Moving around South Island New Zealand.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to visit South Island New Zealand for a week of holidays.  I flew to Queenstown by a direct flight from Brisbane and then from there I embarked on a seven days road trip around the southern part of the island. You can see my day to day itinerary on the map bellow:



The South Island is an amazing place with a big variety of breathtaking landscapes. Driving around the island is fairly relaxed due to most roads having little traffic and is also quite pleasurable as the road network is diverse in characteristics and not monotonous. Lots of curves of different radii, uphill and downhill sections and of course the magnificent road environment and landscape allows the driver to drive long distances without feeling bored or tired.

Mountainous sections and sections across the Alps, ocean side sections and sections across the fields, they are all worth having a look. Plenty of spots of interest along the way, provide opportunities to stop, rest, enjoy lookout views and observe wildlife and livestock.

There are a few very interesting aspects of the South Island New Zealand road network. One that stands out is the single lane bridges. Most of the bridges along the peripheral route that I followed, were single lane narrow bridges. With low levels of traffic and without the very long and very heavy vehicles that we have in Australia, single lane bridges seem to work just fine. Just a few of them are very long, and these ones have usually one or more  pull-outs, so that you can pull your car aside if you happen to accidentally be on the bridge as another car is trying to cross it too.

One other very interesting aspect of the road network is the way New Zealanders do roadworks. I am not sure about the work health and safety statistics on roadwork sites, but it seems that they take a far more relaxed approach than Australia. Less people doing traffic control, use of automatic traffic lights to control one way traffic on roadworks sites and far less use of roadside protective barriers. The big debate about WH&S protection measures on roadworks sites and how those raise significantly the total cost may have an answer in a comparative analysis between the two countries.

But then again, looking at the picture above, maybe the solution for roadworks safety is somewhere in between the approach taken by the two countries.

AITPM@IPENZ - Last day. Ingenuity now more than ever.

Last day of the conference and I am happy to report on the conference proceedings back from Brisbane. I fully enjoyed my stay in Wellington but... give me Brisbane any day.

The conference day kicked of with keynote speaker Steven Newman, CEO of EROAD. I was hoping that Steven will speak about the work he did on road charging but Steven preferred to speak about future transport systems or as he called it super intelligent transport systems.

The second keynote speaker for the day was Rob Merrifield. Rob has worked for more than 50 years on road construction and management but his passion was always studying the historic development of transportation. From the Diolkos and the other ancient Greek rutways to the 1834 Newcastle upon Tyne railway and other tramway systems in England it seems that archeology takes more and more interest in transport systems of the past.

One of the morning streams was dedicated to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia a joint Technical Society of Engineers Australia and IPENZ New Zealand, formed to further the interests of the railway industry at large and its individual participants. With their upcoming conference CORE 2014 in Adelaide they are directed towards providing leadership for the facilitation and coordination of professionalism in the railway industry and the encouragement of member contributions to the application of railway technology and good management practices.

Michael McKeon from KiwiRai and then Randall Prestige from Target Railway Progress presented current and proposed New Zealand railway projects that will enable more efficient movement of freight and passengers across the country.

Overall the IPENZ Transportation Group 2014 conference was a great opportunity to learn about transport projects from the other side of Tasman sea. There are also  some good opportunities and ideas to enhance the collaboration between IPENZ and AITPM that are worth exploring the following days. I also found some good ideas that we can maybe adopt for our AITPM 2015 conference in Brisbane.

The quest for transport ingenuity is ongoing and more relevant now than ever in the history of 100 years of Engineers of New Zealand.

AITPM@IPENZ Day 1

A few days ago, I had the pleasure and the honour to win the AITPM New Zealand Study Tour Award. This award gives the opportunity to an AITPM member to have the conference registration costs, reasonable travel & accommodation expenses to attend the conference and accommodation costs for an additional two days in the conference city fully paid by AITPM.

Wellington is a lovely city, relaxed but yet vibrant, with a very friendly atmosphere.

It kind of made me homesick as it reminded me a bit of Kavala. Harbour town build amphiteatrically around the water.

Wellington though, has some amazing museums with astonishing Maori art and artifacts.

The highlight of the CBD tour was the cable car ride. Wellington's cable car is more than 110 years old.

Networking with my New Zealand (and a few Australian) colleagues was fun with activities like the geocaching/ treasure hunt at Zealandia and a bridge building competition that proved that traffic engineers and transport planners are not only good in planning and designing bridges but also at building them.

This first day was very promising. I hope the rest of the IPENZ Transportation Group conference is as interesting and as fun.