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.

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!

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.

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.

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...

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...

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).

With a cyclone over New Zealand over the weekend we had a bit of time to think about transport planning and network resilience.

"Filling up at the petrol station is definitely becoming painful" - my wife said to me as we filled up our car yesterday "anything you think can realistically be done in the short term...or long term for that matter?" Good question and one...

As the Winter Olympics return to Italy in February 2026, the Milano–Cortina model will test something the transport community has long known: large‑scale sporting events don’t succeed because of infrastructure alone — they succeed through...

Over the last few years, I’ve worked across two worlds: transport planning and sports governance. In both, I’ve seen the same pattern. When everyday movement drops, the costs compound. Sport isn’t just stadiums and scoreboards.

We have spent the last three weeks riding around Thailand on our bikes. It was my wife's idea. Mixing work meetings, the SEA games and some holiday time together.

“Every hour stuck in traffic is an hour lost to productivity, family time, and economic growth.

Congestion charging is no longer a distant concept for New Zealand—it’s on the legislative books, and Auckland is set to lead the way. The goal? Like most transport goals - Reduce congestion, cut emissions, and make urban mobility smarter.

After spending a week in Beijing for sport, and now back in New Zealand, I realized what a shock cars travelling through pedestrian crossings was - even when the pedestrian signal was green and the traffic light was red.

We have the pleasure of being in Kaunas, Lithuania this week for World Pentathlon Executive Board meetings, and a World Championship.

We are currently working on a Heavy Vehicle EV project and it got us thinking about the impacts of trucks on or networks.

Today we thought we would touch on the age-old topic of trying to build our way out of congestion. Old school traffic engineering views still hold strong to this day - eg a view that more lanes equal less traffic or less congestion.

We are a fan of Bus Rapid Transit, even though our hometown is Melbourne which has one of the largest Light Rail (tram) systems in the world!

New Zealand, as many other developed and developing countries around the world are, is struggling with congestion, constrained corridors and limited available funds.