I talk about the issue of Auckland’s car dependency quite a lot on this blog. About how over the past 60 years our very unbalanced transport policy has led to a situation where the city has grown, developed and become very much dependent upon being able to drive anywhere, any time. This has presented a few major problems in the past, and while an upcoming problem – the closure of the Newmarket Viaduct for a weekend – will be relatively fleeting, it does hammer home the need for balanced transport policies: so we don’t put all our eggs in the one basket.
I’ve mentioned the closure of the Newmarket Viaduct in a previous post, and how I think public transport should be made free that weekend to encourage as many people as possible to use the public transport system. As NZTA are causing the problem, it would be only fair for them to pick up the tab for lost revenue. ARTA could think of the process as a giant marketing exercise, to encourage people who wouldn’t usually use public transport to “give it a go” on a weekend when time pressures are perhaps not as great as they are during the week. People might be surprised to learn how much the system (particularly the rail system) has improved in recent times. It seems like ARTA is cottoning on to the opportunity to boost patronage on that weekend, as an NZ Herald article says they’re looking at putting on extra trains.
But it’s another couple of paragraphs in that article which highlight to me the great problem with Auckland’s auto-dependency:
A consortium building the $215 million replacement viaduct has said in an email to schools that to prevent major disruption on arterial roads on the weekend of the southbound closure – from 5pm on Saturday, September 4 – it will be “essential to avoid driving anywhere in Auckland unless absolutely essential”.
The Transport Agency predicts the closure – to prepare for three lanes of a new southbound viaduct carriageway to carry traffic from September 6 – will cause “significant delays throughout Auckland’s road network”.
Agency state highways manager Tommy Parker said though the email may have been “a little bit of an overstatement”, local roads would certainly be unable to cope with the 80,000 vehicles which travelled south on the viaduct on normal Sundays.
“We are requesting people not to travel,” he said.
Far out, it’s not like it’s the end of the world here. We’re simply closing a critical road for the weekend. The fact that there’s not a decent backup is something of an indictment on how Auckland has become to utterly dependent on its motorways – something that I don’t think is particularly healthy. Close one motorway and we’re expected to sit at home and do nothing for a whole weekend.
So come on NZTA, stop scaremongering people to stay at home and actually do something to make it easier for us to get through the weekend. Do you bit to help make public transport free, encourage people to use the extra buses and trains that get put on and things might actually turn out just fine. Then we can start thinking about what we need to do to create a transport system that’s not completely and utterly dependent on one or two roads.
Irrelevant to this post (sorry), but I thought people might be interested in this book that Tyler Cowen has recommended over at Marginal Revolution:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/city-on-the-edge.html
Hmm, traffic engineers predicting the automobile apocalypse again? …although I suppose closing such a key part of the southern motorway is bound to cause some trouble.
I wonder if it is the same ones that said central Auckland would grind to a halt of the left turn slip lanes were taken out of Queen St’s intersections.
Didn’t they say San Fran would grind to a halt if their waterfront freeway was demolished – when it was destroyed in an earthquake nothing happened, people took other routes or caught the train. I wonder what will happen in Auckland?
I bet it won’t be anywhere near the problem that the media and the NZTA are making it out to be. Sure, there will be a few delays, but this part of Auckland has plenty of alternative routes to bypass the closure. It would be more interesting to see if how things would go if they had to shut the AHB down suddenly in one or both directions due to, say, a truck crash where chemicals were spilled.
They had to shut down a key bridge for in Vancouver a couple of years ago due to one end of the bridge catching fire. This displaced 100,000 vehicles a day for the two weeks it took to fix, but it wasn’t the end of the world, and life went on. Across town, you would have never known there was a problem.
NZTA and in particular the AMA are preparing for the worst, which is fair enough, and quite frankly should be done, so I have no problem with the way they are handling it, yes it is a major closure but they are doing it over the weekend with a detour route in place, then they are warning as many people as possible so they take a extra route, and in Auckland there are plenty of different Roading routes to take. So saying we don’t have a backup is not entirely accurate, the back-up just happens to a different Motorway connection.
Hence I don’t believe NZTA should fund free public transport, as they are already providing different options of getting to your destination. However it is ARTA’s chance to grab onto the situation, make a event of the Roading closure, paint Public Transport as the savoir and boost patronage. It will be ARTA’s loss if not done, not NZTA’s.
IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD, A ROAD IS CLOSED..!
RUN, SCURRY, FLEE, WHILE YOU STILL CAN..!
I completely agree Josh that this is one of a long list of missed opportunities for a free day of PT…
I wonder if NZTA and / or ARTA will be taking survey counts of surrounding intersections and PT patronage to see how drivers “cope” with this unholy inconvenience. It seems a good opportunity to test the local network for future emergency closures or planned capacity reductions (i.e., T2/3 or bus lanes). Has anyone heard?
Dan, that sounds like far too good an idea to have been considered.
dan – I wouldn’t be surprised if you can see some students from Opus or Beca doing survey counts, however most of the relevant data would most likely be taken from the loops in the Arterial Routes, and alternative motorway connections, these should give a wider picture the effects of this closure has had, including an approximate on how many were taking ARTA’s advice and taking alternative routes or means of transport.
It could be worse… We could be looking at this…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10668472