The New Zealand Transport Agency is proposing to build a new road near where I live.
This coming Saturday is a general election in New Zealand, so I emailed the candidates for my electorate and the neighbouring one to check what their views were. Here are the responses I received, which I'm publishing in the hope that other people might find them useful when deciding who to vote for.
In each case, I first looked for an email address for the candidate on the party website, and if I couldn't find an address listed for the candidate there, I tried googling for <candidate name> <party name> email. In a couple of cases I failed to find an address for a candidate, which I find disappointing.
I then sent an email with subject line "Petone - Grenada link road" and the body:
I'll keep it brief as you're probably rather busy this week, but I was wondering what your views were on the proposed Petone - Grenada link road, and what you would do about it if elected?
- Cheers,
- Olly
I sent most of these on Monday night NZ time (I was actually in Buenos Aires airport with several hours to kill), and I'm writing this early Thursday evening, so in most cases the candidates have had three working days to respond.
I was emailing from my phone and managed to truncate Trevor Mallard's email address, so that email bounced, but I got home to find a form letter from him which explicitly addressed the link road, so the quote below is from that.
I also discovered while compiling this post that I'd missed two candidates - I've emailed them and will update this if I hear back, but note that they haven't really had a chance to respond yet.
Candidate | Party | Response |
---|---|---|
BISHOP, Chris | National Party | Briefly, I am supportive of the road. It will reduce congestion on the way to and from Wellington and also Tawa/Porirua, increase resilience, and help drive economic growth in the valley and wider region. It has a benefit cost ratio of 4, meaning for every $1 invested, there are $4 worth of benefits. It is supported by the Hutt City Council and also has widespread support in the community. Funding decisions and timelines are over to the NZTA. What I can do as local MP is encourage them to get on with it, make sure that locals are consulted properly about the exact route that the road takes, and their concerns are heard, listened to, and acted upon. That's what I intend to do if elected. |
COPELAND, Gordon | Conservative | I support both that road and the cross valley link and will lend them my support if elected. |
MALLARD, Trevor | Labour Party | The response I've received to the Petone-Grenada link after door knocking Korokoro/Petone residents has been overwhelmingly negative. Locals don't want increased traffic on The Esplanade and don't want to destroy the beauty of the Korokoro valley. I agree with the Mayor that the Cross-Valley Link is a much higher roading priority for the Hutt Valley, as it will reduce congestion and improve travel times. I'm committed to an assessment of roading priorities in the region, with a view to funding upgrades on SH58 as well as the Melling and Haywards interchanges. |
O'SULLIVAN, Grae | ACT New Zealand | No response so far |
PAJAK, Jan | Independent | No response so far |
PARORO, Mataroa | New Zealand First Party | I'm not on favour of the Grenada link and will not support it. However I will support the cross valley link if elected. |
STONYER, Dave | United Future | Unable to locate email address |
WALKER, Holly | Green Party | Automated-reply only |
Candidate | Party | Response |
---|---|---|
ANDERSEN, Virginia | Labour Party | Support Petone-Grenada link road. The region needs it. Some questions as to where it cuts through i.e. folk in Takapu Valley not that fussed. Process for consultation has been shoddy. I've attended the local meetings and it looks as though NZTA will have to go back to drawing board as to where it cuts through as those people potentially affected have not had adequate information. |
BRUNNER, Michael | Conservative | Unable to locate email address |
DUNNE, Peter | United Future | No response so far |
FITZPATRICK, Sean Daniel Thomas | ACT New Zealand | I am afraid I know very little about the project and as such it would be imprudent to comment in any way. Party policy is that roads and other infrastructure is, clearly, vital for economic development - however blanket policies on 'more roads - no more roads - more rail' etc are more about ideology then practicality so any and all proposals need to be dealt with on a case by case basis. |
HAMILL, Sue | Independent | Emailed later than others, not responded yet |
HUDSON, Brett | National Party | No response so far |
STEEMSON, Alida | Democrats for Social Credit | Emailed later than others, not responded yet |
WOODLEY, Tane | Green Party | The Greens are opposed to any more new motorways at a time when traffic volumes are stagnant. We think that fuel prices will rise significantly in the near-mid future, as peak oil production is reached, further depressing traffic, and making new motorways a waste of resources. We would prefer to invest in substantially improving our public transport networks, investing in road upkeep and in new cycling and walking routes. The main advantage I can see to the Petone-Grenada link is in earthquake resilience, as it provides a transport route between the Hutt and the Karori-Plimmerton area. While this is a real advantage, it might be cheaper to invest in strengthening SH58 over the Haywards instead, to provide the same options. So in short, both I and the Greens are opposed to this road. If elected, I would review the case for it (road volumes, cost, earthquake relience, impact on residents and environment), and unless it really stacked up, I would try to have it cancelled. |
Posted in general by Olly Betts on 2014-09-18 18:29 | Permalink
Slide 5 from my nostalgia-fest "The Art of Writing Small Programs" from just under two years ago:
XKCD 1275 from last week:
(Of course that should be INT SQR EXP PI/INT PI * PI * R ** INT PI).
Posted in general by Olly Betts on 2013-10-18 18:01 | Permalink
I finally got my talk slides from last year's Kiwi PyCon and OSDC uploaded, and got inspired to overhaul my list of talks, including a few that were missing entirely, and adding links to video or audio of more of the talks.
If you've half an hour to kill and want some 8-bit computing nostalgia, then the video of "The Art of Writing Small Programs" from OSDC 2011 is well worth a watch.
Posted in general by Olly Betts on 2012-01-09 01:20 | Permalink
Tim McNamara and the team at boost new media have generously decided to open up some spare desks in their office as a free co-working space each Friday. The concept (and silly name) come from an original event in New York, USA, and has already spread to over 100 cities around the world.
I was going to be in town at lunchtime for the Summer of Tech lightning talks (which were well worth the trip in) so decided to sign up and spend the afternoon co-working. Usually I work alone at home, which has fewer human distractions than a shared office, but plenty of replacement distractions, and I sometimes miss being able to easily bounce ideas off other people without waiting for them to check email.
Posted in general by Olly Betts on 2011-02-10 15:02 | Permalink
Hello world.
I've been meaning to start blogging for some time. My motivations are that articulating what I'm up to will help me to stay focussed better, and I'll be able to let those in the Xapian community who are interested see what I'm currently up to without me having to worry that I'm bombarding the mailing list with too much information.
It will also give me somewhere to put analysis of Xapian-related issues which include graphs, diagrams, and tables, which mailing list email isn't very well suited to.
And that's the motivation for getting around to this right now. GMX are sponsoring me to do some work on reducing database size. They've wanted me to report as the work progressed, and we decided the best approach was for me to post the progress reports to a public blog, so other people can follow the work too.
I will try to make the test scripts available where I easily can, and I'd love to get feedback on how things look with your Xapian databases, particularly if they are large.
I don't currently have a commenting feature on the blog. It would be good to have one, but I'm reluctant to create yet another place to have to regularly cleanse of spam, so until I have time to set up comments with decent spam protection please direct feedback to http://identi.ca/olly or the xapian-devel mailing list.
Posted in general by Olly Betts on 2009-12-13 19:39 | Permalink