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By Peter M, on May 8th, 2012 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?
By Peter M, on May 3rd, 2012 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.
By Peter M, on May 2nd, 2012 Another great video from Streetfilms:
Tom Radulovich, the executive director of the local non-profit Livable City, describes the recent livable streets achievements in San Francisco as “tactical urbanism” — using low-cost materials like paint and bollards to reclaim street space.
That willingness to experiment was a big reason that the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) gave its 2012 Sustainable Transport Award to San Francisco (an honor shared with Medellín, Colombia). In this Streetfilm we profile the innovations that earned SF recognition from ITDP.
Perhaps the city’s most exciting new development has been the parklet program, which converts parking spaces into public space complete with tables, chairs, art, and greenery. These mini-parks are adopted and paid for by local businesses, but they remain public space. The concept has its roots in the PARK(ing) Day phenomenon started by the SF-based Rebar Group in 2005.
San Francisco has also seen an impressive 71 percent increase in bicycling in the past five years, despite being under a court injunction that prohibited bicycle improvements for most of that time. The city aims to have 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020. Sunday Streets, San Francisco’s version of Ciclovia, has also drawn huge numbers of participants and continues to expand.
The city has also taken the lead on innovative parking management with the SFPark program, which uses new technology to help manage public parking in several pilot neighborhoods. It aims to make it easier to find a parking spot by adjusting prices according to demand, helping to reduce pollution, traffic, and frustrations for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.
So many lessons for Auckland there.
By Nick R, on April 28th, 2012 A short while ago I asked for an update on the Auckland Harbour Bridge shared cycleway and walkway from the good folks running the Getacross campaign, Kirsten Shouler sent me the following summary of the project and it’s current status:
Since May 2011, NZTA and the AHB Pathway Trust have committed significant resources to identify and finalise the optimal design for a walking and cycling Pathway on the Auckland Harbour Bridge. NZTA has now signed off on the structural feasibility of the Pathway concept design. NZTA has advised they won’t allocate funding through the NLTP to construct walking and cycling access across the AHB, but they will permit the construction and operation of the Pathway as a community facility.
What happens to the Pathway now is in Auckland Council’s hands. On May 15, Auckland Council’s Transport Committee will decide the future of the Pathway project. A potential funder has been identified, and a naming rights sponsor lined up. There is virtually no cost to Auckland Council but we need Council on board as a project backer to finalise the contracts.
The AHB Pathway Trust is asking for Council to consider the Pathway proposal as a transformational project and as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) which is funded by revenue from a toll on users and the sale of naming rights to the Pathway.
The Pathway is an example of a private initiative which has a very strong foundation, including agreement with NZTA and a robust business case….It will:
resolve the most critical gap in Auckland’s walking & cycling network
- provide a flagship project for uptake of walking and cycling in Auckland (similar to the way Britomart Station provided a catalyst for rail patronage)
- deliver a significant tourism attraction that will encourage longer stays by visitors to Auckland
- use an innovative funding proposal in line with goals of with Getting Auckland Moving & the Auckland Plan
- provide projected net surpluses - which are estimated to be substantial
- enable Auckland Council to take ownership of the Pathway once the construction loan is paid off.
As you can see it all sounds like very promising stuff. They have NZTA on board allowing the structure to be added to the bridge and private funder ready to pay for construction. All it needs now is the OK from Auckland Council and the pathway becomes a reality. Fingers crossed for May 15th, great job Getacross!
Now it would have been good if the various agencies responsible for transport in Auckland could have somehow funded this out of their not insignificant budgets, but there’s no point splitting hairs if this PPP model is the one that actually gets it built. At the end of the day a small charge for a great ride and a wonderful view isn’t such a bad thing… although I must wonder if we’ll have the dubious honour of the only bridge in the world where it is free to drive across but a tolled for those on foot!
Anyway, this pathway will make an excellent addition to the transport and tourist infrastructure of our city, and as Kristen says it will end up in the hands of the people once the construction loan is paid and the investors have made their money back. Looking at that list of benefits, I really think numbers 1 and 2 are the killer outcomes of this project. As a shoreboy I can say I would love the opportunity to walk or ride into the city and home again, and there is obviously a huge problem where a full quarter of your city cannot access the other three-quarters without using motorised transport (or a lengthy swim!). But the flagship-project effect is perhaps even more important, it’s one thing to simply meet the current demand for walking and cycling, it’s another altogether to open that option up to a lot more people, to advertise it, promote it and to make it a real part of the way people get around our city.
Like most other Aucklanders I cycled around my neighbourhood a little as a child, but gave it up in my early teens in favour of being driven – and later driving myself – everywhere instead. For a good ten or twelve years I didn’t give cycling another thought, not until I moved to Melbourne. There I chose to live car free and could do so relatively easily with a transit pass and some comfortable walking shoes, but in some cases I found it quite time consuming to make trips across town that were a few kilometres in length. They would take thirty or forty minutes on foot, and often just as long on the tram once you factor in a little wait time and a connection or two. The solution I discovered, along with thousands of other Melburnians, is cycling. Cycling has gone from strength to strength there, not only in sheer numbers but also in image. Hipster kids aren’t concerned with cool cars, but you should see the flash fixies and cruisers lined up at the pubs and cafés all over inner Melbourne every afternoon. In Melbourne riding bikes is not only effective, its fashionable too.
 They may be latte sucking hipster douchebags, but they're latte sucking hipster douchebags who ride bicycles. One thing I noticed in Melbourne is that they have well used shared cycleways along every motorway, rail and river corridor in the city, and quite frankly there’s no reason we can’t do the same. We already have our own prototype along the Northwestern Motorway, and a few other short sections, so why can’t we do the same on the motorways and rail lines to the north, south and east too?
The great thing about shared cycleways is that they are very cheap to build: all you need is about two metres or so of spare width out of a corridor, the design geometry is pretty lax and if you get stuck in a tricky pinch point there’s no real problem diverting the route onto a nearby street or using a pedestrian crossing. As a general guide a price of $1 million a kilometre would be generous for a cycleway, yet there is so much potential for benefits. The Northwestern Cycleway currently carries over six hundred people a day, one wonders if you could add anything like that to the motorway for a mere million per kilometre? The BCRs of cycle projects must be huge!
At this point I should probably make a little observation. In Melbourne I used just regular streets and roads to travel about on my business, and only occasionally used the flash cycleways for a bit of sport on a sunny day. So is this the right path to take? Instead of corralling cyclists into off road paths so they can get out of the way of good honest car drivers, should we aim to normalise cycling on road so that people can just ride anywhere they so chose? Well yes and no. The ability to safely and easily cycle on any street to any destination should be the end goal, but we can’t get there without off road cycleways. The simple fact of the matter is that cycling is currently a niche mode in Auckland and it’s really only done by enthusiasts. To broaden the appeal and normalise cycling we need to get normal people on to bikes, and the best way to do that is to provide a safe and easy network of cycleways. Perhaps people start riding on them for a bit of fun, or they buy a commuter cycle to fly past the motorway traffic, but at the end of the day they get a bike and start riding it. Once we have that off road network stretching out to the four corners of the city, then it’s time to get serious about on street riding.
There’s certainly room along the Northern Motorway once the bridge crossing is complete, there are a few sections of board walk along the eastern rail line that could be extended into a route all the way from Panmure to Quay St, there is space along the Southern Motorway for something similar down to Otahuhu and beyond. In fact our city is covered with transport corridors that could have a smooth concrete path added to one side, it should be a requirement of any new or upgraded motorway to build one in. Another interesting idea I had heard is about the potential to leverage off the electrification works on the railways. Apparently they have had to establish a series of small access roads and work sites all along the railways to install the new equipment, so why not link up a few of these access ways and pave them into long corridors for cyclists and walkers? It can’t cost a lot and the pathway would still provide excellent access for maintenance crews in the future.
So what’s holding us back on these cycle superhighways, why aren’t we spending the relative pittance to cover our city in a network of cycling and walking paths? It might only take a few tens of millions to get a thousand commuters off the road at peak times, so why the hell not? Let the commuters of Auckland burn fat instead of oil, and perhaps even have some fun while doing it!
By Patrick Reynolds, on April 11th, 2012 Tuesday’s Herald had a lot of good coverage of transport issues. No fewer than four good reports by Mathew Dearnaley. Rudman on the Remuera buslane rebellion, covered here on this site. And even a piece on the transformation of LA back towards being a transit town.
There was also really good coverage of this site’s founder, Josh Arbury, in his new role as Transport Strategist at the Council on value for money in Auckland’s PT; here. A piece on design of the new trains, here. And coverage of ways to raise infrastructure investment funds via proposed road pricing here. This issue deserves its own post and will get future coverage on this site. All this follows earlier an report on fewer road deaths here, and a really encouraging report on Shared Spaces with not only Alex Swney of Heart Of The City saying really good things about the improvements they bring but even the AA’s Simon Lambourne managing to not see the world ending at the removal of parking spaces; here, although still demanding more parking buildings.
But the one I want to look at in detail is about a seemingly insignificant little road with a boring name; who was/is Ian Mckinnon? Dearnaley’s article is here.
I have always hated this road. I hate driving on it. I certainly hate cycling on it. I hate the detail of its design. I hate its programme of speeding vehicles up briefly in the middle of the city. I hate the way it turns its back on its surrounding sites. I hate the way it cuts off Eden Terrace. I hate the way it spreads the quality of a motorway a little further into the surrounding area. And now it turns out to be so bad that it kills its users too….. In short the whole thing is a disaster. Why? Well first let’s look at its reported problems.
Although the road was built almost to motorway standard for the 30,000 vehicles that use it daily, and includes long downhill sections in both directions, it lacks a median barrier and has become notorious for crashes on its main bend.
So the idea of building a road ‘almost to motorway standard’ to link ordinary streets in the middle of the city has led to bad outcomes. Surprise me. And despite a road design that encourages speed it is now expected that declaring a lower speed limit will fix the situation, although police concede that this is unlikely.
But although the police intend monitoring the new limit, they are expected to “exercise discretion” until drivers get used to it, with prompting from electronic message signs over the next two weeks.
Hopeless really, it should have the physical characteristics of a city road; in particular it would be best to reduce it to one lane each way to help slow drivers. This would also provide the opportunity to add a real cycle lane here on the resultant spare tarmac. Something urgently needed because the NorthWestern cycleway stops at the Newton Road overbridge and this annoying little road could provide a way to link the cycleway up to K and Queen, to Symonds Street and therefore the Universities and the hospital, through to the Domain and so forth. A low cost way to get a great deal of cycling connection and some traffic calming thrown in for free! Like this:
 Ian McKinnon Drive as a way to extend the NW cycleway to Upper Queen St and beyond Now let’s go back a bit further and look at what else is so bad about this road. Here’s a wider view from above:
 Dom Rd/New North Rd flyovers bottom. Ian McKinnon Dr top. Ian McKinnon Drive is a relatively new road [anyone got a date?] inserted through a much older street pattern and a sorry consequence of the terribly over-engineered and land gobbling monument to post-war planning that is the Dominion Road/New North rd interchange. Originally designed to be part of the Dominion Rd Motorway, yes!, this interchange clearly needed somewhere to head to once the motorway was thankfully abandoned, so Ian Makinnon was rammed through. Here is how it was:
 Dominion Rd + New North Rd with rail line pre interchange Ok you can see the problem; both Dominion Rd and New North Rd converging into one road city bound. You can also see what’s good about this intricate and interwoven neighbourhood street pattern; housing and employment mixed together, walkable and interconected streets; a modern urbanist’s dream. But to allow [or force] a car based transport model on a city like this can only mean getting out the wreckers ball. It also means, of course, choosing to prioritise those living further out and wanting/needing to drive in over the value of the land and buildings and the community already existing in this inner area. New outer suburbs over older inner ones. Spirit of the times. Here is work by Kent Lundberg showing what value was directly destroyed by putting this road in [Twitter: @kentslundberg]:
Interesting to see just how much of old inner Auckland has been lost to expanding the roadspace to accommodate our imbalanced car focussed system, especially in the light of how valuable this kind of inner city property has become. What great rating income if nothing else has been abandoned by choosing this kind of city. Lost wealth. But that isn’t all, this demolishing and severance, as well as the presence of more and more vehicles rushing past has kept the remaining odd parcels of property low value, underdeveloped, and underperforming. Auto-dependency waving yet again its magic wand of anti-agglomeration. In the top left you can see a stretch of Newton Gully which has also, of course, been sacrificed to auto infrastructure. Making complete the separation of the remaining housing of Eden Terrace into a strangely stranded island. And one that few walk to and from as Ian McKinnon and motorway form such barriers to pedestrians.
You can also see there is a rail line running through these pictures. Had the earlier versions of the City Rail Link been built and a real Auckland passenger service been invested in so many of the commuters that these interventions were designed for could have still got to the CBD efficiently. Then could the costly destruction of so much of this neighbourhood have been avoided? It would have had to have been considered valuable for that to happen or at least there would have had to have been the ability for local view to have been heard and considered instead of distant decisions being forced down from City Hall and Wellington. We could still do much to improve this area, undo a lot of the damage, but we’ll never get the old street pattern back. The good news is that reducing the road space will become more and more viable as we build effective alternatives car commuting and as it would release a fair of land for productive use such rehab work might pay for itself. Here is an earlier post about this by Josh Arbury.
Let’s also remember the wider lesson from this story, we must balance place value and movement benefit more sensibly than was done here. Motorways and other invasive insertions are always more likely to happen in areas of low value but are those values permanent? How much have we already lost? Grafton Gully, for example, is a terrible loss to the city and clumsy separation of the city and the Domain, and put through in an age when we valued wild places a little less. Is it any surprise that the road lobby are now proposing to complete the total separation of Onehunga from its harbour by motorway; a lot easier to get its payday among the poorer and less connected of South Auckland after getting a bloody nose in the eastern suburbs.
So we can see in this one example how the auto-dependent model is considered the least productive and most wasteful system of movement for a city; it is a costly destroyer of place value. But we’ve always known that:
 De Leuw Cather report 1965, detail
By Peter M, on April 3rd, 2012 This is an excellent, if rather lengthy, video by Streetfilms about the impact of automobiles on our cities:
A description:
For more than 100 years New York City government policy has prioritized the needs of the automobile over the needs of any other mode of transport. Working under the faulty assumption that more car traffic would improve business, planners and engineers have systematically made our streets more dangerous and less livable. As a result, even the idea that a street could truly be a “place” – a shared space for human interaction and play – has been almost completely destroyed.
During his decade long effort to understand and improve the streets of New York City, entrepreneur and livable streets advocate Mark Gorton has gathered together a compelling set of examples of how transportation policy impacts the quality of our daily lives. Mark is regularly invited to speak in public about these issues.
In his current presentation “Rethinking the Automobile” Mark explores the history of autocentric planning and considers how New York and other cities can change. Filled with ample video footage of dozens of Streetfilms, we’ve worked with Mark to create a version of the presentation here.
As the founder of Streetfilms, Streetsblog, OpenPlans, and the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, Gorton has been on the front lines of the battle to transform New York’s streets. But Mark is not done fighting. He contends that the recent improvements that have been implemented in New York should only be considered as the “tip of the iceberg” and that a truly comprehensive set of changes are still necessary.
Compulsory viewing for traffic engineers methinks.
By Patrick Reynolds, on March 23rd, 2012 Along with ‘Transformational’ the other phrase suffering from misuse in discussions around Auckland’s transport plans at the moment is ‘Multi-Modal’. This seems to have come from the logistics sector where it refers to the sending of goods over a variety of technologies and/or involving handling by various companies to get to their destination. In the urban transport context it seems to have at least three meanings:
1. A journey that uses more than one kind of movement, eg walk/bus/walk, or drive/rail/walk, or bike/ferry, or even bus/bus/bus [3 different bus rides] and so on.
2. An infrastructure project designed to facilitate different modes of movement, eg the AMETI project includes highways, buslanes, cycleways, and train station redevelopment, so can be described as multi-modal.
3. An analysis of needs for an area that sets out to not proscribe what mode, or combination of modes, will provide the best outcome. Currently there is [yet another] study into the transport needs of south west Auckland that aims to be multi-modal, which is to say it will look at whether trains, bus systems, more motorways, or maybe teleporting [!?], will best suit the needs of the area and at what cost.
So we can see how the phrase can mean various things, although generally we can say it is intended as a positive; as it sounds like a good thing, sounds like it offers choice, democracy, and in a sophisticated way. Who doesn’t want that?
Here is Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye:
I support, as does the Government, the development of a robust multi-modal plan for future transport into the CBD, which includes a thorough analysis of all the alternative modes to transport.
Sounds good doesn’t it? Except this is from at post on her website where the MP is detailing the government’s refusal to support the construction of the City Rail Link, because, somehow, it supports ‘a robust multi-modal plan’. So when you don’t want to support something but still want to appear all positive it seems calling for ‘a thorough analysis of all the alternative modes to [sic] transport’ seems like a cunning choice of phrasing; go all multi-modal. Okay, so perhaps we’ed better look at this phrase a little deeper.
The multi-modal journey.
Almost all public transport trips are multi-modal. With the occassional exception of someone who say works at Westpac, whose offices are directly above Britomart and who also happens to live right next door to another train station, all PT trips can be assumed to involve getting to the point of connection with the transit system by some other means, usually walking, and then doing the same at the other end of the transit journey. This fact is one of the reasons that cities with more effective public transport systems consistently record better health statistics than those without. Simply because with more people using PT, more people are getting more exercise.
The chief advantage of the vehicle mode is that it can be point to point. Straight from your garage at home to the carpark at your office. So while very handy also both extremely sedentary and completely mono-modal; therefore cities dominated by car use report poorer public health outcomes. There is all the evidence in the world for this for example; here, here, and here.
Of course park’n'ride journeys are also multi-modal, but usually involve less walking. And when I ride my bike to University I am only using one mode point to point, but still getting more exercise than those rainy days when I take the bus. But despite these two examples a place that supports more PT journeys, and therefore more multi-modal journeys, reports better health outcomes.
Nikki Kaye again:
 Twitter with Nikki Kaye Yes well Multi-Modal does include cycling and walking, and it’s great that Kaye knows this but do her government’s transport policies actually encourage more of either? There is nothing, for example, about opposing the construction of the City Rail Link that supports either Multi-Modality or cycling and walking. In fact quite the reverse. All PT encourages walking, offers choices other than driving, and frees the streets up to be available to cyclists and walkers. And fully underground and transformative projects like the CRL do these things extremely well.
So lets look at some more examples.
It is often gloomily noted that in order to get funding for a cycleway in Auckland you first need to find a billion dollar motorway project to attach it to. Certainly this is true of the Waterview project [and here] which despite taking place on a rail designation its only claim to any multi-modality is that the Environment Court has forced the addition of some pretty good funds for cycleways and paths as a means to mitigate the negative effects of this motorway on the local community. It has no public transport component -so other than the mitigating paths and bridges it is not really a multi-modal project. Hopefully AT will add buslanes to Gt North Rd after this project is complete but there is no funding or specific inclusion of bus priority in the Waterview project itself.
Multi-modality can be retro-fitted to an ordinary road too. Here is a multi-modal street in Manhattan: From left; bike lane, parking, general traffic, dedicated buslane. And to top it off pedestrian priority in the foreground. Four modes each with their own priority, clearly to do this you need a fair bit of road width, and that presupposes other systems of movement to compliment the road space. Of course Manhattan has a comprehensive subway system to free up this roadspace.
 First Avenue NYC photo: NYC DoT This pattern of strict separation isn’t the only way to multi up the modes; there’s also the ‘shared space’ way, this offers a more anarchic multi-modality that can work extremely well, especially in narrower streets where vehicles can be calmed by enough users of other modes, this type of system is common with trams too:
 Shared Street in Copenhagen Or we could think of particularly mono-modal systems; motorways are not only restrictive of what travels along them [no walking or cycling, and very little successful public transport] they also break connections across them for other modes, especially walking and cycling, but also for more local motorised connection too. Not only that but the quantity of traffic that they then dump onto to local streets severely limits the exercise of multi-modal patterns seen in the examples above.
 Auckland's CMJ This is what a Mono-Modality looks like. So anyone looking for a ‘robust Multi-Modal plan for future transport to the CBD’ would be wanting to urgently add the modes that are missing from this picture, and could well be looking to limit the use of systems like this one: the largest Motorway interchange in in Australasia.
So I guess the question I want to ask the government is how sincere are they really about Multi-Modality? I agree a truly multi modal Auckland would be a great improvement but successive governments have deviated very little from a highway dominant policy and the current one has greatly accelerated it, and therefore increased our Mono-Modality. The Government Policy Statement makes it very hard to get funding from NZTA for any mode at all other than state highways, in fact it seems designed to enable motorways to get funding no matter how poor their cost benefit analyses. So under this government the share of Land Transport funding going to anything other than state highways has shrunk. And now they are planning to make it even more difficult for the local authority to make its own investments that may differ from this bias.
These actions then are the exact opposite of promoting the Multi-Modal. I know this may seem naive but I would very much prefer politicians to back up their sweet words with actual actions.
By Nick R, on March 5th, 2012 Readers of my recent post may recall that I’m no fan of the proposed second harbour crossing. That has a lot to do with the fact it would actually be our third harbour crossing, and our third motorway crossing at that. With traffic levels static on the Upper Harbour Bridge and actually declining on the Auckland Harbour Bridge it seems a little silly to be planning yet another motorway across the harbour, especially once we consider how effective the busway has been.
It’s not actually a case of fewer people crossing the harbour each day, that figure keeps climbing, it’s just that all the growth has occurred on public transport. More and more people cross the harbour each day… on a bus. This begs the question, why aren’t we planning a public transport crossing? A projected cost of more than five billion dollars for a harbour tunnel and it’s all just for cars and trucks. Something needs a rethink methinks.
The real problem with proposals like this is that they just won’t go away. No matter how poor the business case, how low the BCR (around 0.2 to 0.4 if you’re asking), no matter how damned expensive… I just can’t shake the resignation that sooner or later this motorway tunnel is going to get built anyway. All it takes is one minister to start using words like ‘policy alignment’ and ‘strategic fit’, and all the extensively researched economic evaluations aren’t worth toilet paper.
With that though in mind I went back to the drawing board and started to think about how we could really make a harbour tunnel work. If it abso-friggin-lutely has to be built come hell or high water, what can we do to make it a real bonus for Auckland? How can it also improve public transport, walking, cycling and urban design?
After all, it’s not like this megaproject couldn’t have some additional benefits. For a start the plan is for the tunnel to carry State Highway 1 though to Spaghetti Junction and leave just citybound traffic on the existing bridge. If they do this right the new tunnel would function as a bypass of the CBD, by taking all that heavy traffic and sending it underground and out of the way. With only city bound traffic on the bridge we could reallocate a pair of its lanes to buses, and without heavy freight traffic we would have enough strength in the clip-ons to add the proposed walking and cycling path.
More excitingly, without any need for a link between the bridge and the other motorways we could tear down the Victoria Park viaduct and free up that corner of the city. The remaining Victoria Park tunnel could be reused as a two-way link for traffic through to Cook St, perhaps even taking the bulk of traffic off Fanshawe St. In any case we could almost halve the number of lanes through St Mary’s Bay, if those lanes need only enough capacity to service the city streets and not the motorway.
There might even be a case for demoting the St Mary’s Bay motorway to an avenue style expressway, a sort-of western version of Tamaki Drive extending from a revitalised Fanshawe St boulevard. Auckland’s city waterfront could then stretch right across to it’s natural anchor at the foot of the bridge. I can see it now: rows of leafy trees, a stretch of waterside grass, cyclists whizzing along to the North Shore, kids eating ice creams as mums and dad watch the comings and goings of the marina and the harbour.
 The plan for St Mary's Bay today. Fourteen lanes carrying city traffic and State Highway 1.  ... and what it could look like if it only carried citybound traffic. This all sounds very good, positively bucolic even… but truth be told we’re not really getting much value out of this yet. Five billion bucks to get some bus and cycle lanes on the bridge and tidy up the waterfront? To be frank that is the sort of thing we can do anyway at a much lesser cost, we don’t need a motorway tunnel for that. If we really want to get value out of a harbour tunnel it has to carry public transport, and I mean proper high capacity and fast rapid rail transit. Nothing else is going to move enough people to swing the numbers. Adding a rail line to the motorway tunnel could triple it’s carrying capacity at very little extra cost, if only some space could be found inside the same pair of tubes.
If we look at NZTA’s most recent proposals we are actually talking about some pretty big holes through the ground. One of the issues with boring a tunnel like this is that motorway lanes are basically rectangular in cross section, while tunnel bores are circular. It’s very much a case of fitting a square peg into a round hole. In this case the round hole will apparently need to be about 15.5m in diameter to fit in a square peg 12m wide and 4.5m tall.
 The NZTA proposal for the harbour crossing. Two tubes like this would be tunnelled under the harbour. That’s quite a lot of tunnel indeed, and in fact some of it ends up wasted. I’ve clarified the labels there because they are too hard to see, but the bottom right corner of the cross section is simply ‘cement stabilised backfill’. In other words that is just a mix of concrete and dirt poured back into the tunnel to hold the road deck up. Could we not put this space to better use?
Closer inspection of the cross section reveals the sorts of things you might expect in a tunnel: lights, fans, smoke extraction ducts. But underneath the road deck there is also a sump area to extract water, and a cable tunnel to carry pipes and wires across to the North Shore. That cable tunnel is actually pretty big, about 4m tall and 3.5m wide, could we fit a train through there? Probably not one of our new electric trains, they’re a bit too big and their overhead power lines need more height. But I do think a more compact light metro vehicle would fit in comfortably, particularly as they have a low floor height and get their power from between the rails instead of an overhead wire.
This picture shows a Bombardier ART driverless metro train to scale in that same cable tunnel, nestled in under the road deck. Instead of backfilling the empty space under the road, I’ve used it to relocate the cable tunnel to one side. This could also double as an emergency exit, or an access path to whatever emergency system they would have to install in the motorway tunnel anyway.
 The same tunnel with a Bombardier ART light metro train under the road deck. Basically, it seems with a little rejigging of the layout of our big harbour motorway tubes we could also fit through a light metro line to the North Shore. Given that it’s the same pair of bored tunnels, this rail crossing could be tacked on for minimal extra cost.
Now I must say I am no civil engineer and I couldn’t confirm if this is actually feasible, but a quick looks suggests that we very well could get both three motorway lanes and a driverless light metro track into what NTZA were proposing to build for the motorway alone. The benefits of this would be immense.
Three motorway lanes can carry about 6,000 vehicles an hour at best, which at our occupancy rates translates into about 7,500 people. The light metro systems in Vancouver and Kuala Lumpur currently carry about triple that on each track at peak times, and can theoretically move well over 30,000 people an hour each way.
Stacking metro tracks in under the road decks could easily quadruple the person carrying capacity of a harbour tunnel, and one can only imagine what that would do to the cost benefit ratio. If we must build a hugely expensive motoway tunnel under the harbour, then a shared motorway and metro tunnel could be just the thing to make the numbers stack up too.
By Patrick Reynolds, on March 1st, 2012 There’s something quite strange about Auckland Transport’s latest safety campaign for pedestrians- which focuses on university students. Despite the fact that it seems pretty unlikely pedestrians deliberately try to die or be seriously injured when crossing roads, they are seen as the ones who need most ‘educating’ when it comes to road safety:
 iPhone shot of Symonds St at the Grafton Rd intersection Auckland Transport’s new pedestrian campaign targets tertiary students returning to class urging them to take more care around pedestrian intersections.
Research shows students (young adults) are among one of the groups most likely to be in crashes involving pedestrians. Twenty seven per cent of all fatal and injury crashes in central Auckland involved a pedestrian.
With more than 38,500 students studying at the university and nearby AUT, the campus precinct is one of the busiest pedestrian areas in the CBD.
Talking on cell phones, chatting to friends, listening to music are all common distractions lowering people’s awareness of cars and changing traffic lights.
Auckland Transport Community Transport Manager Matthew Rednall says it is a real concern that many people are distracted when it comes to crossing the road.
“Walking is very much part of their daily campus life that we’re asking students not to become complacent but to be continually aware of the road environment.
“Just as risky is jaywalking and running to cross when there is no time to get across safely. It is worth waiting for the next light change or using the campus underpass instead.
“The campaign’s use of lifeguards is a fun way to get across a safety message to what can be a hard crowd to crack, says Mr Rednall.
Lifeguards dressed in bright orange will be stationed at intersections and in the University Quad interacting with the public.
Obviously when you’re crossing roads as a pedestrian you should take care. But the motivation to be careful is pretty strong: most people don’t want to get run over, seriously injured or killed. You would think that perhaps more focus should be on educating drivers to be more aware of pedestrians, or on efforts to lower speed limits in parts of the city centre where there is a lot of pedestrian activity, or to identify particularly dangerous spots and undertake works to improve safety in those locations.
Interestingly I recently found a report by UK consultants from 1966 for the council which said, among many criticisms of the motorway only policy then only just begun, this little gem:
 Buchanan+Partners, City of Auckland, 1966 Well you can see that that report got buried, here we are 46 years later and even Alfred St is still full of vehicles. But it does show that we have long know that the priority given to vehicles here is at the very least suboptimal yet here we are spending money on a well meaning but useless ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ programme. Campaigns like this just seem to reinforce the mentality that our streets are only for cars, that drivers don’t need to be more careful and that it’s naturally the pedestrian’s fault for getting run over. It’s like we collectively have a Stockholm Syndrome about this: it’s the victims fault. Which seems wrong.
By Matt L, on February 24th, 2012 Auckland’s second most important project officially kicked off today by Len Brown. AMETI which is a range of road and PT projects is to help improve transport in East Auckland which is probably the worst urban area in the whole region when it comes to transport options. It started life after the eastern highway idea was canned and was quite a big roads fest and while that is still quite, thankfully over time it has incorporated stronger PT improvements which will eventually include a busway between Panmure and Botany. The first stage is a $180m project and is focused around Panmure and here is some of the benefits that AT claim will be a result of the project:
AMETI Panmure transport benefits
- New AMETI road will cut ten minutes off the journey time between Glen Innes and Mt Wellington when open in 2014 (phase one)
- It will carry 20,000 vehicles per day, including 2,400 trucks as a result of the better connection for business and freight traffic
- The new road will reduce traffic on Mt Wellington Highway (40%), Ellerslie Panmure Highway (33%), Jellicoe Rd (40%) and Apirana Ave (20%). Much of this reduction will be freight traffic – heavy commercial vehicle flows on Jellicoe Rd are forecast to reduce from 3200 trucks per day to less than 400 and on Ellerslie-Panmure Highway past Panmure station from 3600 to less than 700.
- Reduced traffic through Panmure roundabout, providing benefits for Pakuranga, Howick and Botany drivers and allowing an upgrade to a signalised intersection in phase two
- 6km of new cycle lanes/paths and 5.5km of new or improved footpaths, 12 new signal controlled pedestrian crossings when both Panmure phases are complete
- Lagoon Drive busway to be used by 21,000 passengers per day, 5.5 Million per year (phase two)
- Improved Panmure rail station will attract 6,500 passengers per day, 1.7 million per year.
Here is a map of the current focus of the project:
And here’s Len officially kicking things off.
 Len using a pretty new looking digger 
On the PT improvements, one interest fact is that AT claim Busway is eventually expected to have 5.5 million passengers a year, compared to the current 2.2 million using the Northern Busway (although that doesn’t count other buses that use the busway like express buses). Like New Lynn I think that Panmure is one of the biggest opportunities we have for urban renewal based around an existing train station but only time will tell how well it goes.
 The Panmure roundabout living on borrowed time
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