on the Greater Auckland blog itself and its role in Auckland’s transport (and planning) policy conversations and debates. 

Greater Auckland is an influential example of a transport policy (and planning) focused blog/site with an advocacy mission. It is akin to sites like the Streetsblogs and Greater Greater Washington.

Greater Auckland has been amazingly effective and influential and there are lessons for transport activists anywhere.

HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE CONVERSATION.

I am a slow moving creature at the moment due to illness, so I will keep this short.
  • Interesting local circumstances in Auckland meant it filled an important gap.
  • Cooperation with advocacy group allies, Bicycle Auckland and climate-focused youth organization Generation Zero, is important. 
  • Patrick and Matt offered generous advice for aspiring advocacy bloggers everywhere. 
  • Distilling the key things from already-public information and presenting them in an accessible form (both readable and with clear visuals) is extremely valuable. 
  • GA's success has taken a lot of work but it is entirely voluntary. A slowly-changing team of passionately engaged volunteer writers keeps up their pace of one post every day.  
  • Many of GA's writers are self-taught. Yet they have been key players through through diligence and their passionate interest in the issues and in their city.
  • Transport agency insiders are big consumers of GA's output! 
  • There is also a surprisingly large public audience for GA's output, despite how wonkish it is. 
  • GA's sober, data-driven, evidence-based, non-partisan and positive tone is the opposite of click bait. But it is the right tone for influence. This includes not responding to personal attacks and sticking to the issues, arguments and evidence. 
For more detail, listen to the audio (with the player above or find Reinventing Transport wherever you usually get podcasts).

And of course, check out and explore the Greater Auckland site itself!


IF YOU LIKED THIS EPISODE

Please do recommend Reinventing Transport to any of your friends or colleagues who might be interested. Please share on social media too!

Subscribe, if you haven't already (it's free):
  • sign up to get updates by email from this site
    OR 
  • subscribe to the audio podcast (search for 'Reinventing Transport' in your podcast player app or click the symbol that looks like a wifi icon in one of the players at the top or bottom of this article).
You can also help me make time to continue this work by becoming a Patreon patron of my efforts.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Save Manila's (mostly informal) public transport!

Metro Manila depends on informal, lightly-regulated public transport which now faces a catastrophe as a result of this pandemic. The Mobility Coalition, an alliance of eight Metro Manila transport advocacy groups, has ideas on what to do. I spoke with Robie Siy who is active in the Mobility Coalition and who writes the weekly Mobility Matters column for the Manila Times.   [Scroll to the end for more details on Robie, Mobility Matters and the Mobility Alliance.] Scroll down for highlights of our conversation or listen with the player below. Click here to learn how to subscribe to this podcast.

Singapore Urban Transport: The Warts-and-All Story

Singapore's National Day is this week (9 August). So I decided to share Singapore's urban transport story - or my slightly  unusual take on it .  It is   a unique city in various ways but its urban transport policies are well worth your attention even if you don't live in Singapore. This is a warts-and-all version of the story, and it is my own view, not any kind of official one. It's also a little wonkish in parts. [Hi all you policy wonks!] But I hope to keep your interest with some surprising twists, such as: Why was the bus-only public transport system in an awful state by the early 1970s? If the buses were awful in early 1974, how was Singapore able to impose drastic increases to the cost of motoring in 1975? You will have guessed that the buses must have been drastically improved in 1974/75. But how was that achieved? Singapore urban transport enjoyed success through the 1980s and 1990s but its core social bargain (cars for the rich; decent but bas

Shaping public transport

If you care about promoting public transport, you need to understand the key choices about organising and regulating it. These choices shape the industry and they really matter. This is NOT just about privatisation versus government operation. It is more interesting than that. This edition of Reinventing Transport shares the key alternatives and gives a sense of what's at stake. The focus is buses but most of the ideas also apply more widely. Click here to learn how to subscribe to the podcast. You can either read the article below or listen to the podcast episode  (use a podcast app or the player at the beginning of this article or click HERE ) . This is just the basics, not a deep dive. If you want more gory details, then follow the links right at the end of the article. It may seem dull but bus regulation is important! [1:29] The regulatory framework sets how decisions get made and who makes those choices. It makes a huge difference for things you care about