Or should we get excited about 0.5m extra width and a slightly less bumpy lane?

Jeremy – I wouldn’t mind so much if they at least designed the interchanges so if we decide to do it in the future it is easy but they aren’t doing that. If we ask for the full thing then we may get future proofed, if we only ask for future proofed we won’t get anything at all.

Most of the time our motorways are at the same level as the land immediately around them. Why should there be any problem with a cyclist getting on there? Recently someone managed to get cycling over the Newmarket Viaduct, and that is one of the less accessible parts! Concreting an approach cycle path is work any semi-skilled builder can do. All you would need to do in that hypothetical peak-fuel-future-we-need-to-move-somehow-so-lets-think-different is:

- take out one traffic lane (oviously only where we have three or more lanes at the moment), so the old shoulder becomes the cyclepath, and the outermost traffic lane becomes the new shoulder.

- put some approach paths on from the side roads, and some cyclist crossings over or under the onramps / overbridges (since we don’t need ramp signals anymore then, we’d even have the space!). Best solution would be grade-separated of course, but we could also just cross the ramps like at the St Lukes off-ramp with the Northwestern Cycleway (lots of signal time available for cycles with less cars in the mix)

- move the (or provide a new) heavy concrete barrier (maybe with a little extra fencing stuck on top) over to protect the cyclepath behind the shoulder

- Voila.

And of course we don’t need to do it on the Northern Motorway where we already have a cycleway. But we could create a Southern Cycleway all the way to, say, Takanini, in mere months if we wanted to in that brave new peak fuel future of ours in which our motorways will have half the traffic of today. And we could build it cheap as chips.

Responding to Nick R and Jarbury:

I understand all your comments, and even agree with them. But isn’t the most difficult part in any motorway planning those areas where you need widening? If our traffic levels suddenly and consistently dropped with peak fuel, at least we would have the width available. We could then start to fix up those grade-separated interchanges. Or maybe we wouldn’t even need to, because then car traffic would be a lot less too.

I know I am just reaching, but at least motorway widening will not destroy the ability to later put in a busway.

Jarbury, from my understanding, the only way in which the SH16 bus shoulders will be different from normal shoulders is that they will be built to design specs that can take bus loads (not too unimportant) and will be wider than normal shoulders. I know that isn’t enough with our disparity between PT and roads spending, but at least it has SOME benefit.

In 10 or 15 years when oil is $3 a litre in today’s terms we’ll really regret this…

1) If the bus lanes are on the outside then general traffic will need to cross the bus lane to enter or exit from ramps. If the bus lanes are on the inside they avoid this but you then need to build bus only access ramps in the centre to avoid buses having to cross three or four congested lanes of traffic.
2) The possibility of pinch points at overbridges.
3) It is difficult to build any sort of bus station, interchange or park-and-ride straddling an eight lane motorway. If you have bus lanes that means and stops or platforms end up on opposite sides of the motorway, or perhaps buses would have to leave the motorway corridor to access a common interchange area.

In summary I’d say bus lanes/shoulders are certainly better than nothing, however they are really only suitable for express buses running non-stop from one suburb each to the CBD, not for a bus based rapid transit system with station-interchanges. Without a busway with functional stations and access points it appears to be very difficult to have either line-haul service like the NEX or any sort of feeder/interchange system, you can only run the suburb to CBD express routes. Opportunities for Park-n-Ride are more limited also.