The Wire with Spike

Kia ora, and welcome to The Wire for Rāpare Thursday!

Today on the show, Spike speaks to:

- Dr. Tim Welch on the proposed Auckland Transport budget cuts

- and Elyssia Wilson-Heti about Stop the Cuts' new survey of the arts and culture sector and their view of the proposed cuts

And Simon speaks to:

- Counsellor Shane Henderson for City Counselling on the community response to the budget, and how submissions to Council budgets work

- Public Service Assocation National Secretary Duane Leo about the importance of libraries and their proposed cuts

- and Ruth Buchanan from Artspace about the importance of council funding for artists and galleries

If you want to submit to the Auckland Council budget consulation, you can do so here.

Thanks for listening!

Public transport has been particularly strained in Auckland recently, with the proposed budget looking to limit services to their current levels, and reducing total bus trips overall. Spike speaks to urban planning researcher Dr. Tim Welch about the current state of public transit, and the cuts proposed by the Council. 

Scientists have been calling for a ban for light-polluting mass satellite groups like Elon Musk’s Starlink for some time now, and a series of papers and opinion pieces published in the journal Nature Astronomy have echoed these calls. Scientists are concerned that the light pollution from these so-called megaconstellations make it difficult to view objects in space for research, to see the stars at night, and to detect potentially hazardous meteors heading towards Earth.  

Arno spoke to University of Auckland astrophysicist Professor Richard Easther to find out more about the call to regulate mass satellite groups.

In the pursuit of meeting emissions reduction targets, the transition to electric vehicles is seeming like a bit of a necessity. 

With battery range and charging stations a worry for EV owners, the government and research organisations from around the world are banding together to come up with new solutions to instil confidence in EV fleets.

Andre Fa’aoso spoke to Doug Wilson, Director of the Transportation Research Centre at the University of Auckland. 

The research facility based in the Faculty of Engineering is designing and testing the possibilities of wireless charging roads in Aotearoa to remedy range anxiety for EV owners. 

The partnership between Downer and the University of Auckland has been tasked with testing the resilience and application of this technology on our roads.

Andre started off by asking Doug about what this technology is and how it works.

In a follow up statement, Doug shared the idea of ‘power snacking’. 

Doug says that power snacking “is very different to the current need to carry around a tank full of gas or a very large and heavy battery that takes longer to charge. For example, if you can charge your ‘EV on the go’ (at your origin, destination and on the way dynamically) then you can reduce the size of your battery as range anxiety is removed. This also has the significant environmental benefit of requiring less rare earth minerals (eg. cobalt, nickel and lithium) as the batteries are smaller in size and are also reduced weight.  This can only be done with wireless charging but the wireless EV infrastructure will need to be in place for this to affect potential users purchasing behaviours.”