Comments on: What makes a “Great Street”?

By: David

David — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:04:18 +0000

Max, yes, I meant remove the parking and use it for pedestrians. I’d also agree that anything more radical could wait for the CBD tunnel (assuming that is not a long way off…).

By: admin

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:09:05 +0000

Max I sure hope that Auckland Transport would employ a huge number of urban designers. I guess the worry is that they’ll always be looking at things from a transport perspective (ie. how to make the street pretty) rather than necessarily integrating their thinking with the wider land-use planning undertaken by the council.

Of course the hope is that the two agencies will work well together, but there is so much likely political animosity between them that it seems likely the mutual distrust will feed through to staff.

By: max

max — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:36:10 +0000

“Removing the remaining parking on K road and making two dedicated bus lanes would be the easiest things to do”

That would create a MORE roads-dominated space, unless you were suggesting to reduce the road width, rather than use parking width to be turned into bus lanes?

I agree that K’ Road could be a wonderful space that way, with wider footpaths, trees… Sadly, until we increase the ability of people to travel by PT, it is not going to happen. Getting the trams back here (ressurecting the old alignments from out west and Ponsonby) and taking that as the catalyst for a whole rearrangement of road reserve would be the best.

Or maybe we can do as soon as the CBD tunnel provides a new link to here.

As for Jarbury’s comments about Auckland Transport (CCO) and urban designers. Damn Jarbury, you scare me. While I suspect that you may be right at first, I believe (=hope fervently) that Auckland Transport will employ urban designers. NZTA (which in some ways is quite black-box corporate itself) does use them, and their work is often quite good (it’s just that the mission statement of NZTA remains “Roads!”).

By: Nick R

Nick R — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:01:23 +0000

I’d like to see it lose it’s arterial road function, and be more of a ‘local’ road, with a mix of shared-spaces and bus priority in places. I’m not suggesting a total pedestrainisation, but something more like the main street of Parnell village or the feel of Lorne St.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:55:46 +0000

I think having 4 lanes, two being bus lanes, is OK for K Road at least until the CBD tunnel is built. I don’t think we need to banish cars from it, but rather just create more of a balance between cars and everyone else.

By: Jeremy Harris

Jeremy Harris — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:43:26 +0000

I think we need to remember (in downtown areas especially) that the street is urban..! We should not always build great big homages to the car down the middle of the public room lined with homages to nature down either side…

Nature should reinforce the “urban-ness” of the street, we should not try and recreate little areas of nature as if we are trying to make amends for destroying the balance by car dominance…

Also the space should accomodate for all modes of transport equally, motorist, pedestrian, bicyclist and PT user…

I think this is why I prefer streets with visible power lines rather than buried ones and the trolley bus wires in Wellington, I enjoy living in a city, we shouldn’t try to pretend we are 1.4 million country squires just happening to have our country estates closer together than average, we should celebrate our urban environment…

By: David

David — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:14:50 +0000

Removing the remaining parking on K road and making two dedicated bus lanes would be the easiest things to do and would probably make quite a difference (though lots of buses don’t make for the friendliest streets). I’d agree with Nick though, that to make a truly great street, it would need to reduce to 2 lanes (or less). It’s the sort of road where a tram would be nice.

By: Nick R

Nick R — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:58:59 +0000

One lane each way for buses only would be ideal, otherwise you either have to have buses and cars mixing on a two lane road, or you need to keep a four lane road with two of those marked for buses.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:41:22 +0000

TopCat, it wasn’t a deliberate oversight, but I think you’re right. Uninfluential lobby groups is all it seems they will be.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:39:24 +0000

I don’t think we need to remove all traffic from K Road, we just need to “tame” it a bit. Narrowing it down to one lane each way would achieve that. Give buses proper bus lanes and priority at traffic lights.