It might be time for Brian Rudman to get some new glasses as in his latest piece he seems to have been confused by various route maps in the draft Regional Public Transport Plan.
What is alarming is the fate of Queen St, which in 2007 got a $40 million makeover, complete with nikau palms and Chinese granite paving. It is now marked as “Rapid Transit”. Presumably that means a busway rather than railway – the proposed tunnel to run further west under Albert St.
The golden shopping mile is also identified as part of the “frequent service network”. Seeking definitions, we’re told “rapid services … have exclusive access to their own rights of way along high-density corridors”.
As for “frequent services”, the draft explains “the core element of the new system will be the frequent service network which will provide all-day high- frequency services at least every 15 minutes”.
In other words, Queen St, including Queen Elizabeth Square, is being identified as having an exclusive busway inserted into it.
To be honest I’m not entirely sure where he gets the idea from that Queen St will become a busway as there is nothing I can find in the plan to suggest that being the case. There is only one service listed as using Queen St and that is the City Link, the same as what we have now. There are only two reasons I can think of as to why Rudman suggests that there is a busway plan for Queen St. The first is that due to maps needing to be big enough to cover the city that it appears that routes in the CBD are on Queen St when in fact they are on neighbouring streets as in the map below
The second option is that perhaps he has confused the Britomart interchange symbol as being an RTN route, here is a close up of the schematic map.
Either way it is incorrect that there are plans for a busway along Queen St and the appendix of routes (page 65) confirms this. The very reason buses were moved off there in the first place is that it takes them about the same amount of time to get from Britomart to Aotea Square as it does walking due to the number of lights that are prioritised for pedestrians (as they should be on this street). However while he is wrong about a busway along Queen St, he is correct about the need for the CRL due to the number of buses that will eventually be in the CBD, he had this to say:
For anyone who doubts the need for the inner-city rail tunnel, this draft public transport plan is the document to change your mind.
The plan is to increase the percentage of peak period trips to the central city by public transport from the current 47 per cent to 55 per cent by 2022 and 70 per cent by 2040.
Overall, it’s planned to double public transport trips citywide from 70 million to 140 million in the next 10 years.
Of course not all of those extra commuters will end up in the CBD, but without increased capacity on the trains – the loop will double the number of trains able to use the downtown Britomart station – the vast majority of those who do will have to squeeze into buses to get there.If you think parts of downtown are unpleasant places in peak hours because of noisy, diesel-belching buses, imagine double the number in the same space.
The reality is, there are only so many buses and cars that can fit on to the streets of the city. When the government rejected the business case for the CRL the former minister of transport asked a series of questions that he wanted AT/AC to answer. The biggest of these was a ‘multimodal evaluation of need for improved access to city centre’ and that spawned the City Centre Future Access Study (CCFAS). The CCFAS should answer just how many buses and cars we will be able to get in and around the city is being completed in conjunction with the NZTA, Ministry of Transport and Treasury so we should hopefully get a fairly strong consensus around this.
My understanding is that the initial phases showed a clear need to improve access to the city centre and then moved on to look at a wide variety of options how that could be done. An update to the transport committee last week said that the options had been narrowed down to just three that are now being analysed more closely. Incidentally these happen to be the same options looked at in the original CRL business case and are the CRL, a bus tunnel or more buses on the surface. A draft version of the completed study is meant to be finished this month with the final version going to the government along with the final versions to the other questions they asked in November. It will be good to get an answer once and for all on just how many buses the city can handle.
I think this is where he went so wrong:
He has apparently confused Frequent Service with Rapid Service, thinking them to be one and the same?
This is terrible journalism; Rudman should have checked basic facts before publication – the Herald will probably need to publish a retraction and an apology.
Funny thing is – Queen Street already has frequent bus service (City Link and Airbus) so it’s no change from status quo. Guess that’s not such an exciting headline?
Rudman is a columnist, not a journalist. He’s only required not to tell outright lies, rather than be accurate. And, in any case, accuracy in “journalism” appears to be entirely optional these days.
To his credit, he’s the kind of person who will admit that he’s mistaken. Just flick him an email. He might even correct the online version immediately. Also, the first comment points out his mistake.
I am not one of those people inclined to get all hot and bothered about jaywalking – after all, it is hardly the crime of the century. BUT I had occassion to pick someone up from Shortland street the other day, and I missed them on the first pass so I had to drive around again, which involved a circuit involving turning right into Queen from Shortland, then right into Customs Street, right again into Gore, right into Fort street then a couple of lefts back to Shortland street. The jaywalking in the road indicated a deathwish; in the “shared space” in was indescribably insane. I think I grew several new grey hairs trying to avoid killing some halfwit striding determindly across the road in front of me, ears plugged into sound and serene in the knowledge they will never be run over. I mean, I don’t get worked up about jay walking, you know what i mean? It shouldn’t be made a huge crime – but either we make those areas fully pedestrian/PT only, or we get some bloody cops down there and issue some tickets/warning to pedestrians. Some of the behaviour is utter imbecility, and Rudman is right – people will be killed.
Are you serious? Drivers have to give way to pedestrians in the shared space.If the cops were going to issue tickets, it would be to the drivers. They are basically fully pedestrian zones, except we let some car drivers through if they drive very slowly and take a lot of care to avoid the pedestrians.
Sanctuary – I wealk throigh that shared space all the time and frankly I agree, cars should not be allowed in that space at all unless commercial deliveries or Police cars.
On the other hand, if you were doing 20kms/hr as motorists should in that shared space, I would have thought braking for pedestrians wouldn’t be an issue. Were you trying to drive at 50kms/hr?
Also, I dont think it can be jaywalking in a shared space. That is the point of a shared space, isnt it? That would be like if you were driving on a footpath and hit someone and claimed they were jaywalking. Cars are second class citizens in that space; scary for Aucklanders I know.
Jaywalking doesn’t actually exist in NZ, except within 20m (I think) of a pedestrian crossing. People are allowed to cross where and when they like, although obviously they need to do so in a way that doesn’t get themselves killed.
You can cross where and when you like, but you do have to cross at right-angles to the roadway: you can’t just wander down the middle of the road. Likewise, if you’re walking along the road, you must use the footpath.
P.S. the gory details: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2004/0427/latest/DLM302188.html
Sanctuary it’s a shared space – that means you give way to pedestrians, exactly how it should be in many more parts of Auckland.
This is a great opportunity for Auckland Transport to reassure the public that Rudman is incorrect, and at the same time reinforce how revolutionary the proposed changes are, and for the general public to read the document and make submissions. For some reason AT have never been strong at responding to public criticism, which is a shame I think. How about a dialogue piece for the Herald AT?
I’m gonna defend Rudman here – on two counts:
1) The distinction between rapid and frequent is just bloody confusing. So there’s a frequent network comprised of rapid services and frequent services, right? So does the frequent network exclude or include rapid services? What happened to QTN? Is it RTN + QTN = FTN or RTN + RTN = Frequent Network, or what? Auckland Transport need to be clearer on this issue and make a distinction between frequent services that aren’t part of the rapid network from the whole network that operates “frequently”.
2) He’s actually right about the whole “city centre being suffocated by buses if we don’t build CRL” point. Queen Street may never be a full busway, but without CRL Albert, Symonds, Wellesley, Customs and Fanshawe might well need to be. What kind of city centre is that?
I agree with Cam above though, this is a good opportunity for Auckland Transport to provide some clarification and come up with a better distinction of the FTN and FN. Plus point out that he’s right about the CRL. (Oh god I hate acronyms!)
If I might respond:
1) Everything on the first map is the Frequent Transit Network, that is a map of service level. The second map is also just the FTN, but it does distinguish between Rapid Transit and regular Frequent Transit. The Rapid Transit are Frequents that benefit from their own dedicated infrastructure, i.e. railways and busway. The distinction is very clear I think, the Rapids are all in the black and white line, while the normal frequents are in coloured line. You only have to look at the map to see there is only one bus route and not rapid transit planned for Queen St. QTN no longer exists, it seems they have split them into Frequents and Connectors based on the service level.
2) I think Albert, Symonds, Wellesley, Customs and Fanshawe will need some superior buslanes or street busway treatment, but they are going to need that CRL or no CRL. There are two things to consider here, one is the general mode shift and growth that is occurring, that will come on the back of increased bus usage. The second is significant development in the city centre, that will come from the CRL. Bus volumes simply aren’t going to do anything but increase in the long term, the CRL is a question of whether that is a manageable increase in buses, or a ludicrous impossible increase in buses. Getting all the buses into a couple of streamlined corridors presents the opportunity for really quality bus infrastructure in some streets, and no buses at all in others. That would be way better than the status quo of dumping buses through just about every street in the city and none of them having very good infrastructure.
Trev – AT seem pretty clear on the issue from my reading of the RPTP. Have you read it? If not then I suggest you do.
To put it in simple language:
Rapid transit network = rapid and frequent
Frequent transit network = frequent
And QTN = no more.
He clearly did this: “he has confused the Britomart interchange symbol as being an RTN route”
Does he fact check or as an opinion writer, can he just make up what he wants. As an aside, I agreed with his article last week re AECT so he isn’t always wrong.
Who knows how much he gets paid per line (i.e. newspaper writing doesn’t pay as much as it used to be, so no surprise if standards are slipping!) – but I definitely have seen a couple cases like this from him, where he clearly quickly skimmed a document, and then turned around to his computer and whipped out one of his “ticked off” pieces.
Rudman is not always wrong, but on the other hand he is wrong quite regularly – too regularly for my liking. And here’s an example of where he is wrong simply because he was too keen to moan, rather than doing a tiny weeny little bit of research first.
Being pernickety and sensitive to the ideological nuances of critics of the current council’s public transport proposals, I rather wish Rudman hadn’t used the ‘loop’ description of the City Rail Link. As has been stated numerous times, the CRL is not a loop, ie trains running round in circles, but rather, as he indeed acknowledges, a key project that unlocks the entire Auckland rail network.
Off-topic – does anyone of the posters have an opinion on this?
http://www.interest.co.nz/property/61448/how-nzta-has-paid-more-nz30-mln-help-cover-roading-contract-bidders-costs-and-why-mac
Interesting – seems like NZTA are paying for the intellectual property contained in the proposals. That may mean that NZTA can take IP from losing tenders and give it to the winning team so that the ultimate project combines the best of best. Seems to make sense, but I don’t know much about it.