Auckland Transport Blog » Roads

The Wellington St onramp saga

Peter M — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:05:41 +0000

There have been a couple of articles in the NZ Herald this week relating to the ongoing saga around whether the Wellington Street onramp will be reopened. First yesterday:

Pressure is building on the Transport Agency to honour a commitment to reopen an Auckland motorway ramp which it closed during its $406 million Victoria Park tunnel project.

Western bays residents battling against having roads clogged by refugees from the continued closure of the Wellington St ramp won support yesterday from the Auckland Council’s transport committee.

The Automobile Association is also demanding the ramp be reopened, saying it understood the closure was to be only temporary, and the lack of motorway access from Wellington St was causing unacceptable congestion to local roads.

Although the Transport Agency spent an undisclosed sum upgrading the ramp, its future became uncertain when it opened two of the tunnel’s three lanes late last year, and was initially overwhelmed by long queues of traffic trying to get through it.

The article goes on to quote NZTA saying that they have an open mind around whether the ramp will be reopened or not, which does beg the question about why they haven’t reopened it yet to see what happens. Or the really interesting question about why their original plans to reopen the ramp have changed so much. Surely they should be analysing this kind of thing when designing a project?

This “the ramps were part of the deal” issue was then highlighted in another article in today’s NZ Herald, which points out the interesting question of whether the resource consent for the project relied upon the ramp being reopened:

Residents campaigning to reopen the Wellington St motorway ramp from central Auckland have been told its retention was a condition of approval for the new Victoria Park tunnel.

Former Auckland City Council member Graeme Easte has told them he believes the Transport Agency will need to obtain a change to the motorway’s land designation if it wants to keep the ramp closed to general traffic.

Mr Easte, one of a seven-member hearings panel which, in 2006, approved a designation application by the former Transit NZ, said: “We were told that the Wellington St on-ramp would be retained in modified form.

“As local councillor, I was well aware of resident concerns about existing traffic loads on Curran St and would not have approved closure of the Wellington St on-ramp if it had been proposed.”

One would think that if keeping the Wellington street onramp was a condition of the Victoria Park Tunnel project proceeding, then the ramp will need to be reopened.

My feeling is that this is just another example of how selfish and narrow-minded NZTA have become over the past few years in trying to improve traffic flows on the motorway any way they can – including by pushing congestion off the motorway and onto local roads. The ramp signals are often a classic example of this mentality: yeah sure they speed up traffic a little bit on the motorway, but they do that simply by shifting the congestion onto the onramps and onto the streets feeding into the motorway. There’s no net gain, just endless frustration of sitting there going nowhere for ages.

I’m enjoying seeing NZTA getting egg smeared all over their face on this issue. They deserve it.

Fort St Shared Space a Success

Matt L — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:04:17 +0000

A report to the Waitamata local board shows that the shared space on Fort St has been a success and approval has been given to carry on with stage three of the upgrade which will introduce another share space at the eastern end of the street. Here is the executive summary of the report:

The purpose of this report is to communicate results of the Fort Street (Stage 1) shared space evaluation and seek the Board’s support for the shared space design proposed for Stage 3 of the Fort Street upgrade.

The results of the evaluation indicate that the performance of the shared space in Fort Street (Stage 1) has thus far been successful. Stage 1 comprises Jean Batten Place, Fort Lane and the western end of Fort Street between Commerce Street and Queen Street. Stage 2 extends from Commerce Street to Gore Street and includes the section of Fort Street that runs between them. Stage 3 covers the eastern End of Fort Street running between Gore Street and Customs Street East.

A key objective of the project was to improve pedestrian amenity and to create a more attractive environment for people. Feedback from users indicates that people find the space more attractive with a majority keen to keep visiting the area in the same or greater frequency than they did before. Counts suggest that pedestrian volumes have increased in the area (more than 50% in peak hours), vehicle volumes have decreased (more than 25%) as have average vehicle speeds (to approximately 20 km/h). User feedback has shown that vehicle travel time delays through the area are minimal (6-11 seconds), delivery agents have found it ‘much easier’ to make their deliveries in the new shared space environment and people feel much safer in the area. Moreover, property owners (75%) revealed that they see value in being located near a shared space. Further detail on the evaluation results can be found in the attached document.

There is some pretty good results in here, pedestrian volumes up 50% during peak hours, traffic volumes down, minimal traffic delays, delivery vehicles are finding things much easier and property owners are happy which I think is an astounding result and a testament to the hard work put in to get this project going. Stage 3 was designed at the same time as the first two stages but was delayed pending the outcome of this evaluation. After getting the feedback the report says that there was only one commercial tenant, located in the stage 2 section, that was unhappy with proceeding on to stage 3.

Here are the key results out of the evaluation:

User Perceptions – improved

Highly positive perception of users
91% of surveyed users highly complementary about the area post upgrade

Foot Traffic – increased

More than 50% increase in pedestrian numbers in peak hours
Peak hour count of 7400 pedestrians using the area, up from 4800 in 2009

Pedestrian Environment – improved

Majority of pedestrians and drivers believe pedestrians have priority
In reality, data indicates pedestrians assume priority when pedestrian numbers are 1000+ per hour. Vehicles tend to be given priority otherwise.
52% of surveyed users felt there were still to many cars in the shared spaces

Vehicle traffic – reduced

1470 less vehicles per day using Fort St

2009 count of 6170 vehicles, 2011 count 4700

1000 less vehicles per day using Jean Batten Place

2009 count 2918 vehicles, 2011 count 1918

Reduced Vehicle Speeds

5-9km per hr reduction in Fort St
2-8km per hr reduction in Jean Batten place

25% of surveyed users felt vehicle traffic should be more restricted
75% of delivery services found it ‘much easier’ to make their deliveries

Safety – improved

Over 80& of surveyed users felt ‘very safe’ in the area
Greatly improved perceptions of safety at night time
Minority (5%) of users felt the space was dangerous/confusing/unsafe for pedestrians

Distinct destination – more analysis required

Anecdotal evidence suggesting the area now has a broader appeal as
Fewer people feel there is nothing special about the area

Economic performance - inconclusive

Limited economic information presently available
Areas to be measured in coming years

Property values
Vacancy rates and sales data
Retail turnover
Consumer spend

75% of property owners saw value in being located near a shared space

As I said earlier, these are some great results and the local board along with the CBD Advisory board have approved for stage 3 to go ahead. Personally I tend to go down there at least once a week and love the improvements, the place is a far cry from the grotty area it was not that long ago and it has been great to see new private development happening to really maximise on these improvements. In time I think this will become one of the best areas in the CBD and it would be great to see a few more areas given the same treatment.

Local roads getting screwed over

Matt L — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:00:47 +0000

NZTA is funded from petrol tax and road user charges, which obviously comes from cars, trucks, vans and buses using fuel (or travelling kilometres) along our roading network. The theory is that this creates a relatively ‘user pays’ situation, with money raised from road users being spent on projects that benefit road users (including public transport, walking and cycling, which obviously reduce the number of cars that would otherwise be on the road).

There are two types of roads in New Zealand, state highways and local roads. State highways are owned and 100% funded by NZTA – building them, renewing them and maintaining them. Local Roads are owned by local councils (there’s a rather weird legal situation in Auckland where I think the council own the road but Auckland Transport manage it on their behalf) and are funded roughly by way of a 50/50 split between NZTA and council (generally rates) funding. So already we clearly have a situation where roads are subsidised by ratepayers as part of councils’ 50% share in funding their construction, renewal and maintenance. But let’s leave that aside for a minute.

What’s interesting in this situation is that you effectively have Central Government charging (by way of fuel tax and road-user charge) road users for using a piece of infrastructure that’s owned, maintained and renewed by local government. In essence, it’s a somewhat strange situation – an analogy might be that I own a theatre: I built it, I maintain it and I look after it. But people using my theatre actually pay someone else for the privilege: not me. Obviously, the unfairness of the situation is largely resolved by NZTA part-funding local roads – in our analogy giving me back about half of what it costs to renew and maintain my theatre.

A good way of measuring whether local councils are getting their “fair share” of NZTA’s money is to look at the split of actual travel (and therefore technically revenue) which happens on local roads versus state highways and then compare that with the split of spending on local roads and state highways. We already saw that in Auckland the split in travel is approximately two-thirds on the local road network and one-third on the state highway network: If we were to take a fairly strict “user pays” approach to road spending in Auckland, there’d be an argument for roughly a two-thirds/one-third split for local roads and state highways. With public transport largely on the local road network, arguably the split could be even higher.

Where I’m getting with this relates to an amusing document released under the Official Information Act to Green Party transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter, which she has passed onto bloggers on this site. It relates to a Ministry of Transport response to Steven Joyce last year, when he was seeking some technical justification for shifting even more money into state highways at the cost of money that would usually go to local councils. You can see this point outlined in the paragraph below:
Unfortunately for the Minister, the actual figures tell the complete opposite story. We learn that the local road share of travel is increasing (very slightly), but bizarrely we see that the state highways share of expenditure is increasing – a huge mismatch:
The table clearly highlights that over the past decade there has been an enormous increase in state highways spending and a much slower increase in local road funding, even though the share of VKT between the two has stayed relatively constant. Back in the early years of last decade we can see that there was a reasonably match-up between VKT and expenditure, but since around 2005/2006 that has changed enormously due to the huge ‘spend-up’ on state highways.

In effect, what we see is local councils now pretty much subsidising state highway projects, in particular the big budget items of the Roads of National Significance. Meanwhile the amount of money available for local roading projects is getting squeezed harder and harder, with less spent in the 2011/12 year on local roads than was spent in the 2006/07 year. With the 2012 Government Policy Statement proposing a further big increase to state highway spending, while putting the squeeze on local road spending, it really does become obvious that our local roads are getting screwed over.

P.S. the Ministry (wisely) suggested that such a table not go in the cabinet paper!

People travelling less in the UK too

Peter M — Mon, 14 May 2012 04:09:45 +0000

The slowdown in traffic growth seen both in New Zealand and the USA is also occurring in the UK, as detailed in a recent Economist article.

Car and van mileage has fallen over the past four years, mainly because of the economic slump. Yet this comes atop a longer-run trend: for around 15 years, Britons have been making fewer journeys. According to the Department for Transport, the average person now goes on only slightly more trips than he did in the early 1970s, mostly by car. Between the mid-1990s and 2010 individuals made 19% fewer shopping outings. Jaunts to see friends dropped by fully 22%, thanks to a fall in visits to private homes.

The article is accompanied by a couple of really useful charts which start to break down the difference between trip numbers and distance travelled, and then looks at which types of trips are increasing and decreasing the most: The decline in trip numbers is discussed at length in the article, which looks at long term cultural changes such as people grouping together shopping trips much more, a general reduction in “Couch and kitchen socialising”, the rise of the internet and higher petrol prices making think twice about ‘discretionary’ trips. Yet the article also argues this does not mean Britain is turning into a country of hermits:

A rise in hours spent staring at computer screens and televisions—and a concurrent decline in journeys to see friends at home—does not necessarily mean that Britain is becoming a nation of hermits. Mr Gershuny argues that those who engage with friends online also tend to see them more in person, even controlling for age. The internet may make socialising more “efficient” and diverse—people can research and plan where they are going, or what they want to buy, eat or do when they are out. In fact, many trips to visit friends at home are being replaced by jaunts out with friends, reckons Oriel Sullivan of Oxford University.

The ONS’s national well-being survey suggests that socialising with friends is still one of the most popular pastimes. People spend more time chatting on the phone too. Yet the travel data may obscure such engagement because socialising is increasingly combined with another activity. The number of trips to meet friends outside their homes has held steady. Other types of outing have become more popular, such as what the ONS describes as “entertainment or public activity” and “day trips”, all of which are likely to include friends or family. For many people, work is also a social encounter.

Retail travel also follows this trend. Despite the decline of the high street, there are more grocery shops at transport hubs such as railway stations, which makes buying fresh food possible without a special outing. “Multitasking” has become a popular shorthand for the predicament of modern workers. It may increasingly apply to their leisure time too.

There is an interesting debate to be had, I think, around the extent to which we might expect trends like these to continue into the future. I do wonder whether there’s a risk of us over-building transport infrastructure – particularly new roads where volumes are very much static (unlike booming PT patronage) – because our future projects are based on past assumptions which simply no longer hold true.

I feel the real test will be what happens to travel patterns and traffic volumes once economic growth properly returns (assuming it will do so).

Removing signs to make streets safer

Peter M — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:38:14 +0000

Yes, the title of this post sounds like an oxymoron. Street signs are often there to make streets safer – here’s a give way sign, a speed limit, a warning about a school, a particularly sharp bend, the list goes on. But does all this signage actually make us safer, or does it turn drivers into mindless idiots who forget to actually look at what’s going on because they’re only focusing on the signage or the traffic signals?

An interesting article (yes I know it’s from 2009, but it’s still relevant) picks up on this issue:

[Dr Gerald] Wilde theorizes — in something he calls “risk homeostasis” — that everyone has his or her own fixed level of acceptable risk. When the level of risk in a part of the individual’s life changes, there will be a corresponding rise or fall in risk elsewhere to bring the overall risk back to that individual’s equilibrium. Wilde argues that the same is true of larger human systems, like a population of drivers. He argues that street signs designed to make us safer actually make us drive more carelessly by sort of nanny-ing us into complacency.

A new traffic movement called “naked streets,” being practiced in the city of Drachten in the Netherlands seeks to change that. The small city spearheaded the change of 20 four-way intersections into traffic circles with no signage. The net result? One intersection went from between two and four people dying each year to zero people dying since 2003. In another, the removal of traffic lights has resulted in accidents falling from thirty-six in the four years before it was introduced to two in the next two years. Not only that but they’ve been more efficient — thanks to overall increases in efficiency from traffic circles — with the average time for each vehicle to cross the junction falling from 50 seconds to 30 seconds, despite a rise in the volume of traffic. Why? Because people are paying attention to traffic, they’re going slower and they’re communicating with each other.

Owen Paterson, the Dutch Transport Minister, visited Drachten to see the implementation in action. “The idea is to create space where there is mild anxiety among everyone so they all behave cautiously. No one thunders along at 30mph on a high street thinking that they have priority.” Mr Paterson said that putting up more speed limit signs and painting more lines on the road had failed to make streets safer. “Instead of the State laying down the rules, we need to give responsibility back to road users. It’s about creating an environment where it just doesn’t feel right to drive faster than 20mph.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

I think there’s a lot of validity to the argument being put forward here, and it explains why shared spaces – which in theory should be horrifically dangerous – are actually very safe. In fact the most dangerous intersections in Auckland often tend to be those which are managed to the highest extent – such as the big giant one near Botany town centre.

Maybe it’s time for the traffic engineers to let us think for ourselves?

Comparing Big Transport Projects

Matt L — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:30:12 +0000

One of the big complaints about the CRL is the cost and at over $2b it is understandable that people balk at it. The project is actually likely to come down in price as a result of the refinement that is going on behind the scenes and things like staging some of the stations as has been mentioned will also help and may even get the cost down below $2b which should help its image enormously. But how does a project like the CRL compare to something like the Western Ring Route (WRR) that is being built. There have been numerous parts completed for it over the last few years but one thing that has happened is that the costs have been spread out over various projects and so the general public doesn’t really seem to have had as much objection to it. Here is a map of the entire WRR:

Thinking about it a bit further I decided to add up all of the costs for the WRR to see just how much had been spent and how much is predicted to be spent in the next few years. After a bit of searching I managed to find the costs for all the projects bar the Royal Rd interchange which is the NZTA haven’t listed yet.

So all up just over $3b will have been spent on the route over a period of roughly 10 years. That is a huge amount of money and I can only imagine what would have been said if the NZTA or its predecessor had tried to build the whole thing in one go. At $2b over the next 10 or so years, the CRL starts to actually sound a bit more reasonable but then of course is the issue of how much each of these projects would be used. Its pretty hard to directly compare the two as there are so many different variables so I decided just to do a really rough calculation. The best numbers I have for the CRL come from an OIA request our former admin did over a year ago.

That shows that in about 30 years that with the CRL the rail network would have 47.6m trips per year or about 130k per day, this is compared 22.2m per year without the CRL or just under 61k per day. From that we can say that the CRL provides for an additional 69k trips per day. A few quick calculations show that for us to be getting the same number of additional trips, the improvements to the WRR would need to generate roughly an extra 80,000 vehicle movements per day on top of what was using SH16 and SH20 before these improvements were started (accounting for an occupancy of 1.3 people). To put that in perspective, that is only just a little less than the number of vehicles that cross the causeway today.

I guess the one big thing with the CRL is that with the exception of perhaps a few of the stations, there is not much chance to stage things and everything else will have to be be built in one go.

Analysing Auckland’s VKT

Matt L — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:14:23 +0000

VKT, or “vehicle kilometres traveled”, is perhaps the most accurate way to measure – in aggregate – whether traffic volumes are going up or down. It’s perhaps not quite as critical as ‘peak flows’ in determining whether and where our infrastructure is at capacity, but it gives us an overall picture that most other measurements can only hint at.

Which is why I’m really interested in the answers to a couple of written questions Labour Transport Spokesperson Phil Twyford has put to Minister Gerry Brownlee over the past few weeks. One on state highway VKT over the past five years in Auckland and one on local road VKT over the same time period. They show, with a little bit of fluctuation, pretty small annual increases in both figures: Both totals have, on average, increased by around 1% a year. But that’s not really the complete story because we would expect VKT to increase as population increases – what’s really interesting is whether each person is driving more or less each year. Using Statistics NZ population estimates for each of the past five years we can start to develop some ‘per capita’ numbers: What the table above shows is that in 2006/2007 your average Aucklander travelled 2,931 kilometres on the state highway network and 5,572 kilometres on the local road network. By 2010/2011 both numbers had dropped: state highway travel dropping by 49 kilometres per person, local road travel by 144 kilometres per person and therefore a total of 193 less kilometres travelled per person in 2010/2011 compared to 2006/2007. That’s around 3.7 kilometres less per person per week – not an insignificant number.

More important than the level of decrease is the fact that per capita travel is decreasing at all. And remember, this is only travel within Auckland so explanations such as long-distance driving shifting to air travel or people taking fewer domestic holidays probably doesn’t make as much difference in Auckland as it would elsewhere.

It would certainly be quite helpful to see whether this trend is something that started around 2006 or whether it’s a longer lasting trend. I was certainly under the impression that traffic levels have typically increased at a faster rate than population growth (obviously, until recently). If per capita travel on the roading network continues to decline in the future, that has some pretty major implications for our future transport planning – specifically that we really might not need many of the roading projects that have been justified based on an assumption that per capita travel would at least stay constant, if not continue the longer historical trend of actually increasing.

Visualising the Impact of the CRL

Matt L — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:25:02 +0000

Yesterday I posed the question of which piece of transport infrastructure carried the most people during the morning peak. The answer is that at the moment they both carry about the same number of people, the difference of course is that the Britomart tunnel has the ability in the future to carry many many more people in the same amount of space as I intend to show you shortly. I have mentioned before how hard it seems to be to show just how much benefit the CRL brings to the city and this post is another intended to try and show some of this information in a different way to make it easier to understand.

The data for this post came from a couple of sources, the current PT information came from the Screenline Study which counted the number of people on buses and trains that entered the CBD last year. The vehicle traffic numbers come from Auckland Transport’s vehicle counts from which there are AM peak hour counts for the roads the cross enter the CBD. I have then mixed this information together along with information we already know about the capacity of the CRL and the EMUs to put these maps together.

A quick explanation about the maps:

The lines represent places where people enter the CBD from, Red lines are access points from the motorways, Blue from local streets, Yellow from the ferries and Green is the rail network. The size of the line represent the number of people (not vehicles) coming via that route.
For the streets the bus and vehicle counts are merged into one arrow, bus patronage is worked out at approx 30 people per bus for the current map, 40 per bus for the 2017 map and 50 people per bus for the 2022 map. In reality we probably won’t see utilisation that high but I thought it would be useful to show the difference.
For the rail network the current count only includes people entering Britomart so other heavily used stations like Grafton and Newmarket are not included which take up much of the reserve capacity. The final map only shows the network at 60% capacity with the assumption that people would still get off at stations like Newmarket. Also before getting accused of accused of having a CBD only focus, the lines represent capacity to the Aotea station for visual purposes only.

First up here is what we have currently. The rail network is small but it is actually the 4th largest source of arrivals into the CBD when compared against each individual streets. You can also see the massive impact that buses from the North Shore and from the Isthmus and down Symonds St make, over 70% of people coming along these two corridors do so on a bus.

Next we see the what things might look like in 2017. By this time we should have all of our new EMUs running which will boost capacity as well as attractiveness of rail network. There are likely to also be significant increases in the bus network following the implementation of the planned improvements to it. In here I have assumed that only about half of the capacity of the EMUs arriving into Britomart is being used yet that line is already the single biggest on the map.

Lastly we see the impact once the CRL is opened, as mentioned the lines only represent about 60% of the available capacity as not everyone will want to head to the CBD. The capacity of the CRL absolutely dwarfs every other entry point to the CBD and it does so without impact to the surrounding streets once it has been built. It is also worth pointing out that the usage of the bus network has been greatly increased, probably more that we can expect in this time as combined it is around 65% higher than the bus patronage is now.

Going back to yesterdays post, to get the same amount of extra capacity we would need probably another 15 general traffic lanes into the CBD, around an extra 400 buses per hour or some combination of the two.

Is reducing speed limits to save lives “nuts”?

Peter M — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:05:50 +0000

Looks like Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee may have a long-lost cousin who became mayor of Toronto (click for the video):

And the accompanying article:

Rob Ford has dismissed a report that suggests a reduction in speed limits to protect pedestrians and cyclist in Toronto as “nuts.”

Asked if the city will drop speed limits, as suggested earlier this week by the city’s chief medical officer of health Ford told reporters on Friday the idea is “nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts. No.”

The report — Road to Health: Improving Walking and Cycling in Toronto — released by Dr. David McKeown recommends speed limits be reduced by as much as 20 km/h, saying the slower speed limits will protect pedestrians and cyclists.

If accepted the speed limit on Lakeshore Boulevard might be reduced to 40 km/h. On most residential streets traffic would be reduced to about 30 km/h.

Ford, who has many times referred to what he calls the ‘war on the car’ in Toronto, said the proposal is “absolutely ridiculous.”

The mayor was also asked about a vote this week by Metrolinx, the provincial transportation agency, which gave the green light to four light rail projects on Toronto’s streets.

Ford, whose vision of subways was soundly defeated by city council, said he’s not giving up.

“I’m not going to stop fighting for subways. That’s what the people want. That’s what we’ll continue to do.”

The mayor also said a proposal for road tolls to pay for public transportation projects being floated by some on city councillor is not going to survive.

“I’m totally, 100 per cent opposed to toll roads. If they want to float it — I’m going to sink it.”

The mayor also dismissed a new group that has emerged from within city council which describes itself as a centrist group.

Ford said contemptuously that there’s “no middle” at city hall. City councillors, he said, are on “One (side) or the other.”

But Ford said although they may make proposals for the city agenda, he remains in charge.

“I encourage them to meet and come and talk to me – and as you guys know I’m meeting with the councillors, as many as I can — and getting their input and telling [them] the direction I want to take the city.”

Ford made the comments during a news conference to show off a new iPhone app which will allow residents to easily report vandalism, graffiti and potholes.

About time we dropped the speed limit on all non-arterial roads in Auckland to 30 or 40 kph I think.

The Morning Peak Quiz

Matt L — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:17:43 +0000

I’m currently working on some information for a post in the next few days but as a result of that work I thought I would pose a quick question for readers and to make it easy I will make it multiple choice quiz. Which of these two bits of transport infrastructure do you think currently carries more people into town during the morning peak?

A) The Nelson St traffic sewer. This 5 lane beast of an inner city road is fed directly from two motorways which means it is always busy.

B) The Britomart tunnel. Two tracks wide this tunnel currently handles the arrival of about 18 trains per hour in the peak

Image care of Jon C of the former AKT