I want a better catastrophe

I just spent the better part of an hour listening to Andrew Boyd walking through his beautiful, poignant, empathetic and stark flowchart of the climate crisis. It challenges my own biases and denial about the scale of this challenge. Even though I live and breathe this stuff, I still find

Wellington’s bike lane buildout is at risk. We can do something.

If you care about Wellington taking climate action, you have to tell our city councillors ahead of a vote on Thursday. Contact councillors to support climate action On Friday last week, Wellington City Council released a range of recommendations to slow rates increases. At the moment, the median rates bill

Digging deep on bus replacements

You're not going crazy. Bus replacements are getting worse. Over the past couple of months, I've been collecting official information from the Greater Wellington Regional Council about our train services. They've provided data on how many people were on each train service and bus

LGOIMA: Bus replacement demographics, Jan 2024 to Dec 2025

Snapper tag-on data for Metlink rail replacement bus services and scheduled rail services across Wellington, broken down by fare type and line (Jan 2024–Dec 2025).

LGOIMA: Every bus replacement from July 2017 to January 2026

Greater Wellington Regional Council has released monthly bus replacement service counts for all four Metlink rail lines from 2017 to January 2026, broken down by planned and unplanned disruptions, in response to this January 2026 LGOIMA request.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Your political guide to restoring Wellington’s trams

As recently as 2022, over half of Wellingtonians wanted trams to return to our streets. For decades, the people of Wellington have supported better transport choice. A revitalised Golden Mile. Improving rail. Bringing back the trams. Citizens across the capital want a place that’s tight-knit, affordable, and fit for

On a culture of oui

Henry Cooke, writing for the Post: But you’ll note from my examples above that we don’t need to look away from democracies or the global north to find places that can build things quickly - we just need to look at countries where people don’t speak English,

LGOIMA: Metlink daily rail patronage from 2018 to August 2025

Greater Wellington Regional Council has released detailed daily rail patronage data spanning 2017/2018 to August 2025, including individual trip high-count statistics for all train lines, in response to this September 2025 LGOIMA request.

LGOIMA: Wellington City Council Parking Capacity

Wellington's central area contains approximately 13,750 publicly accessible car parks, including 4,096 on-street spaces, according to this February 2026 LGOIMA response from Wellington City Council.

Why trams should rebuild Wellington

🚋This is part two of my series on Wellington trams. Part one covered our history, part three will tackle the politics. It's a modest Monday morning in 2035. Derwent Street is glistening in the drizzle. You walk through your apartment block's central courtyard and out towards

AA Insurance is temporarily halting new insurance in Westport

Kate Newtown, writing for RNZ: AA Insurance, which has approximately half a million New Zealand customers, wrote to Buller District Mayor Chris Russell at the very end of 2025 to tell him the company would halt new business, home and landlord insurance policies for properties in the 7825 postcode, which

Fiscal conservatives should be clamouring for cycleways

Hayden Donnell, telling it like it is for the Spinoff: During his tenure as transport minister, Brown made it clear that value for money was his top priority in funding decisions and that’s continued under his successor, Chris Bishop. Given that, you’d think cycling investment would stand out