To: All media From: Sarona Iosefa – 12 May 2004

Criteria to help prioritise traffic on city’s busiest roads accepted

The Council is taking another step toward introducing public transport-priority measures on some of the city’s busiest routes. One of its committees has accepted the proposed criteria by which the citywide routes are to be selected.

The criteria accepted by the Sustainable Transport and Utilities Committee at its regular meeting yesterday will identify which routes first receive public transport-priority treatment. The criteria will be used to identify routes where:

-bus arrival times along the route are unreliable
-bus delays relative to car trips put people off buses
-they are served by a number of bus routes
-there are high numbers of passengers on buses
-providing public transport priority may provide additional benefits for other road users

Other factors that must be taken into account are road safety, practicality, impact on adjacent land uses, and ongoing maintenance and operational liabilities.

Council Transport Planner, Robert Woods, says bus-priority measures would help provide a more reliable, faster and convenient public transport system citywide that would offer a real alternative to many car trips. Council long-term aims are to encourage people to use public transport while discouraging single-person car travel.

Public transport priority measures are part of a Council Citywide Public Transport Priority Plan to have at least three corridors with priority in place by June, 2006. The Plan will outline how bus-priority corridors are to be developed, introduced and appropriately enforced.

The citywide plan should be presented for Council adoption in July, says Mr Woods, and part of this process will include consultation with community boards.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>