Auckland City Council released their “Draft Annual Plan” last week, and looking through it there is some interesting stuff on what capital investment in transport there will and won’t be. For example, if you are curious to know where the money’s coming from to do the various transport upgrades ‘necessary’ for the Rugby World Cup, then this plan is the place to find out. And that’s an interesting point actually, because if one has a look through the list of funds allocated to capital transport projects, there are some clear differences between what was proposed in the 10 year plan, and what’s happening in the actual Annual Plan.
This is outlined in the table below: I have highlighted the figures that I find particularly interesting. Figures in brackets indicate a funding cut compared to the ten year plan, while figures without brackets indicate a funding boost compared to what was previously anticipated. What initially stands out to me is that the walking and cycling improvements budget (which was already dramatically reduced by the 10 year plan) has been cut further, from around $1.5 million a year to just over $1 million a year. That’s a pretty pathetically low amount in my opinion.
Other places where money has been “saved” in order to spend it on the World Cup improvements include footpath renewals, road maintenance, wharf developments in the Gulf Islands and – perhaps most horrifically – safety around schools. One wonder how many children will die as a result of this funding cut?
Many of the funding changes are explained in the notes outlined below. In some ways what these notes detail is even more worrying, as once again it shows the effects of the Government Policy Statement changes starting to have an impact – less money for maintaining roads, less money for school safety. There’s lots of “talk” in the Draft Annual Plan about improving sustainability and improving transport choices. However, one look at the nitty gritty funding indicates that it’s all pretty much hot air.
A couple of great videos from Streetfilms on steps New York City is taken to reduce the dominance of cars within Manhattan.
“Fixing the Great Mistake” is a new Streetfilms series that examines what went wrong in the early part of the 20th Century, when our cities began catering to the automobile, and how those decisions continue to affect our lives today.
In this episode, TransAlt Director Paul Steely White shows how planning for cars drastically altered Park Avenue. “Fixing the Great Mistake” is a new Streetfilms series that examines what went wrong in the early part of the 20th Century, when our cities began catering to the automobile, and how those decisions continue to affect our lives today.
In this episode, Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White shows how planning for cars drastically altered Park Avenue. Watch and see what Park Avenue used to look like, how we ceded it to the automobile, and what we need to do to reclaim the street as a space where people take precedence over traffic.
And at Times Square:
Meanwhile in Auckland our main street is a four-lane highway and we continue to build motorways like they’re going out of fashion.
Auckland Cycle Chic has done a post on her blog about John Bank’s recent speech to the Go By The Bike Breakfast.
During which he implied the reasons cyclists are getting hit on our roads is that it is basically their own damn fault. He said cyclists need to be sure to wear plenty of high visibility gear, or Cycle Chic eloquently puts,
“So you’re cycling along, minding your own business, and a car drives into you – this is your fault because you weren’t dressed like a road cone?!”,
Banks then went on to talk about the Tamaki Drive improvements (didn’t we just spend money adding T3 lanes, does anyone know what is happening on this road?) and finally he announced Cyclists need to stop running red lights and a campaign would be started to educate cyclists to be safer on the roads.
WHAT?
We are going to educate the 1% of people who currently cycle to work to be safer when:
1). They are doing those who catch buses and drive to work a massive favour by occupying much less road space.
2). Almost 3/4 of accidents involving a car and a cyclist are the drivers fault.
It is like having a campaign where the 75% of us who don’t smoke are told it is our fault the smokers are dying prematurely and we need to get them to quit. As much as he tries to hide it, V8 Bank’s true beliefs come out. Now he is going to be wasting my hard earned rates due to his ignorance.
I’m a massive fan of cycling and believe the positive effect it can have on our city is under estimated even by PT enthusiasts. Here is something I’m sure a few people wouldn’t have seen, the planned Auckland Regional Cycle Network:
A few points; shared bus/cycle lanes where the lanes are for buses 2 hours a day and car parking for the remaining 22 hours a day are not cycle lanes, stop pretending Auckland City Council! A minimum standard of cycle lane should be established Auckland wide, on arterial roads anything less than a curb or poled barrier is unacceptable, funding for other bicycling infrastructure such as showers and cycle parking at employment needs to be provided, plans should include the latest techniques such as exterior cycle racks on buses and where cycle lanes run on arterial roads, if a quiet residential road is adjacent – turn it into a bicycle boulevard by only allowing cycles and residents of the streets cars (cost: a few signs).
For the cost of Waterview or Puhoi to Wellsford ($1.4 billion) we could have this entire network and supporting infrastructure built within 5 years to a very high standard, not by 2040 which is pie in the sky the way cycle lanes are being funded at the moment, we could have 10% – 20% of the regions population cycling to work safely on a daily basis. If we want a step change in Auckland’s transport and to live in the kind of pleasant, sustainable city we all want, completeing this regional cycling network “crash” style is by far the easiest and cheapest way to achieve that.
I had someone send me a list of all the applicants for funding from the government to form parts of the future New Zealand cycle trail. It makes for quite interesting reading, with the ones in the Auckland region being highlighted:Whilst the cycleway project certainly hasn’t been the unemployment busting project that it was originally thought up as being, it is still a pretty exciting idea.
In terms of the four Auckland projects, I have heard of the Great Barrier Island one being a route running the whole length of the island, along upgraded paths at the sides of roads and so forth. I haven’t heard much about the Waiheke one, but I guess it’s fairly similar, while the Harbour Bridge one is pretty obvious. I am quite curious to know more about application number C32 though – the “Auckland Cycle Trail”. The advantage of developing cycle-trails within urban areas is that they will not only benefit tourists, but will also hugely benefit commuters and those who cycle for recreational reasons.
Discussion about whether cutting the power to traffic lights last Monday made things better or worse reminded me of an article that I read a year or so back about how we perhaps need to completely rethink the way we approach traffic management, and in particular whether it is actually good to have such a strong obsession with separating pedestrians from vehicles, making who has the ‘right of way’ so clear, and cluttering up the urban landscape with a million signs telling drivers what they should and shouldn’t be doing.
Here’s the article (half of it is “over the break” as it is quite long):
Roads Gone Wild
No street signs. No crosswalks. No accidents. Surprise: Making driving seem more dangerous could make it safer. By Tom McNicholPage
Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign – literally – that a road designer somewhere hasn’t done his job. “The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman says. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.” Continue reading Rethinking Traffic Management
I was actually trawling the internet for an article on the traffic safety benefits of shared spaces, but I thought that I had to share one that I came across which looks at the economic benefits of shared spaces, or “woonerf” as they’re known in the Netherlands.
There has been a bit of debate recently about the cost of Auckland City’s projects to create shared spaces within the CBD, as well as the usual opposition from local shop-keepers who think that the world will end if they lose the two carparks outside their shop (when was the last time you parked on the side of the road in the CBD?) Here’s the article, from The Observer:
The Woonerf Deficit By Tom Acitelli July 29, 2008 | 5:20 p.m
The Dutch call it a woonerf—a “livable street” resplendent with wide sidewalks, ample retail, greenery and minimal automobile traffic. It’s designed to boost quality of life for citizenry, the till for retailers and property values for landowners. Perhaps you’ve noticed that New York City doesn’t have many woonerfs amid its warren of streets, which make up one-fourth of the city’s land area.
But what if it did?
Retail sales and property values would jump; pollution and noise would drop; and contentment among those lucky enough to live near or on a livable street would abound. That’s the idyllic outcome, according to a preliminary report shared with The Observer by the nonprofit group Transportation Alternatives. (The report is out officially Aug. 6.) The report aggregated studies of livable streets performed in other cities and found tangible benefits—not Valhalla, perhaps, but serious economic and social benefits that might be replicated in New York.
Some examples from the report:
• In Grand Rapids, Mich., property values increased by nearly one-third following traffic-calming measures. • An effort to make downtown Melbourne, Australia, more livable spurred a 50 percent pedestrian volume increase over 10 years. The number of outdoor cafes quadrupled and the number of cafe seats nearly tripled. • After two through-traffic streets in Cambridge, England, were closed, daily traffic levels dropped by more than 7,300 vehicles with no effect on retail. • A survey of shoppers in central London retail districts found that those who walked to stores spent much more over the week than those who drove.
No studies exist of what livable streets would mean economically and socially to New York, according to Transportation Alternatives’ planning director, Shin-pei Tsay (and relatively few have been conducted, period). Of the studies cited in the group’s report, none involved a city as large as New York (though London has more than seven million residents); and the examples of benefits are not perfectly analogous among cities.
Still, the gathering evidence suggests a sunny mantra: Design additional livable streets and New Yorkers would come—and property owners and retailers would benefit. Plus, such streets would gel nicely with the Bloomberg administration’s long-term goals. Its PlaNYC 2030 wants to do things like plant one million new trees, reduce traffic-related pollution and put every New Yorker within a 10-minute walk of a park.
“I think livable streets is one of those strategies that would fulfill many of the goals in PlaNYC,” Ms. Tsay said, “in that PlaNYC has taken this environmental perspective on things like reducing air pollution, noise, congestion, managing storm water, etc. And if you have a livable street, where a street is sort of our manifestation of all of our priorities for the public realm, if it’s well designed, it can handle all these different issues very, very well.”
Despite the lack of concrete data, evidence that pedestrian- and environment-friendly changes can impact the city economically already exists. The Transportation Alternatives report cites a 2006 New York University study that concluded proximity to community gardens can boost nearby apartment values. And barely half of city households own cars, and most New Yorkers already commute using public transportation.
Of course, the potentially negative impact of livable streets on automobiles may doom any immediate progress toward additional measures (congestion pricing, anyone?). Still, among large American cities, New York might be the best poised to reap the benefits of a woonerf harvest.
Of course Auckland is not New York (nor any of the other cities mentioned in the article) but I am guessing the same rules hold true. I would suggest the upgrades of Fort Street, Lorne Street, Elliott Street and the other shared spaces planned for are an excellent, and wise, spend of the $40 million.
The title I’m sure is not a suprise to regular readers but after my New Year travels I think we can make it official. Here are some images from around NZ showing how far behind Auckland is, we really should be ashamed.
Wellington is a fantastically walkable city and I could have uploaded a hundred photos showing what they do well, here is an idea that was all round the CBD and it is pedestrian covers near intersections for pedestrians to wait under after pushing the crossing signal. They also provide an advertising space which I’m guessing more than covers their cost. Guess what, when a covered walkway was needed between types of PT or stations and destinations, a group was put in a line, simple eh?
Here is the square in front of Te Papa, the whole Wellington waterfront is like this, it goes for kilometres!
Not pictured is Cuba Mall which is great too and hilariously came about due to some public works in the 1960s, the street was closed for these works and businesses found when cars were banished from the street business returns went up dramatically, I notice a trend, as the works neared an end the businesses pleaded with the city council to make it permanent. No such luck in Auckland, where our short sighted city businesses are protesting over even just shared streets.
My trip was my first time in Christchurch and I was pleasantly suprised about just how walkable the city was. Firstly Cathedral Square was a magical centre for the city but it was some of the some streets just off the central square that were the best. This is Worcester St:
And I believe from memory this is Cashel St which is a full pedestrian Mall:
I love to see any streets half as good as those for walkability, urban form and bicycling anywhere in Auckland’s CBD. Maybe the shared streets will get us part way there but doesn’t go far enough in my opinion, Queen Street should be pedestrian and bus only from Town Hall to Britomart and the number of proposed shared streets should be quadrupled.
Finally here is a photo from Porirua, this is one of the main streets of the city just off from the city’s centre:
It has been fully pedestrianised and covered in a canopy, it was quite fantastic to find.
Now I know Councillors and Council staff from the ACC, WCC, MCC and ARC read this blog, many do an excellent job but there is a perception in Auckland that our local body politicans are failed central government politicans or wannabe list MPs, I think maybe catching up to Porirua might help change that perception. Doing something about Queen Street, which is basically a four-lane highway in the heart of our city, might be a good start.
In the third installment, I’ll compare the development of “bicycle culture” in NZ and the US.
Many may be thinking with the National Cycleway we may have the leg up on the Americans in this category but as we’ll see many cities in the US are at the beginning of their own bicycling booms.
Here in NZ generally small amounts of money are allocated to bicycling infrastructure from Central Government or Local Councils via the NLTP. Talking to the NZTA recently about the SH16 widening project I got chatting about bicycling and it was brought to my attention that often the meager funds allocated to bicycling or not fully spent. While the National Cycleway is a good start it will not create a fully NZ wide corridor as many of us had hoped at it’s announcement. Bicycle lanes are developing in our cities though at a snail’s pace, in Auckland mainly as part of state highway projects.
Bicycle parking in New York
Looking at some specific examples in the US we can see a culture growing in selected cities, mainly major centres but also some smaller centres that have focused on bicycling such as Boulder, Colorado (one of three cities to receive Platinum awards by The League of American Bicyclists, the others are Davis, California and Portland, Oregon). In New York a large move is happening to increase the bicycle friendliness in the city. The New York Department of Transport has to increased bicycle lanes from 260 kms to 360 kms in just three years. Bicycles are allowed on all subways and most commuter railways and provision for bicycle parking around the city is growing exponentially.
Here is a video from Street Films, an excellent alternate transport info source, about the changes in New York:
Chicago is also seeing a large increase in ridership under the current Mayor, this has been achieved in small part by introducing an organised monthly ride known as Critical Mass which attracts thousands of riders.
Riders in Daley Plaza meeting for Critical Mass
Portland is the only large “Platinum” bicycling city in the US, here is another video from Street Films showing just one of the many, many initiatives in that city that has raised bicycle commuting mode share from a similar amount as Auckland (0.8%) up to 8%:
If you want to learn more about US cycling and what good ideas we can copy have a look at what they are doing in Chicago, New York, Portland, Davis and Boulder. If we can get similar numbers of people commuting to work as the best of these centres (around 10%) by copying the great ideas, we will be able to relieve congestion for cents on the dollar compared to large heavy rail and state highway projects.
Over 40,000 buses in the US have these racks capable of holding two bicycles
What about the walkers? A few days ago, the blueprint for the Auckland Transport Agency was unveiled. This is the $1 billion-a-year organisation that will preside over the new Super City’s roads, footpaths and public transport networks.
The document contains three pages of charts and lists, itemising involvement in everything from road maintenance and parking enforcement to railway station surveillance and rolling stock asset management. But there’s not a word about pedestrians.
Given that practically every one of us, if only for the quick dash down the road at lunchtime for a sandwich, is a walker, it’s a glaring omission. But perhaps not unexpected, given the new master-plan seems covered in the DNA of the very traffic engineers who, over the past 50 years, have made Auckland the car-centred hellhole it is.
A fairly common theme of annoyance with the way Auckland operates that was raised in my “Pet Peeves thread” seemed to be the lack of respect paid to pedestrians within Auckland’s CBD. A few examples of comments in that thread:
I think one of my biggest peeves in Auckland is the free left turns that almost all roads in the city have, and of which maybe 2% have zebra crossings. Many of these are downright dangerous and really hammers home the message that the car has priority over anyone on 2 legs.
The pedestrian crossing just by The White House on Queen St – when I have time to press the button, pop into the dairy, purchase something and have a brief chat with the owner before wandering out and still having to wait 30 seconds before I can cross on the light, well tells you something about priorities.
High St oh High St! What a nightmare. At one point on the western side the gap between the shop front and a street pole is about two feet! Ok I realise this is Auckland we are talking about and car parking is up there with oxygen and potable water, but does this narrow laneway in the historic part of town really need parking up *both sides*?! The ironic thing is on a busy sunny lunchtime it becomes a defacto shared space as pedestrians are forced out into the roadway. And don’t get me started on the square having a road across it. Why?
I had a chat with one of the urban designers on the Queen St upgrade, she spent months battling the road engineering team who wanted to do the same thing for the intersection of Queen and Mayoral. Apparently they just could concieve not having a full multi lane intersection with left turn lanes and traffic islands. The engineers were convinced that if the didn’t do the intersection to the standard in their engineering manuals it would become filled with crashes and injured pedestrians. Somehow they didn’t catch on to idea that designing an intersection on the main street of the metropolis so that people can drive through it as fast as physically possible might be a bad idea for crashes and pedestrian safety.
Why can’t they lower the speed limit on Symonds Street to 40 and give greater priority to pedestrians with more crossings with better phasings? It goes right through a university with 50,000 students, and right past one with 20,000, and goes right past the court – all of these are important public institutions. Now that the motorway extension is there, the excuse that they used to use – it’s necessary because the motorway hasn’t been built – no longer applies.
Compared to Auckland’s suburbs (particularly the newer ones), of course the CBD is fairly pedestrian friendly, and there certainly are a lot of people who walk around the inner-city streets. Yet it seems that there’s a general opinion that things could be much better, and in fact should be much better.
Let’s have a look at a few photos of inner-city streets – firstly in Auckland and then in a few Australian cities. Here’s Queen Street in Auckland: And now Queen Street in Brisbane (which is also the main street of that city): Next we have Bourke Street in Melbourne, a major inner-city shopping street: And finally, Pitt Street in Sydney: While Auckland is certainly making progress, with the current “shared streets” project, I think perhaps the most depressing thing is that the two street of Auckland with the most potential for pedestrianisation of becoming ’shared spaces’ – High Street and Queen Street itself – were upgraded in recent years yet fully kept their traffic. Furthermore, where spaces in Auckland’s CBD are car dominated, they are really really car dominated. Hobson Street is perhaps the worst example: Yup, that’s a one way street which is around 6 lanes wide. Surely we can do better than this? Surely Auckland deserves better than having its main street being a four lane highway, and many of its other inner-city streets being massively wide multi-lane oneway streets that actively encourage people to drive at 60kph or more along them.
Surely the CBD is for people. Why can’t we make it a more people friendly place?
I have highlighted the figures that I find particularly interesting. Figures in brackets indicate a funding cut compared to the ten year plan, while figures without brackets indicate a funding boost compared to what was previously anticipated. What initially stands out to me is that the walking and cycling improvements budget (which was already dramatically reduced by the 10 year plan) has been cut further, from around $1.5 million a year to just over $1 million a year. That’s a pretty pathetically low amount in my opinion.
There’s lots of “talk” in the Draft Annual Plan about improving sustainability and improving transport choices. However, one look at the nitty gritty funding indicates that it’s all pretty much hot air.
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