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By Matt L, on May 17th, 2013 In the past the use of our streets wasn’t so defined as it is today. Sure there were footpaths however people, cars, trams and even horse drawn carts all had equal access to the road. The image below of Queen St in 1922 shows this well, after all can you imagine the reaction you would get today if a group of guys decided to stop for a chat in one of the traffic lanes on Queen St.
 Queen Street, Auckland. Smith, Sydney Charles, 1888-1972 : Photographs of New Zealand. Ref: 1/2-046201-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23203589 But over time we went from this and turned over as much of our streets as possible to the movement of cars. For the reason why, I believe the answer lies partly in human nature and partly in the saying “you can only manage what you can measure”. For the former the car is meant to represent freedom, the ability to go where you want and when you want so I doubt there is a single person who gets behind the wheel of a car and enjoys it when they held up as it goes against the very dream upon which cars were sold to us on.
As more and more people took to driving, there became increasing problems with congestion. In an attempt to solve that congestion traffic engineers looked at ways of increasing the amount of road space available, taking over road space that was once used by everyone and devoting it solely to the movement of vehicles. I believe that one of the key ways they were able to do this is because they realised how important it was to count traffic. The engineers were able to fairly accurately point out just how much traffic there was and how fast it was growing. Over time the movement of as many vehicles as possible became the most important aspect and justification for nibbling away at the pedestrian environment for which there was no such usage information.
But why was there no information about the pedestrian environment? I suspect there are two reasons. The first being that we forgot that a street isn’t just a place for movement from A to B but that it is a place for interaction and activity. In effect we took it for granted that we could change the quality of it but that the use of it would stay the same. We also didn’t have any way to measure the pedestrian use of a street. In fact up until recently the only way to really get a feeling for how many people using a street was to hire a whole bunch of people and have them manually count every single person. As you can imagine that isn’t a cheap proposition so it can only be done very infrequently which means counts are subject to issues like weather, special events or other influences.
Thankfully that is now starting to change. Just over a year ago, Heart of The City (HoTC) in conjunction with the Auckland Council started installing automatic pedestrian counters in various locations throughout the city. Here is the press release from the time.
We are excited to announce that we are taking real steps towards understanding how people use the Auckland City Centre at all times of the day with our new high tech counting equipment. The new 24/7 monitoring system charts pedestrian numbers and provides meaningful performance data to assist property owners and retailers and track the impact of events and other activities that occur in the city.
The previous ‘snapshot’ system provided data gathered on a Wednesday in mid-October every year – rain, hail or shine. Of course the weather, or road works or a cruise ship or even a blockbuster sale all had huge impacts on the results. but a lot can happen over a year in such a vibrant place like the City Centre, so getting better data was essential.
With this new technology, we now have automated pedestrian counts on a 24/7 basis, which enables us to better understand the pedestrian numbers at any time or day of the year, and compare current and long term trends in the City Centre.
Understanding pedestrian counts is also key determinant for setting rental values, as well assisting businesses in determining where they want to locate, and even their opening hours.
On Saturday 17 March when the city centre hosted both the Volvo Ocean Race and St Patrick’s Day celebration, pedestrian numbers at the bottom of Queen Street increased by 63% on the previous four Saturdays.
Four locations in the City Centre have the automated counting technology – three in Queen Street and one in High Street. The data is instantly sent back over the 3G network to a server at HOTCity offices, where ‘real time reports’ can be downloaded over the web at any time. Heart of the City members will be the first to see the counts.
One of the important ways of keeping a tab on a city centre’s progress is to monitor and report on pedestrian foot traffic. The system is already proving it’s worth and we hope, in partnership with others, to be able to expand the number of locations over time to cover the whole City Centre.
HoTC are able to get some very detailed data from these devices and since that press release have added three more sites to the network. They eventually intend to have 15 of them scattered around the city centre and they have been publishing a summary of the data collected on their website. The current locations are:
 Note: 205 Queen St hasn’t been updated on the map yet One of the things I like about the summary data provided is that HoTC show the average Weekday, Saturday, Sunday and Public Holiday counts which means that the numbers aren’t subject to the changes in the calendar like we have with the PT stats. Here are the average weekday pedestrian counts (excluding public holidays).
This shows quite nicely just how many more pedestrians are walking up and down Queen St every day compared to the other streets in the CBD. The numbers suggest that depending on which part of Queen St you look at, pedestrian volumes tend to range from 45,000-60,000 people per day. It is also surprising that Darby St seems to have better pedestrian volumes than High St – although admittedly it is compared to the worst end of High St. Unfortunately we can’t compare these Queen St pedestrian volumes with vehicle numbers as the last traffic count that I can find for it was done in 2004 which was before the upgrade which delivered significant improvements to pedestrian priority. Back then there were around 20,000 vehicles per day using the road but I suspect it is much less now.
Here are the volumes for Saturdays
And here are Sundays.
I have left out Public Holidays as they are obviously a bit more sporadic.
Overall this is a great development and I hope we eventually see more around not just the CBD but in other areas too. It’s just a shame that we didn’t have these counters sooner, how great would have been great to be able to see the impact that the various upgrades have had?
I have been keeping an eye on these numbers for a while and post them more regularly from on.
By Guest Post, on May 15th, 2013 This a guest post by Tim Kvingedal, a student at the School of Architecture, University of Auckland. Tim is from Norway.
I´ve been living in central Auckland for 11 months now, and you know what? I’m getting sick of waiting for cars. Every time I step out of my flat I feel like I’m wasting my time and this is why I did this research.
First a little backdrop of the situation in Auckland
 Tim K 2 This map shows all parking, which is run by the big companies like Wilson etc., in Auckland CBD. The ones marked with letters are all multi storey car parks and the red dots are “smaller” ones on the ground. You can also add all the parking that belongs to private offices, shops etc. There are so many parking spots but still not enough for the ridiculous amount of cars. So we need more car parks, you say? Well, if you want to dig your own grave, the answer is yes. If you’re more interested in making Auckland work as a well functioning city in the future public transport is the answer, and by public transport I first of all mean train.
Lets do a quick assessment of what kind of work cars and train are doing best. Well, one single railway has about twelve times more capacity than a single motorway lane. This means that you can ship a large amount of people in and out of the city centre ten times more efficient than a car would do.
 On average there are 1.2 people in each car going in and out of Auckland CBD. This means that there is a lot of space wasted to get 1.2 people from A to B. The car is also running on fossil fuels and will pollute a whole lot more than an eco friendly electric train. What the train cannot do is to take you to rural places like your bach, which are miles away from the rail lines. So the car is good at transporting you out from urban places whereas the train is good at taking you in and out of the cities.
The Walk
For my research I decided to see how much time I wasted on a single trip from my apartment in Union Street to Countdown grocery store next to Queen Street. This should be a 10 minute walk with 7 intersections. Lets see what happened:
I only need to walk 20 meters before my first red man. I started the stopwatch. 30 seconds, 1 minute, still no sign of the green man. So what do you do? Call a friend? Well, with all that traffic noise there’s no point in calling anyone. Better do nothing. So finally, after 1 minute 45s I’m allowed to cross.
I walk up Hobson Street and I spot this gap between two buildings. This is not the only one I’ve seen, Auckland is filled with these gaps and most of them are used for ‘temporary’ car parks. In this gap it looks like it´s one lucky car that found this secret little spot with great view.
The thing about these gaps is that people don’t see them, except people that are in a cars looking for a car park. The street life desperately needs these gaps to be filled, because they’re puncturing the whole experience of walking down the street and being activated by the programmes in the surrounding buildings.
This particular spot would be great for a café or what about just putting a big cow there to activate people walking down the street and open their eyes for that gap and what kind of potential it has.
I start walking again and I see people running like crazy to cross the street before the green man disappears. They simply don’t want to waste their time waiting for cars to cross.
So after a couple of red men and one lucky green I’m standing next to Auckland’s biggest wound, the gap next to Elliot Street. Not surprisingly this is used for parking cars, and this is just devastating for the area. Again, why not do something to activate the area before they start building there? There is already one carousel so yeah let’s have a temporary mini amusement park. Think of all the joy this will spread out to the area. Kids laughing, music, the smell of popcorn. I mean anything is better for the city than another car park.
Another thing that fascinates me when I’m walking are all the cars popping out of buildings like Jack in the box.
As a pedestrian I almost constantly have to be aware of that there might be a car coming out of this slot. It’s not that it’s really dangerous but you still have to be aware of it all the time. On my way home I clocked how long time I’d spent on passing these car slots.
This picture sums up the feeling as a pedestrian with all this cars popping out. It’s a battle:
It’s not just the cars crossing the pedestrian lane that is annoying, but also that the pedestrian lane itself sometimes disappear! There is no marking and no lights telling you when you can cross. So I guess if I want to follow the traffic rules I better go back and try another way?
So after crossing 14 intersections in total I’m home again and these are the stats from the walk:
So thanks to the auto-dominant nature of Auckland I will have wasted 91 hours of my time this year just to buy groceries.
And I’m not sure it’s working out so well for all the drivers either…
By Matt L, on May 5th, 2013 There was an excellent piece on TVNZs Sunday programme last week about cycling (click the image).
Its great that they talked to Glen Koorey (sometimes comments on here as Glen K) who made the excellent point that for ~$600 million, we could build an entire cycle network in Auckland. To put that figure in perspective, over the next 10 years the council has budgeted to spent around $5 billion on local roads so that doesn’t even include all of the money proposed to be spent on the motorways. Re-prioritising some of that spend could see the entire proposed cycleway network (below) completed in less than a decade.
Let’s stop mucking around and just get the thing built. At the very least, wouldn’t it be wonderful to at least say we have “completed” one transport network – of course I’m sure that there is still more that could be done so cyclists, please don’t jump on me for that comment  .
By Kent Lundberg, on May 2nd, 2013 
Here’s an update on the last Piece of Cake post (#2). Recall there are several intersections around town where pedestrians are held back by a ‘red man’ when there is no actual vehicle movement conflict. Particularly bad examples can be found at Victoria/High Streets and Symonds/Alfred Streets, and reader mm suggested an additional one at Broadway and Mortimer Place in Newmarket.
Since I figured this problem was so easy-peasy, I logged a call with AT via their twitter account @AklTransport and pointed them to my blog post. A few days later a friendly person called and asked me to describe the problem in more detail. The issue, according to AT, is not so easy to fix. These intersections (at least the Symonds and Victoria Street ones) have an “exclusive pedestrian phase” which means that they also can’t have unique mid-phasing cycles that allow people to cross in one direction. This decision is based on previous situations where mixed signal phasing patterns have introduced safety issues.
This seems like a reasonable and logical consideration based most likely on a major intersection like Queen Street. The problem I have is using this rule and applying it to unique circumstances. The most obvious distinction with these cases is the one-way street. Also, the side streets are more like lanes than streets. So we are left with a design that treats people like idiots and ultimately forces them to ignore the signals.
Not to be deterred here is Piece of Cake #3. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons why these are also “too hard.”
By Guest Post, on April 11th, 2013 This is a guest post from reader Goosid
I returned to New Zealand in September 2011 from three years in Romania. Although Bucharest may rival Auckland for its unfriendly environment for cycling – I have always been a keen cyclist and seeing the cycling Infrastructure in Northern Europe (particularly Amsterdam and Copenhagen) convinced me that the deciding factor is investment in infrastructure. You only need to look at the difference in cycling culture between the Netherlands and Belgium to see that. Belgium, despite having a very similar culture (at least in the majority Flemish areas) and geography to the Netherlands has relatively poor cycling infrastructure and is much more auto dependent. This is even more pronounced in the French speaking parts of Belgium.
What I also saw was how well bicycles work with public transport. I am sure many of you have seen the stacks of bikes at the Amsterdam train station, to the point where there is now basically a crisis of congestion and parking for bicycles
Like most of the English speaking world we are very far behind even Belgium (the Netherlands has more cyclists than the entire English speaking world combined). In Auckland a common issue raised are the hills that Auckland is blessed with which give us such a great natural environment.
The solution I have found is an electric bike. I first saw these in Germany and I immediately realised what a great idea they are. Electric power is perfect for bicycles as the low weight means a relatively small power source is required as opposed to an electric car where so much weight is added through the batteries. I don’t really cycle for fitness so I just want to get from A to B as quickly and easily as possible.
I purchased a SmartMotion eUrban Bike. You can see more detail about this bike at (http://www.electricbikes.co.nz/content/view/96/125/). It was specifically designed for New Zealand by the Wisper franchise owner in New Zealand and is a great little bike. However, I have no association with the business and there are lots of other great bikes out there. For some electric bike porn check out the new electric bike from Smart (who make the Smart cars) http://www.t3.com/news/smart-electric-bike-available-to-pre-order-now. Drool!
The bike can be ridden purely on electric power via the throttle or, on my bike, you can choose an assist level from 1 to 5. This means that the bike will supply power from the battery in addition to your pedal power to keep you at around 25-27 km/h on the flat. If you go over 27 km/h the motor will cut out and you are just on pedal power until your speed drops again. I always ride on assist level 5 which, of course, sucks more power.
These are the advantages I see of the electric bike:
- It has a motor, so I don’t work as hard and arrive at my destination not covered in perspiration. I usually travel at around 27-30 km/h with literally no sweat.
- Hills are like riding on the flat. I just turn up the assist, go down some gears, cycle at a normal pace and usually ascend the hill at 18-22 km/h depending on the slope. Annoys the hell out of the lycra brigade I tell you!
- It can be carried on trains and ferries. I take the Bayswater ferry every day and it is fantastic. A lot of fellow riders get off and continue on to Newmarket, Ponsonby etc.
- Easy for kids to use. The speed via throttle is limited to around 25 km/h so they can’t go crazy speed wise.
- The range is great at around 30 kms per charge on my reasonably hilly route. I usually charge every 3-4 days and I have never been caught short. The bike has an easy to read panel that shows the amount of power left at the current rate of consumption. It takes about 5-6 hours to recharge from a normal power outlet and uses about the same amount of power as a light bulb.
- If the power does run out you can still continue to cycle like a normal bicycle using the pedals.
- It is very quiet with only a slight whine when the motor is working hard up a hill.
Some disadvantages from a normal cycle are:
- It is heavier than a normal cycle (mine is about 19 kilos) which may make it difficult to carry up and down stairs for a smaller person. I am 85 kilos and it is easy for me.
- It will be a few 100 dollars more expensive than a non-electric bike which is basically the cost of the battery. I think it is worth it to avoid the effort on hills and to enjoy my cycling more.
- The battery does have a limited life span. However, I know a guy who has an older model of Wisper bike with the same battery for 5 years and it is still going strong. I believe a new battery costs around $700 new.
- You will have to put up with little jibes from the lycra brigade that you are “cheating”.
- You will constantly be asked by people about your bike and you will turn into an electric bike zealot.
- You won’t want to use your car. Hmm, I guess that should go in the first list?
The point with this is not that my family doesn’t need a car. We live in Auckland of course we do! Keeping with the electric theme, we have a hybrid that my wife uses and I occasionally use on the weekend. However, it means we now comfortably only need one car, which saves a huge amount of money. When my children are older, I intend to buy an electric Danish style electric cargo bike like this one for getting them around:
 NZ Post has just bought some electric bikes for their posties and, in some European cities, electric cargo bikes are being used to transport goods through pedestrian only areas. What a great solution for our future pedestrian zones in Auckland. Some can carry up to 100kgs of goods. They are huge in China along with electric scooters.
Some people have been very sceptical about the benefits until they have actually ridden my bike and then they are sold. For trips of less than 5 kms, electric bikes really do offer a fantastic alternative and with some cargo carrying capability can replace a car for many short trips.
I remember someone on the blog did a map showing how over 80% of Aucklanders live within a 2km radius of an existing train station. An electric bike will make you laugh at a 2km ride, regardless of age, fitness or terrain and you can then jump on one of the new electric trains and you are away!
P.S. I have nothing against the lycra brigade! Just playing fellas, all us cyclists have to stick together and guys do a great job of keeping cycling visible in the city.
By Stu Donovan, on April 8th, 2013 About 5 years ago what was then the Hyatt Hotel (since renamed the Pullman Hotel) underwent major renovations, which involved adding some apartments on the northern side of the building and rebuilding their frontage with Princes Street.
The location of the hotel is shown below, on the north-eastern corner of the intersection of Princes and Waterloo Quadrant.
Then something very strange happened – a verandah pole encased in plywood boxing was plonked right in the middle of the footpath on Princes Street, as illustrated below.
At the time it happened the whole arrangement looked so mediocre I assumed that it had to be temporary. As years passed, however, I have reluctantly come to realise that the pole and associated box were a permanent feature of Auckland’s pedestrian environment.
This, I suggest, is problematic.
The first issue is that the pole and box together block a good proportion of the footpath, which at that point is quite narrow due to the presence of a post box and street tree. The second issue is that the top of box have sharp corners that sit at head/eye height for a slightly shorter than average person. The third and final issue is that it’s just plain ugly.
So I contacted the Pullman Hotel and raised the issue with them. To which they responded:
I am just following up on your expressed concern to me on the 07/08/2012 about the boxing surrounding a beam connected to our hotel which is blocking a part of the pathway on Princes Street.
I have been in contact with the hotels Director of Engineering in regards to this and he has informed me that when the hotel was originally operated under Hyatt the boxing was a temporary supporting. However during the change of ownership the boxing was given consent and the council approved for it to stay there permanently.
I appreciate your concerns and can understand where you are coming from in retrospect of this, however as this has not directly affected anyone at this stage there are no plans in the near future for this to be removed.
If you do have further queries in regards to your concerns, please feel free to contact the city council directly.
The points in bold are quite important. The first point is an acknowledgement that it was intended as a temporary arrangement. The second point is an assertion the pole and box “has not directly affected anyone at this stage.”
Which seems odd – because it obviously affected me enough to raise the issue i the first place. I suspect the box has also affected many more people over the last 5 years, even if they have not bothered to raise the issue with the hotel.
So anyway, later in August 2012 I followed the advice of the Pullman Hotel and followed up with Auckland Transport. On the 6 September their feedback coordinator replied with the following email:
Thank you for contacting us about the Verandah pole outside the Pullman Hotel on Princess Street. While we had hoped to provide you with an update by this time, our investigation is taking longer than initially anticipated. We apologise for the delay and you can expect to receive an update by mid-September.
As you’re probably aware September 2012 has well and truly come and gone, as have another 6-7 months, and I’ve still not yet received any further information from Auckland Transport, despite me sending a follow-up email to clarify what the status of my complaint was.
So having demonstrated what I think is a reasonable amount of patience (~5 years since the box went in and more than 8 months since I first raised the issue with the Pullman) I think it’s time for me to simply come up with my own version of how the situation has unfolded:
The original designs for the verandah screwed up by placing the pole in the footpath, when a much cleaner – albeit more expensive – solution would have been to anchor the support to the side of the building. Someone at the Pullman/Hyatt Hotel then managed to pull the wool over the former Auckland City Council’s eyes by convincing them it would not be a major issue if the temporary verandah support was a permanent fixture. Meanwhile, Auckland Transport / Auckland Council are paralysed by this situation because consent has obviously be granted in error. And instead of being proactive about resolving the issue they are hoping that it quietly disappears off the radar.
As an aside, I think the attitude of the Pullman Hotel in response to this issue demonstrates a disregard for the public realm. I can’t escape the irony that as soon as you walk through the door to their hotel (which is situated a mere 10m up the road from this ugly pole) you see granite paving and plush carpet. If the Pullman Hotel thinks obstructive and ugly plywood boxing is good enough for Auckland’s footpaths then it should be good enough for their foyer, in my opinion.
I’d suggest Auckland Transport’s needs to get it’s act together and engage more proactively with pedestrian issues when they are raised by members of the community. All I want is an explanation for why a private business has been able to treat the public realm with such blatant disregard.
Having raised the issue with both the Pullmand Hotel and Auckland Transport the only avenues left for me are this blog post and capitalist resistance. But that I mean encouraging all of my guests to avoid staying at the Pullman Hotel. I encourage you to do the same.
By Guest Post, on April 4th, 2013 This is a guest post from our friends in the cycling community
I wanted to let you know about CAN Do 2013: Inspiring Change, an exciting conference coming up in Auckland on the 13th and 14th of April.
CANDo is a national summit for cycling advocates which is held in a different location each year.
Because it hasn’t been held in Auckland for some time I personally have never been to it. But I’ve heard great things about it from those who have attended!
The key details for the event this year are:
When: Saturday 13, Sunday 14 April.
Where: Ellen Melville Pioneer Hall, corner of High Street and Freyburg place, Auckland CBD
Cost: The registration is $60 for one day or $100 for two days, including meals.
Who: The Cycling Advocacy Network, the umbrella group for cycling activists in NZ.
They have lined up some great speakers for the Saturday including:
- Jonathan Daly: Transport behaviour-change expert from GHD Melbourne: “The politics of cooperation in the age of sharing: A new paradigm for bicycle advocacy”
- Stephen Town: Regional Director Auckland/Northland for the New Zealand Transport Agency: “Collaboration & partnership in action”
- Rod Oram, Issues Analyst: “The problem is … the solution is….”
- Camden Howitt from Sustainable Coastlines: “How do we get the NZ cyclist voice heard? Popularising the cause”
- Gerry Dance: Model Communities:“New models, new learnings”
- Phil Shoemack: Medical Health Officer, Bay of Plenty: “The health factor”
- John Mauro: Director of Policy, Cascade Bicycle Club: “Going Online”
- 90 Seconds TV: Social media and interview practice
If you are involved in cycling advocacy, either as an individual or part of a group then this is definitely a must-attend event!
If you are a public transport advocate then you might also find it useful to attend because a lot of the topics, such as, how to use social media or communicate issues effectively to the
general public, are applicable to both our work.
This is a great chance to skill share, network, and talk about how public transport and cycling advocates can work more effectively together to achieve change.
To see the whole programme or find out more check out CAN Do 2013 on CAN’s website.
To register download a form here.
By Kent Lundberg, on March 26th, 2013  People waiting at the Engineering building, note underground crossing available but ignored (silly human behaviour) Here is some good news on the walkability front. Reader Luke C brought a problematic pedestrian signal timing issue to AT via Twitter and it was improved within a few days. Here is his account:
I saw the mass of students trying the cross the Symonds St crossing outside the engineering building. There were so many people the green phase was too short for everyone to cross, so when the traffic lights turned green people were still crossing the road. I thought this was not right at all, and worried someone would get runover. So I sent a tweet to Auckland Transport letting them know this.
The next day I got a Twitter DM saying they had logged it with their engineers. At lunchtime today I received a call from the Auckland Traffic Operations Centre asking me about this. I explained the issue a bit more fully to the guy on the phone, and he told me the red man was set to flash for 7 seconds once the green man had finished. However he could change that to 10 seconds, and would do that this afternoon! Sure enough half an hour later I went out at 1pm when the mass of students change classes, and sure enough the red light was now at 10 seconds! This seemed to be enough to help everyone clear in the allowable time. It is only a very small change, however very impressed what AT did in 3 days from a simple tweet!
As Luke admits this is a very modest improvement but it’s great to see how responsive The City was. With that said, here is another Piece of Cake project sheet identifying some other dodgy signal timings. The Piece of Cake series is designed to identify simple solutions to problems for pedestrian movement and accessibility around Auckland, and from now on we will make sure they get directly to @akltransport for consideration.
By Matt L, on March 21st, 2013 When moving around the city, the shortest way from A to B is generally in a straight line. Sometimes though, following a straight line isn’t always easy due to obstacles like buildings so you have to work your way around them and the street network is generally designed to facilitate this movement. We tend show these movement options through maps like the one below.
But in the CBD the streets aren’t always the only way to get around as there often unmarked passageways through buildings all across the city.
Land in the CBD is a premium and naturally when it gets redeveloped, the developer wants to maximise their return. That has resulted in building taller than what we have in the past giving us the skyline we have today. But their are limits to how high we can go, not so much physical limits but ones imposed by councils over the years to protect things like view shafts. Those height limits were a bit more like guidelines though, developers were able to apply for permission to build extra floors in return for providing public amenity. This amenity could come in many forms, it might be a public viewing area, a kindergarten or importantly for this post, public access through a building.
This public access can have quite an impact on if you want to get somewhere. One that I have been using a bit recently is in the Lumley centre on Shortland St. A public lift is available from an entrance off Fort St that whisks you up 8 stories almost to the top of Shortland St. That saves you not only a decent uphill trek, but depending on your destination, can save you quite a detour. With this access getting from Britomart to the top of Shortland St can be done in a matter of minutes without having to build up a sweat. The Fort St the entrance can sometimes a bit inconspicuous so I have pointed it out with an arrow.
Similar access also exists in the Vero building and people may be more familiar with the set of escalators in the neighbouring building.
These isn’t the only building that you can use to save time. For example to the south west many people know about the arcades (Midcity and The Strand) that provide a link from Queen to Elliot St. But perhaps less well known is the link through the Atrium on Elliot through to Albert St. Entering the mall you can use the escalators to rise all the way up to Albert St where you can exit through the foyer of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Once again if you don’t like hills, not that Wellesley is too bad, this can save you from having to negotiate them. If the rain is driving in it can also be a route to keep you a little bit drier.
These access ways are littered all over the city and can really help people to get around yet none of them show up on maps. It would be good to create a map of them all so in the comments lets get a list of all of them so we can do that.
By Kent Lundberg, on March 15th, 2013 This is a follow up to our recent Piece of Cake posts and general discussions around walkability in Auckland. Over the next several weeks we will be posting summary sheets that compile many of the issues identified in the posts. Ultimately, we will organise the sheets and comments into a document to submit to them to people that care (hello?).
Feel free to comment, critique, re-order or otherwise provide input. As you’ll see below, we’ve had to limit the locations to five (which wasn’t easy). It would be good to list additional places where relevant conditions exist.
The first sheet is related to dedicated pedestrian cycles AKA Barnes Dances. Thanks DavidO for the money quote.
“Barnes dance crossings are one of the very few (only) glories of traffic management in Auckland. We should make every crossroads a Barnes dance and the city should market them as a tourist attraction. I know this proposal is ‘inefficient’. I don’t care. Reclaim the streets!”
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