Transit Trends
Short, numbers-first pieces on transport, cities and infrastructure by Andrew Collings, KA Advisory.
The 8:40 problem and why I hate school drop off
For those who know me, you will know we have four children - three adult one 15 year old at home and at school. Almost feel like empty nesters...except we still do the occasional school drop off. Today was the first day of Term 4.
Here in New Zealand we have just changed four road rules - I actually thought one was already the law!!!
On 1 October, four road rules changed in New Zealand. There wasn't too much flair just legislative changes were made based on feedback and research - probably a good thing!
Singapore just put a satellite in your dashboard...will other countries do the same?
Firstly, welcome to our 60th edition! For this one we thought we would touch on what four countries are doing with charging and changes in technology. Enjoy!
528,007 is a record. 85,289 is not. Yet.
Hope everyone is doing well. Another short CRL article this week:) Auckland's trains carried 528,007 passengers in the City Rail Link's first week (13 to 19 September). That beats the previous weekly record of 504,380, set in March 2019.
The CRL tunnel is the easy part: What Sydney, London and Leipzig tell us about the nine years after the ribbon
We are back in New Zealand this week and came home to the opening of the CRL...exciting times! This week's article focus on CRL and what other examples around the world can teach us for the city of sails.
Three Chinese cities, one missed connection, and a few things worth bringing back home
I have just come back from three weeks in China, in Guiyang, Beijing and Guangzhou. I was there through sport rather than through work, which turned out to be the better way to see a transport network.
Five bottles for a bus ride - What Surabaya’s scheme actually earns, and why the maths doesn’t work in other locations
Every few months a photo of the Suroboyo Bus does a lap of LinkedIn. Passengers boarding with bags of empty plastic bottles, paying their fare in waste. It is a genuinely good idea and the coverage is uniformly warm.
Assessed, not assumed
Most options assessments start with the answer already in them. Not deliberately. Nobody sits down to rig a business case.
ASEAN didn't beat us on EVs. It beat us to the harder question.
Wishing everyone a good start to the week and hope everyone had a good weekend. Was amazing weather here in New Zealand...although slightly cold.
Should the bus be free? Wrong question.
There's a version of this newsletter I could have written in about four minutes. It goes: Luxembourg made public transport free, ridership soared, emissions fell, why can't we be more like Luxembourg. It would have read well.
How to read a pipeline
On 9 July 2026, NZTA published its Major Transport Projects Pipeline. Depending on which headline you read that week, this was either "Transport pipeline provides certainty" or "Govt pulls flagship roading projects into the slow lane."...
The Weekend America Towed Its Robotaxis - and what it has accidently taught us about road pricing.
A slightly different article this week. We have a good transport friend in San Franciso and over the weekend we had a 20 min chat on robotaxis and what has been happening in both San Franciso and more broadly the USA.
The Pacific is quietly becoming the world's transport-resilience laboratory
Rising seas are forcing the hardest questions in infrastructure to be answered first - in the smallest places. Spend enough time working on transport in the Pacific and you start to notice the same thing on almost every island.
The road-funding problem hiding in plain sight
Every efficient new car is good for the climate and for the household budget. However, it's also quietly draining the fund that keeps our roads open.
Capping fares is the easy part. The harder question is what we're optimising for.
Labour's proposal to cap public transport at $20 a week in our main centres - and $10 everywhere else - has done what good cost-of-living policy is meant to do: it's clear, it's relatable, and it gives people a number they can picture in...
Asia is Building for Walkers and Cyclists. How Do We Make It Work for Everyone?
We spend a lot of time reading and listening to podcasts. One we listened to last week really stood out from Charlie Munger and his famous quote..."Invert, always invert" While the quote isn't originally his, he has borrowed it from the...
Moving the Pacific: Transport, Beds and Big Ideas for the Pacific Mini Games 2029
I've just come back from Rarotonga, where I had the pleasure of sitting down with several members of the team at CISNOC (the Cook Islands Sports and National Olympic Committee).
From Buses to Ride-share - Uzbekistan's Quiet Transport Glow-Up
We have spent a bit of time thinking about Uzbekistan recently. This is for a few reasons: The Stans (well at least some of them) are fast becoming very competitive host nations for sports.
The fuel shock doing what our business cases couldn't!
Just a short article this week:) While fuel prices are having a massive impact globally, it's interesting to see that this 'financial shock' has achieved more than some of the public transport business cases we have worked on.
700 Fewer Deaths a Year. What Barcelona's Superblocks Mean for How We Plan Streets in New Zealand
With a cyclone over New Zealand over the weekend we had a bit of time to think about transport planning and network resilience.