This report investigates ways that public transportation affects human health, and ways to incorporate these impacts into transport policy and planning decisions. This research indicates that public transit improvements and more transit oriented development can provide large but often overlooked health benefits. People who live or work in communities with high quality public transportation tend to drive significantly less and rely more on alternative modes (walking, cycling and public transit) than they would in more automobile-oriented areas. This reduces traffic crashes and pollution emissions, increases physical fitness and mental health, and provides access to medical care and healthy food.
These impacts are significant in magnitude compared with other planning objectives, but are often overlooked or undervalued in conventional transport planning. Various methods can be used to quantify and monetize (measure in monetary units) these health impacts. This analysis indicates that improving public transit can be one of the most cost effective ways to achieve public health objectives, and public health improvements are among the largest benefits provided by high quality public transit and transit-oriented development.
Considering the enormous amount of money spent on the health system in New Zealand (over $13 billion each year), looking at effective ways in which to improve health can potentially be extremely cost-effective. Add to that all the lost productivity from people dying earlier, or people being less healthy and productive and we’re talking seriously big numbers here.
Some of the connections between transport and health are obvious. The more we drive the more at risk we are of dying in a car accident. The converse to that is, because public transport is generally extremely safe, the more we use public transport per capita, the lower likelihood we will have of dying in traffic accidents. Statistics from US cities play out this correlation fairly well: There are also links between greater use of public transport, walking and cycling, and lower rates of obesity. This is once again reasonably obvious – as all public transport users are also pedestrians: while cycling is likely to keep you fit and therefore healthier in that sense:
Research also suggests that obesity rates tend to be inversely related to use of alternative modes (walking, cycling and public transit), as indicated in Figure 12. Rundle, et al. (2007) found that New York City residents’ Body Mass Index (BMI) ratings tend to decline significantly with greater subway and bus stop density, higher population density, and more mixed land use in their neighborhood.
Smart growth community design provides health benefits, particularly for children by encouraging physical activity (The American Academy of Paediatrics 2009). Residents of smart growth, multi-modal communities tend to walk more and have lower rates of obesity and hypertension than in sprawled areas (Ewing, et al. 2003). Frank, et al. (2010) found that residents of more neighborhoods with more and better transit service tend to walk significantly more and drive significantly less than residents of more automobile dependent neighborhoods. Research by Sturm (2005) found that, accounting for demographic factors such as age, race/ethnicity, education and income, the frequency of self-reported chronic medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, hypertension and cancer increased with sprawl (Sturm 2005). Overall, 1,260 chronic medical conditions are reported per 1,000 residents; each 50-point change toward less sprawled location is associated with 96 fewer conditions. For example, shifting from automobile-oriented San Bernardino, California to transit-oriented Boston, Massachusetts would reduce 200 chronic medical conditions per 1,000 residents, a 16% reduction.
Another interesting link between public transport and better walking or cycling conditions is that a good public transport system makes it possible to remove many cars from city street, narrow down roads of pedstrianise them completely: which has huge benefits for walking and cycling. But critically, at the same time the good quality public transport will enable the city to keep functioning. It allows the best of both worlds.
I seriously do see the day when the Ministry of Health funds cycleways.
Last year New York City pedestrianised large chunks of Broadway around Times Square – one of the busiest and most notable intersections in the whole world. Here’s a great video showing the before and after:
Wouldn’t it be great to do something like this in Auckland?
The discussion about Danish architect/urban designer Jan Gehl that resulted from my blog post the other day got me thinking about how we could give effect to his plea to “halve asphalt in the CBD in the next 10 years”. Some changes that he specified seem obvious: pedestrianising parts of Quay Street and narrowing Queen Street (although until we have built the CBD rail tunnel I’d actually probably leave Queen Street as is but turn two of the lanes into bus lanes), but what about beyond that?
Well for a start I would hope that we look at extending the network of shared streets that Auckland City Council is about to embark upon creating. Last year I had a bit of a think about how we could extend that network, and came up with the following map (red being currently proposed shared streets, green being the immediate next stage and blue being a third somewhat longer term stage): Most of the streets I’ve highlighted are little backstreets that don’t carry much vehicle-traffic and would therefore be perfect for conversion to a more pedestrian-friendly feel. An obvious problem with this plan is how much it might cost, as Auckland City Council’s current shared streets project do seem very expensive indeed. Hopefully, once the first few have proven to be successes we can work out ways to do future shared spaces in a more low-key and inexpensive way.
However, in my opinion simply focusing on the little side-streets doesn’t necessarily go far enough to make the CBD a more people-friendly area. There are a significant parts of the CBD that are utterly hostile to pedestrians, and if we really do want to give effect to Jan Gehl’s vision for Auckland (and in my opinion we absolutely should want that as it would create a far nicer CBD to live, work, do business and generally ‘be’ in) we need to focus on improving those areas.
One such example is the corner of Mayoral Drive, Cook Street and Vincent Street. As shown in the photo below, it’s a pretty massive intersection right next to Auckland’s Civic Heart, and in its current form simply reinforces the “car is king” perception that I think we need to do away with: Five lanes of high-speed traffic, huge “free-turn” slip lanes that cars can just barrel through, no interface between the street and the Aotea Centre (that big white blimp to the left of screen), this corner of the city almost couldn’t be worse. If the intersection was narrowed up a lot, I actually imagine the council would find they had enough space to build something quite useful, particularly on the Aotea Centre corner, and reconnect the newly narrowed (and therefore, critically, slower) street with its surrounding environment.
Another candidate ripe for some “road removal” is Pitt Street in the ‘upper CBD’. It is sometimes joked that Pitt Street is as wide as it is long, which is not quite true – but does reflect the fact that the road is completely unnecessarily wide at six lanes. This is shown in the photo below:
Now I assume Pitt Street is so wide because back in the days before spaghetti junction was finished and you could travel through Auckland on state highway 1 without exiting the motorway, this was effectively the main road through the city. In fact, I imagine it probably was state highway 1 at one point in the past. But when it was bypassed, instead of “locking in” the benefits of the new bypass the road was simply left unnecessarily wide – leading to drivers speeding along it and a wholly unpleasant place for pedestrians. Some buses use Pitt Street, so I’d probably narrow it down to a single general lane and a single bus lane in each direction. The other space could be used for nicer, wider footpaths.
(There’s a lesson here actually, to ensure that you lock in the benefits of new roads that take traffic away from local streets. I hope that lesson is learned with Wiri Station Road in Manukau City.)
A third obvious piece of road to narrow/remove would be the Lower Hobson Street viaduct. I actually remember when this was being built, and it is perhaps one of the most horrible pieces of roading infrastructure in the entire CBD.My word, what idiot thought that was a good idea? With Quay Street pedestrianised, the need for this horrible piece of infrastructure would disappear, and gloriously the whole thing could be removed. I sincerely hope that we never think of building such horrible things again.
Any other roads in the CBD that could be removed/narrowed/altered to become more people friendly and to help create a truly world-class central city?
Reading today’s article about Jan Gehl got me thinking about how all the cool things he proposes might actually happen in the brave new world that is the Auckland super city. While a lot of people call Mr Gehl an architect, urban planner and so forth (inspired genius is what I tend to call him), what I think is probably the most appropriate job title for him is “public space urban designer”. In effect, he focuses on how public spaces can be adapted and altered to best improve urban environments for people to live, work and play in.
Urban design is a relatively new discipline, slotting some way between architecture and planning. Here’s how wikipedia describes it:
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has been linked to emergent disciplines such as landscape urbanism. However, with its increasing prominence in the activities of these disciplines, it is better conceptualised as a design practice that operates at the intersection of all three, and requires a good understanding of a range of others besides, such as urban economics, political economy and social theory.
Urban design theory deals primarily with the design and management of public space (i.e. the ‘public environment’, ‘public realm’ or ‘public domain’), and the way public places are experienced and used. Public space includes the totality of spaces used freely on a day-to-day basis by the general public, such as streets, plazas, parks and public infrastructure. Some aspects of privately owned spaces, such as building facades or domestic gardens, also contribute to public space and are therefore also considered by Urban design theory.
Because urban design is primarily concerned about the “public realm”, the spaces between buildings where people interact with each other, it is enormously related to transport – because after all most ‘public space’ is road-space. It is this strong connection between urban design and transport that Jan Gehl understands perhaps better than anyone else out there.
This is complicated territory, in that transport based urban design seeks to alter spaces that are usually considered to be more like urban corridors (for passing through) rather than urban rooms (for being in). Instead of altering these spaces in a way to improve their efficiency or throughput (like a traffic engineer would), an urban design approach to improving road-space would seek to improve the quality of being in that space. Often, but not always, improving the quality of that space will actually reduce the throughput or efficiency of that space – as measured by traditional transport engineering.
As a huge amount of the urban design that will be happening in Auckland in the future will be located within what are broadly called “roads”, I think it’s utterly essential that the future Auckland Transport CCO gets strongly involved in driving better urban design outcomes. It will be Auckland Transport that decides whether to expand upon the network of shared streets that Auckland City Council is about to create, it would be Auckland Transport’s decision to pedestrianise Quay Street and narrow Queen Street down to two lanes – as suggested by Jan Gehl. So while I’m very pleased to see that Auckland City Council urban design guru Ludo Campbell-Reid has a high-placed job within the new Auckland Council, I sincerely hope that the new Transport CCO gets down to the serious business of making sure that it hires a number of top-class urban designers and focuses on how to make Auckland a better place to be, not just an easier place to get around.
Surely we can eventually aim for great transport space like this – which nicely balances getting people through a space while not destroying that space:
A very interesting article in the NZ Herald today about Danish urban planner Jan Gehl. Gehl is the type of urban planner we need a lot more of in this world – concerned about humanising spaces, creating areas that are friendly for people, reducing auto-dependency, and above all – looking to make our cities nicer places to be in: surely what all urban planner should aspire to. Anyway, here’s part of the article:
If New York can reclaim Broadway for pedestrians, then so can Auckland, says Jan Gehl, the Danish urban planner credited with having more impact on more cities than any other person in the past decade.
It’s like the line ‘If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere’ in Frank Sinatra’s classic song New York, New York, says the 73-year-old.
He has made a career of reclaiming streets for pedestrians and bicycles in the belief that people and public spaces are the lifeblood of a city.
Since setting up Gehl Architects in 2000, the former academic has worked with about 70 cities, including on the transformation of Melbourne and, most recently, the permanent closure of New York’s Broadway in February this year.
Three years ago, Gehl Architects began a “public realm health check” which found Auckland was in a beautiful harbour setting but a hostile city where too many concessions to the car had created. In the words of Mr Gehl, it was “a mini Los Angeles”.
On the plus side, the latest Gehl report has found more people living in the city centre – 21,600 at the last count – and a university city with 63,000 students contributing to the city’s vitality and cultural diversity.
Mr Gehl says Auckland has all the goodies to be a great city and is making some progress. But a major change of mindset is needed to address the balance between how much space is dedicated to cars and how much to pedestrians.
“Having a north-facing waterfront is the ultimate dream of all cities in the Southern Hemisphere – and you have it. But it is poorly utilised and hidden by red fences and used as storage for secondhand cars.”
To break the physical and mental barrier between the city and the harbour, he recommends closing either Quay St or Customs St and narrowing the remaining street.
Other suggestions are reducing Queen St from four to two lanes – Auckland City Council has stopped plans for reducing traffic and creating 24-hour bus lanes after objections from retailers – and halving the amount of city asphalt within 10 years.
The Gehl report says one of the challenges is the system of motorways creating a “traffic machine” to and through the city centre.
“The overall pedestrian environment is of poor quality and therefore does not encourage people to walk across the city centre,” the report says.
Says Mr Gehl: “This nation needs a vibrant wonderful heart and you have all the makings of a good heart here [in Auckland]. What is needed is some refurbishment. One could really make a fantastic city.”
He said Copenhagen had improved every day for the past 40 years “and people have come to love the city”.
Jan Gehl’s recipe for Auckland
* Halve asphalt in 10 years. * Reduce Queen St to two lanes. * Close Quay or Customs St to traffic; narrow the other street. * Provide space for cyclists.
Seriously, let’s just do what he says. He really knows what he’s talking about.
We are seeing some of these ideas come through, in the form of Auckland City Council’s shared streets projects. I’m very much looking forward to watching those come to fruition over the next few months.
Having finally got the 30 year Regional Land Transport Strategy completed, it’s important to look at the question “where to next?” This is particularly important to consider when you realise how the whole management of transport in Auckland is going to be revolutionised in the next few months, with the creation of the Auckland Transport CCO. This vast change in how transport will be run in Auckland is both a huge risk and a huge opportunity, as there will be the chance to start from scratch in some respects, but at the same time there is also the opportunity to build on gains made in the past few years.
With a potential vacuum during the changeover from ARTA and a pile of transport departments in each council roll into the new Auckland Transport agency, I think it’s important that there are some clear plans for what gets done in the next five years in particular. Obviously ARTA has its transport plans, and each individual council have their plans, NZTA have their plans and so forth, but for the first time in the near future we will see most of these plan come together (unfortunately Auckland Transport will still have no real power over the state highway or railway system) and we will have the opportunity to actually start giving effect to the very many plans and strategies that are sitting around.
Probably the best indicator of current thinking about what transport will be constructed, or have its planning advanced with a mind towards construction in the not too distant future, is laid out in ARTA’s 2009-2012 Regional Land Transport Programme. Keeping in mind that this only covers three years, and that we’re already one year into its timeframe, it’s a bit more shorter-term than what I think we need to be considering, but it’s still a useful starting point. Here are some of the major projects in the current programme:
Major local roading and State highway projects which are scheduled to be constructed in the 2009/10–2011/12 programme are:
The Central Connector.
SH1 Newmarket Viaduct.
SH18 Hobsonville Deviation.
New roading connections and improvements associated with the New Lynn rail trenching and transport interchange.
Major roading projects in new development areas, especially Flat Bush, East Tamaki and Pukekohe.
Bus priority programmes.
Major pavement reconstruction.
In addition there will be significant funding in the following public transport areas in the three-year time period of the RLTP:
Integrated fares and ticketing and the completion of the real time public information system.
Trains
Significant rail station upgrades will take place during the RLTP period, including major new transport interchanges at Newmarket, New Lynn and Manukau. KiwiRail will continue its programme of signalling upgrades and double tracking. The Western Line double tracking is expected to be completed by June 2010.
Electrification will build on the momentum achieved in Auckland rail over the past five years in which patronage has grown from just over 2 million to over 7 million passenger trips per year. Seat capacity will be increased by at least 12.5 % over the three-year period as a result of additional and longer trains in service as more refurbished carriages are brought into operation. The Government has given its commitment to electrifying Auckland’s rail network and is working with the region on the mechanisms to deliver an electrified rail network.
Buses
Service improvements will be implemented on the Isthmus, Waitakere, North West Rodney, Manukau and Papakura including better connections to rail stations.
Ferries
Half Moon Bay ferry terminal upgrade.
Hobsonville ferry terminal in conjunction with new housing development.
Bayswater ferry terminal design.
Birkenhead – installation of hydraulic ramp.
Major schemes proposed for study, investigation and design stage include:
CBD Rail Tunnel.
Crash reduction studies in Auckland City, Waitakere and Franklin.
Freight Transhipment studies on the State highway network.
Designation of Constellation to Albany busway extension.
Albany Highway Corridor upgrade.
CBD Waterfront access.
Extending this programme out by a couple more years would allow the new Transport Agency to be a bit more visionary, and also reflects that many of these projects (Hobsonville Deviation, Newmarket Viaduct, Central Connector, railway station upgrades etc.) are already under construction and are therefore not really relevant for considering what new projects should be prioritised over the next five years.
I think splitting the type of project up into roads, public transport and other (such as walking/cycling/other pedestrian improvements) is quite a useful start, and I also think that it’s useful to consider whether we would hope to be constructing this project within the next five years, or whether the main focus is on planning/design/consenting etc. Many of the bigger projects are obviously going to be mainly in the planning and design phase, and the important thing will be to ensure that everything is ready to go once we have the money available or once the need for the project becomes particularly clear.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the distinctions between projects can at times be fuzzy, particularly the question of whether a roading upgrade with bus lanes should be counted as a roading project or as a public transport project. I generally make the distinction based on the issue of “who benefits most?” By in large, new roads will benefit motorists the most, even if they have peak hour bus lanes, so therefore I would put that under roads. In contrast, turning part of an existing road into bus lanes primarily benefits public transport users, so therefore would be a public transport project.
OK well let’s start with roading projects, and as shown in the table below there is a particular focus on state highway projects already underway, or those that are likely to be underway in the not too distant future. The list looks fairly short, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that “other arterial road improvements” is quite broad, and there are likely to be a number of areas where arterial road upgrades are either constructed, or get close to being constructed, during this time period:
I don’t think anything is particularly controversial there, apart from perhaps the priority I have given to PenLink. I’ll have a think about that one a bit more myself, but my general thinking behind it is based on the current route to Whangaparaoa being a huge dogleg detour, and therefore the gains from constructing PenLink do see to be long-lasting and real. Note that I do not include the widening of State Highway 16 in my list, as I think it’s stupid for us to waste $800 million widening a motorway just to watch it fill up again with induced demand. Also unsurprisingly I think that just a Warkworth bypass and a safety upgrade of SH1 between Puhoi and Wellsford is needed, rather than a multi-billion dollar holiday highway.
In terms of public transport projects, obviously my list is rather longer – perhaps because that’s an area where I have greater interest, or perhaps because we really are coming to the end of roading projects in Auckland that need to be undertaken, and most of the remaining list of transport projects are related to improving public transport. Looking at the projects I would want to see under construction (or implemented might be a more encompassing term) I think what should come across most obviously is that they’re mostly about buses. There are two big rail projects within the next five years: the completion of Project DART and rail electrification. That should keep us busy enough, along with some platform lengthening, perhaps the addition of a Parnell/University station and the very much needed third track between Wiri and Westfield.
The reason I have focused so much on bus projects in the next five years is because they are relatively quick and easy to implement: as Human Transit’s latest blog post notes, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper and faster to put some paint on a road (bus lane) than it is to build rail. So there are key bus-based projects, like getting an interim QTN (Quality Transit Network – read bus lanes) up and running between Panmure and Botany (and also between Botany and Manukau I should probably add), upgrading Dominion Road: hopefully to light-rail but potentially in the shorter term just to having better quality bus lanes, getting a QTN operational along the SH18 corridor as that develops, and perhaps most critically: getting bus lanes in operation along all the nominated QTN corridors. This shouldn’t be a particularly expensive project, it just needs some willpower. Other important projects for implementation include a complete redesign of the bus route system, so the it better reflects the integrated ticketing system we will have and so that it takes advantage of the “network effect” benefits I have described previously. There are probably some other ferry upgrades that will be required, hopefully taking advantage of integrated ticketing and a simplified bus route structure to encourage people to catch feeder buses to their ferries.
In terms of design/consenting, here’s where more of the “big ticket items” emerge, such as the CBD Rail Tunnel, rail to the airport, the extension of the busway to Albany and the southeast Auckland RTN (hopefully in the form of a Howick/Botany Line). The Regional Land Transport Strategy highlights many of these projects for construction in the 2020-2040 period, except for the CBD rail tunnel which is recognised as crucial for construction by 2021, but I think it’s essential that the routes for all these projects are protected and that they are pretty much “ready to go” as soon as the funding and political will is there to push the go button. Not future-proofing or protecting the routes of important transport projects can lead to disaster, if someone builds something really big in the way, so I think it’s essential there’s a really big push to sort them out as soon as possible. I also think that extensions of the little tram network we will have hopefully created between Wynyard Quarter and Britomart will become increasingly sensible in the future, so doing the background work to extend the system along Tamaki Drive and Dominion Road seems sensible to me. Finally, in terms of projects that would be at their initial investigation phase, I have put a North Shore railway line and the Avondale Southdown railway line into this group. These projects are likely to be some of the later “big ticket items”, but it’s still useful in my opinion to be analysing them and working out which routes/options we would want to proceed with.
Turning to walking, cycling and other projects, these are projects that are mainly about improving the lot for pedestrians and cyclists. There are a few “big ticket items”, like the Harbour Bridge Cycleway idea which seems to be proceeding quite well, but many others are just about changing around existing areas to make them more pedestrian friendly. Rolling out the shared streets idea more and more is an example of that.
The great thing about walking and cycling improvements is that they generally aren’t particularly expensive. For just a few million you can get many kilometres of cycleway, whereas by comparison the Victoria Park Tunnel project costs nearly a million dollars a metre to build. Some of the other projects to implement, such as lowering the speed on non-arterial routes, wouldn’t cost anything (apart from signage) but would contribute significantly to making our city more friendly and livable I think. In the longer term, I really do hope that bigger and potentially more challenging projects such as pedestrianising parts of Queen Street and Quay Street can be possible. If we had a tram running up and down Queen Street, to connect our Wynyard Quarter tramway with a Dominion Road one, that could mix quite well with an otherwise pedestrianised street.
Well anyway, that’s my idea of a transport plan for Auckland over the next 5 years. It’s a lot of work, but then the new Auckland Transport agency will be sucking up a lot of money so it should be able to achieve a plan like this, at least the parts that it can control. There’s generally nothing much new in my plan, apart from the Howick/Botany railway line and my tramway ideas, but instead it’s all about implementing what’s in the RLTS and in ARTA’s 10 year “Auckland Transport Plan“. In terms of the focus on buses, this is because doing so is a “low hanging fruit” – potentially big benefits for relatively low cost. But at the same time, I think it’s critical the big ticket items are progressed, at lest in terms of getting all the design and consenting done so that once funding is available they are ready to go.
I am sure I’ve missed things, or that there are parts of this plan people disagree with. So it’d be great to get some feedback on it, so I can refine it and hopefully eventually turn these basic ideas into something that might really make a difference.
There a very interesting agenda item in Auckland City Council’s May 2010 “City Development Committee” meeting, which relates to an idea that it seems the Council is working on in partnership with Sky City, that could result in Federal Street becoming a shared space, but at the ‘price’ of letting Sky City extend their convention centre in the airspace that sits above the road reserve. Here’s the summary of the item:
Despite the macro benefits offered by Sky City as an international entertainment precinct and Sky Tower in particular as a recent landmark addition and iconic structure on the Auckland sky line the sky city complex does not engage well with the street. Along its western edge the sky city building has a poor relationship with Hobson Street. In particular, the bus station is set back from the street frontage and provides a significant impediment for easy pedestrian movement. Pavements run along blank frontages and at times are not connected offering low levels of amenity, comfort and safety.
In a similar way, Federal Street (between Wellesley and Victoria Streets) is also currently an uninviting pedestrian environment. This is primarily due to the street frontage being dominated by car park entrances, inactive blank concrete facades, large pillars, and above ground planter boxes. These components obscure sight lines, marginalise pedestrians to the edge of the street and create significant issues around perceived and real safety, street clutter and accessibility. The street is also used as a rat run, taxi rank and a coach drop off spot. This further compromises noise, air quality, and overall microclimate.
Despite being the front door to a 5 star hotel and one of Auckland’s major tourist attractions, the street is also poorly landscaped and unattractive. The combination of all of these elements makes for a cluttered, unappealing and intimidating pedestrian environment.
Federal Street is on the radar in terms of requiring intervention and upgrading but is not currently in CBD Projects streetscape 10 year programme of works. However, one of the outcomes of the CBD into the Future strategy is to deliver a high-quality urban environment and one of the identified actions to help achieve this outcome is to work with building owners and developers to maximise opportunities to improve streetscapes should the opportunity to arise.
To transform the public realm quality and destination experience within Federal Street requires collaboration with the adjoining landowners, as ground floor activation will be required to work in harmony with the public space to create a more active, safer, vibrant and inviting pedestrian environment. There now exists an opportunity for the city to work in partnership with a significant landowner (Sky City) to undertake potentially transformational urban repair work within this critical area of the mid-city. This report covers the site and the opportunity that has been presented.
SKYCITY Entertainment Group Limited (“SKYCITY”) have approached Council with a proposal to undertake a package of works. The three components of the package are as follows: 1. Redevelop Federal Street as a quality shared space predestrian friendly environment between Wellesley and Victoria Streets so that a wider range of uses, activities and events can occur during both during the day and night. 2. Reconfigure the ground floor of SKYCITY’s buildings to accommodate an eclectic mix of restaurant and retail units on their Federal Street frontages. 3. Extend the existing SKYCITY conference facilities into the airspace over Federal Street. The proposal would result in an overbuilding that would span a 48m stretch of Federal Street. The overbuilding would be 13m above street level, and approximately 9m high. This would allow SKYCITY to increase the capacity of their largest conference room to seat 2,000 (currently 1,500) for a lecture, and host a banquet for 1,600 (currently 1,200) people. SKYCITY have commissioned Gordon Moller and a nationally recognised artist to work together to develop an exciting concept that would cleverly sheath or conceal the overbuilding in order to create a significant piece of public art. It is proposed that this art work together with innovative design components would in fact enhance the public realm from a physical and visual amenity point of view.
Despite the opportunity presented there are a number of urban design challenges associated with the proposed overbuilding, and its real and perceived potential negative impact on the public realm in Federal Street. The construction of such an overbuilding will be polarising, with some, such as some members of the Urban Design Panel, being fundamentally opposed to building over a public street and those such as The Public Art Panel who are sceptical but believe that if the public art component is extraordinary in design quality and authentically integrated so as to drive the architectural response (rather than the other way round) the project may be supported.
The view supported by this report is similar. If the package of works within each component is developed to an exemplary design standard it could certainly provide a quality outcome for the city. It also believes that this is an exciting package of catalytic interventions that council would be unable to deliver on its own and encourages further dialogue with Sky City and their team to see if the potential can be realised. This report also acknowledges that wider interventions or urban acupuncture (such as the reconfiguration of ASB building on Federal St, the boulevarding and two-waying of Hobson Street or the relocation of the intercity bus depot) may also be possible by leveraging opportunities to work alongside other key landowners such as Multiplex or stakeholders such as NZTA or ARTA. This is a golden opportunity to progress this dialogue.
SKYCITY will only undertake the work if all three components are agreed to by council.
SKYCITY requires council’s consent as landowner to undertake the redevelopment of Federal Street, and also requires an airspace lease to allow the construction of the convention centre overbuilding.
SKYCITY have made an offer to fund the redevelopment of Federal Street.
I find myself rather fascinated by the proposal here, as it would be great to have another shared space within the Auckland CBD. Yet at the same time I also find myself concerned about the effects of extending the conference centre into the air space above Federal Street. So what might this look like? Luckily we have a few sketches and renders showing what the end result might look like:
It should be noted that this view doesn’t really show the depth of the structure within the air-space, that remember will be close to 50 m long. However, at the same time it’s clear to see the benefits with the pedestrian space being much much bigger than it is at the moment, which is shown below: As you can see it’s hardly a particularly pedestrian friendly street at the moment, and there already are two air-bridges across the street-space, although both are pretty tiny compared to what is proposed by Sky City.
Here’s another view of what is proposed: Once again the render is being a little bit sneaky in showing the extended conference centre as being a little more transparent than it will end up being.
I’m not quite sure what I think of the proposal all up (more detailed drawings can be accessed here). Another shared space would be great, but at the same time the building in the airspace could have some pretty adverse effect unless its design is exceptional. What do other people think?
Here’s a great video about what the city of Long Beach, California (which forms part of greater Los Angeles) is doing to make cycling a more attractive means of transportation.
What I find particularly interesting in the video is the support the measures have from local businesses, who realise that 12 customers with bikes can “park” in the same available space as one customer with a car. There is also a realisation that engineering the streets to benefit those who are travelling to the local shopping areas, rather than for the benefit of those travelling through them, is of huge benefit to the local community. I really like the focus on “to” rather than “through”.
Some exciting news in today’s NZ Herald that there is a financial backer for the plans to construct a pedestrian/cycleway on the Auckland Harbour Bridge:
Campaigners for a tolled pedestrian and cycle path across Auckland Harbour Bridge have attracted a leading coastal development company to build and operate it as a joint venture.
Orewa-based Hopper Developments – with pioneering projects such as canal housing and marina schemes at Pauanui, Whitianga and Marsden Pt under its belt – has signed a heads of agreement to work with a walking and cycling charitable trust on a $16 million pathway over the bridge.
Architects and structural engineers have already produced a concept design for a shared pathway beneath the bridge’s southbound clip-on, which the Getacross Campaign presented last week to the Transport Agency as custodians of Auckland’s 51-year-old transport lifeline.
The concept differs from a proposal by Transport Agency consultants, rejected by the agency’s board in 2008, which was for separate paths to be cantilevered at road level off each edge of the bridge for up to $43 million.
It envisages cantilevering a single 4.8m-wide pathway off the base of the deep box girder which supports the southbound clip-on’s two traffic lanes, offering partial shelter to its users without having to reduce the width of the lanes above or to build barriers to separate them from motor vehicles.
The campaigners are proposing a toll of $1.95c each way for holders of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority’s proposed integrated transport smartcard, and of $5 for casual users, expected to be mainly tourists.
They say the tolls will cover security, lighting and harbour viewing platforms, among other things…
Here’s an image of the proposal: I still think it’s a pity that NZTA didn’t come to the party here and offer up what is actually a fairly small amount of cash compared to what they’re throwing at other projects. A full business case analysis would have been quite interesting, particularly when you look at the wider economic tourist benefits of the proposal. Given NZTA’s frustrating attitude to the whole idea, I think that its proponents have done exceedingly well to get things this far, and I hugely look forward to seeing where it goes next.
A pity this project won’t be done for the Rugby World Cup. I guess we only worry about building stuff for all those tourists who’ll be bringing their cars on the plane with them.
While NZTA are being pretty damn reluctant about even future proofing for a northwest busway, I have to give them good credit for progress that has been made on extending the northwest cycleway – with the most recent 1.24 kilometre stage through Kingsland being opened today. Here’s the NZTA press release:
NZTA says new cycle link will ease congestion
A new section of Auckland’s popular Northwestern Cycleway is officially opened and the NZ Transport Agency says it will provide an improved alternative transport choice for people and help ease traffic congestion.
The new section between Bond and Myrtle Streets in Kingsland is 1.24km long, and runs alongside the Northwestern Motorway (SH16).
It was officially opened this morning (Thursday 15 April) by the Minister of Transport, the Hon. Steven Joyce, and cyclists can now take advantage of an almost entirely off-road 12 kilometre-long stretch of cycleway from Te Atatu Road in Waitakere to Newton Road in Auckland City.
The NZTA’s Regional Director for Auckland, Wayne McDonald, said cyclists will no longer have to leave the existing cycleway and ride along steep and busy roads in Kingsland before re-joining it again.
“The cycleway is already popular and is joint fourth highest in terms of cycle volumes in Auckland with around 500 trips daily, and the improvements we’ve made will add to that popularity,” said Mr McDonald. “It is also wide enough to safely accommodate walkers as well.”
Mr McDonald thanked the community living next to the new section of cycleway for their support.
“It is never easy constructing any project close to neighbours, and we are grateful for the co-operation we have had from the community here,” he said.
Mr McDonald says that although the cycleway has opened, there are still a number of finishing touches to be made to provide more privacy for residents. The improvement project also includes upgrading fences and screening, and replanting native trees and bushes between the cycleway and houses when the dry spell ends.
With the Kingsland section nearing completion, the NZTA is now focussing on extending the Northwestern Cycleway further into central Auckland.
An investigation is underway to find a suitable route through Upper Queen Street, the Central Motorway Junction and along Grafton Gully to the Auckland University of Technology and Auckland University. The NZTA plans to have the 3 kilometre long-extension completed in 2011.
Mr McDonald said all the improvements to the Northwestern Cycleway fitted with the NZTA’s objectives of supporting cycling and walking projects that reduced congestion on the roads and delivered a viable alternative to the car.
“When we’ve brought the cycleway into central Auckland, it will be much safer and much quicker for cyclists to commute between west and central Auckland,” said Mr McDonald.
Further improvements are also planned to the cycleway between St Lukes and Te Atatu interchanges when the NZTA project to widen the Northwestern Motorway gets underway.
I’m a big fan of cycleways like this one. Being able to offer a fully off-road cycle path takes away the issue that probably puts most people off cycling – safety concerns. I also think that putting the cycleway next to the motorway is a good idea from a marketing point of view – in that a lot of people are aware of it because they can see it. If I’m honest I actually don’t know about any other off-road cycleways around Auckland other than the NW one, and the reason I know about this one is because it’s so highly visible.
The map below shows the location of the new stretch of cycleway:
Because of cycling’s health, environmental and congestion easing benefits, cycleway projects don’t need to attract too many more riders to pay off in a cost-benefit analysis measure. Cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam have huge proportions of their population choosing to cycle to work each day (even though they have much harsher climates that Auckland), and the benefits to those cities are huge (for example Copenhagen spends only 4% of its wealth on transport whereas Auckland spends 16%). I look forward to further extensions of the NW cycleway, and also to other cycleway popping up around Auckland. Surely we could have one next to the southern motorway perhaps?
There are also links between greater use of public transport, walking and cycling, and lower rates of obesity. This is once again reasonably obvious – as all public transport users are also pedestrians: while cycling is likely to keep you fit and therefore healthier in that sense:
Most of the streets I’ve highlighted are little backstreets that don’t carry much vehicle-traffic and would therefore be perfect for conversion to a more pedestrian-friendly feel. An obvious problem with this plan is how much it might cost, as Auckland City Council’s current shared streets project do seem very expensive indeed. Hopefully, once the first few have proven to be successes we can work out ways to do future shared spaces in a more low-key and inexpensive way.
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