Auckland’s geography has helped to define how the city has developed, both at a regional level but also at a local level. As the city has grown we have worked around the natural barriers often taking the path of least resistance/cost but that has left us with some places that can be extremely circuitous to get around. In this post I want to look at a few places where actually adding in a road would be extremely beneficial, not just for cars but also for buses, walkers and cyclists.
First up in the West we have the another crossing of the Whau River. At the moment, particularly anyone around the Glen Eden area, has an extremely long route to travel to get to either the Avondale peninsula or to the motorway. This crossing actually had some work done on a few years ago and the preferred alignment is shown below was to link the roundabout on Rosebank Rd/Patiki Rd to Hepburn Rd and was costed in 2008 dollars at $73 million for a two lane bridge or $106 million for a four lane one. Such a route could have potentially dramatically reduced the amount of pressure that is placed on the Te Atatu and Gt North Rd interchanges and potentially been a useful bus route, especially if a busway was built alongside SH16.
While the Whau River crossing wouldn’t come cheap, there are others that wouldn’t cost nearly as much. This time lets jump across to the East to the area around Pakuragna. The waterways around here have created some huge barriers that require all traffic from further East to be forced onto a handful of roads in order to get west. It is also difficult to serve with public transport due to the way that the two key routes, Pakuranga Rd and Ti Rakau Dr, continue to separate like a wedge the further they get from Pakuranga where the only two crossings of the river north of the motorway exist. In this case a small bridge between Hope Farm Ave and La Trobe St would amongst other things, allow for a logical third main bus route from the east to pierce right through the middle of that wedge. I imagine it would also be hugely beneficial to those who may want to cycle in that area too.
In the North another potential, although probably quite difficult and expensive link we have discussed in the past is a bridge between Greenhithe and Beach Haven. Its something which could provide another useful North/South bus route along the shore and would dramatically cut down on travel times from upper harbour areas.
There are probably also countless other places where new links in the form of bridges or perhaps as a result of removing a few houses could make a massive difference to how people get around by walking or cycling, make a more logical bus network or even to help spread vehicle traffic out further by reducing bottlenecks. If you were to have a programme of work to make some of these new links, what ones would you like to see.
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