OPINION
Auckland Transport is making a very good case for its demise, with crazy and unbelievable happenings at the organisation. It seems to be at odds with its political masters.
Wayne Brown needs to start sacking some people and get control of the organisation.
Monday saw AT cancel train services because… wait for it…. it was a hot day:
Some train services have been delayed or cancelled again in Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland on Tuesday, due to overheating tracks.
As a result of trains having to go slower, trains on all lines are running less frequently, Auckland Transport (AT) said on X.
“Due to KiwiRail train speed restrictions there will be some delays and cancellations to services today,” the agency said.
It’s the second day in a row of cancellations, after several services were cancelled on Monday, also due to heat.
AT’s public transport director Stacey van der Putten said in a statement the organisation was disappointed with the disruption yesterday, due to the hot tracks.
“These speed restrictions would be unlikely to be needed today if the Auckland rail network was not vulnerable because of numerous known faults,” she added.
Van der Putten told Newshub a week ago that a whopping 35 percent of cancelled trains in January were due to overheated tracks.
Newshub
Uhmm…it was hotter last week and there were no cancellations. This is absolute rubbish: 24 degrees is hardly a scorcher. How come trains in warmer climates continue to operate?
In the UK, the rail operator explains how heat affects rails:
When Britain enjoys a summer heatwave, rails in direct sunshine can be as much as 20°C hotter than air temperature. Because rails are made from steel, they expand as they get hotter, and can start to curve this is known as ‘buckling’.
Most of the network can operate when track temperatures heat up to 46°C – roughly equivalent to air temperature of around 30°C – but rails have been recorded at temperatures as high as 51°C.
How we keep trains running in high temperatures
Network Rail
When our remote monitoring systems tell us that a section of track might be expanding too much and could cause problems, we introduce local speed restrictions. Slower trains cause lower forces on the track – this reduces the chance of buckling.
At 24 degrees in Auckland, this isn’t even close to reaching a critical point and, as has been pointed out, there were four days last week hotter than the days AT closed the line. Someone is telling fibs.
Then we find out that in just one suburb, Pt Chevalier, AT is installing 28 $500,000 raised pedestrian crossings.
Auckland Transport (AT) is proceeding with at least 28 raised pedestrian crossings as part of a $29.3 million cycling and road improvement project between Point Chevalier and Westmere.
Following revelations that crossings are costing up to $500,000, AT launched a review last month for opportunities to minimise the number and the cost of crossings.
Last month, the Herald revealed AT has chewed through $6m on 12 signalised crossings at an average cost of $500,000, and Mayor Wayne Brown raged over the cost of a $490,000 crossing near his Ponsonby home, saying AT had “lost the plot”.
“That’s not a new pedestrian crossing. It’s taking an old pedestrian crossing and spending $490,000 turning it from a pedestrian crossing into a pedestrian crossing, which was working fine,” Brown said.
When it comes to the Pt Chevalier/Meola Road/Westmere project, AT said 28 of the 29 raised crossings are proceeding unchanged, and just one crossing on Pt Chevalier Rd is being reviewed from a raised to a zebra crossing.
“Our review will carefully consider safety levels and performance,” AT said.
The 29 crossings are situated on main and side roads the length of the project – 15 on Pt Chevalier Rd, seven on Meola Rd, and seven on Garnet Rd.
NZ Herald
What the actual hell! 28 crossings at $500,000 a pop, just in Pt Chev? That’s $14 MILLION for pedestrian crossings, in just one suburb!
AT needs to tell us how many pedestrians have been run over, injured or killed in Pt Chev which requires such a massive expenditure to be incurred to calm the traffic in the suburb. Is there a preponderance of hoons speeding dangerously or have Russell Brown and Simon Wilson been causing havoc with their battery-powered bicycles, complete with pannier bags?
It’s insane. Wayne Brown better grab someone at AT by the scruff of the neck and get that organisation under control and fast, otherwise come the election next year we will be flushing him as we did to the last Brown who was an idiot.
The time for excuses is over. He’s been the mayor for a year, and he’s done stuff all. Aucklanders deserve better. Maybe Simon Bridges will put his hand up. He’s a former Transport minister too, so he’d know a thing or two about this issue.
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