It took me a little while to notice, but there has been a significant if subtle change to the way Queen Street – Auckland’s main street – functions for the last few weeks. It all comes down to traffic light phasing actually, with the phasing of the lights at the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street (and also on the corner of Queen Street and Wellesley Street I think) being adjusted to favour the pedestrians more and the cars less. Previously, there was the typical cycle – in the case of the Queen Street/Victoria Street intersection it would go as follows:
- Turning traffic from Victoria Street into Queen Street (both ways)
- Straight through traffic from Victoria Street passing across Queen Street (both ways)
- Northbound (downhill) traffic from Queen Street, also including a right-turn arrow
- Southbound (uphill) traffic from Queen Street, also including a right-turn arrow
- Pedestrians
In itself, this phasing was a change from how things used to be before the Queen Street upgrade took place in the last few years. The pedestrian phase included a funky looking walking green man, and a count down timer once a person should only be finishing their crossing of the intersection. The last aspect I think was particularly directed towards young Asian women who for some reason have a particular tendency to wander across that particular intersection at the last possible minute.
This phasing was pretty typical of traffic lights around Auckland, although the “Barnes Dance” situation where pedestrian cross all together (and can therefore cross diagonally) is fairly unusual. However, for the Queen Street and Victoria Street intersection this Barnes Dance is particularly important, as I’ve heard it is one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the Southern Hemisphere. But anyway, in the last couple of weeks the phasing has been different. Originally I thought it was a malfunction on behalf of the traffic lights, which has happened before (particularly at the Wellesley Street intersection) where for some reason a phase keeps on getting missed – damn frustrating if you’re kept waiting forever. However, after a bit more careful observation this isn’t a malfunction, and is a deliberate change. Effectively, this is what happens now:
- Right turn for Victoria Street traffic into Queen Street (both ways)
- Straight ahead traffic from Victoria Street across Queen Street (both ways)
- Pedestrian phase (Barnes Dance)
- Northbound Queen Street traffic (straight ahead and right-turning)
- Southbound Queen Street traffic (straigh ahead and right-turning)
- Pedestrian phase (Barnes Dance)
Yes, I know it’s a little nerdy for me to notice all this, but I do use this intersection a fair amount and I am the kind of person to note such happenings. Now, the obvious change is that an extra pedestrian phase has been squeezed in between the Victoria Street traffic and the Queen Street traffic. First things first, this is great. Queen Street is primarily a pedestrian-oriented area (or at least should be) so it’s absolutely fantastic that council has taken one further step towards prioritising pedestrians ahead of cars. It’s a pity that more significant efforts like considering the full pedestrianising of Queen Street or narrowing it down to one lane of traffic each way wasn’t fully considered in the upgrade of a few years back, but I totally support any step taken to make life easier for pedestrians and this certainly does, but halving the length of time that one has to wait to cross this very busy intersection. However, more than that it is a good symbolic move by council that clearly says “the pedestrian has priority here, yes sit in your car and watch them all crossing the road…. again!”
However, with the extra 45 seconds or however long that pedestrian phase is, clearly the effects on Queen Street’s traffic have been significant. Today in particular it seemed semi gridlocked for almost the whole day for traffic heading up Queen Street approaching this intersection. Now I don’t have a problem with that in one sense. As I mentioned before, all efforts should be made to present Queen Street as a place where you should avoid taking your car – it is Auckland’s “main street” and a lot of money has been spent on creating a nice pedestrian environment for people wandering up and down it. It is a very vibrant street, with thousands walking along the footpaths at most hours of the day, but particularly around lunch time. A few years back I did some pedestrian counts for McDonald’s and we were hitting close to 5000 people wandering past certain locations between 12pm and 2pm every weekday. Outside Vulcan Lane on a Friday I think the final total was close to 7000. So I’m not concerned about car traffic being held up by particularly slow traffic traffic light phasing – if you take your car into town and think you can drive it along Queen Street then I reckon you deserve to get stuck in a traffic jam and for it to take you 20 minutes to drive its length. Perhaps next time you’ll think twice about it and catch a bus into town.
No, my concern is how this effects the many buses that make their way up and down Queen Street throughout the day, particularly in the evening peak when a trip up Queen Street on a bus can take about as long as the rest of the trip from the top of Queen Street all the way to Point Chevalier (something Leila experienced on many occasions). Due to the lack of a city rail-loop, a number of routes that utilise Queen Street and the existence of 50c bus trips within the bounds of the CBD, the buses that head up Queen Street are very popular. In fact, the few times I have caught a bus up Queen Street recently (usually getting up to Karangahape Road to have an awesome Kebab at the Turkish Cafe) the buses have been busier than any bus I have ever seen travelling along my usual routes (New North Road and Sandringham Road). The congestion that these buses have to deal with on Queen Street inevitably leads to longer trip times, less reliability and general all-round frustration. I can speak from experience that this has got significantly worse in the last few weeks since the signalling changes were undertaken.
The solution is pretty simple though: bus lanes for Queen Street. There are a number of streets in the CBD that now have bus lanes: Fanshawe Street, Albert Street and Symonds Street in the near future. In many cases these bus lanes operate at all times or at least for extended hours compared to the suburban ones. This enables a significantly increased number of buses to travel along these routes as they are not held up by the general congestion that other cars cause. Having caught many buses down Albert Street during the evening peak I can say that the prior situation was very dire, with the buses often taking 10-15 minutes to travel from Victoria Street down to the Waterfront. One could walk that distance in half that time I imagine. Whilst I haven’t caught many Albert Street buses of late, I imagine that the bus lanes have fixed that problem significantly. Bus lanes on Queen Street would also have an excellent precedent in the form of Lambton Quay: Wellington’s main street. Lambton Quay is definitely the closest approximate to Queen Street you can get anywhere in New Zealand and there are bus lanes along almost its complete length. Just about every bus servicing Wellington’s CBD runs along Lambton Quay without any congestiong problems that I noted. In fact, even the general traffic lanes were pretty quiet as motorists clearly reliased it was not their domain, and stuck to the wider one-way streets located further towards the waterfront.
Council did in fact investigate the option of bus lanes a while back, but abandoned that proposal because even though most people they consulted thought it was a great idea, shop-owners couldn’t get their heads around the idea that someone might actually buy stuff even though they didn’t drive there! The whole opposing argument to bus lanes on Queen Street was pretty laughable really, and in actual fact was only a disguise to opposing the removal of parking spaces from the side of Queen Street. According to Mr Spencer in the above linked article, each P15 free parking space had a significant economic benefit to the street, which had (somehow) been calcuated at around $500,000 a year per space. Now while I still think it’s dumb to really think that people drive into Queen Street to do their shopping in 15 minutes before driving home again, I can somewhat see a logic in that removing parking space might actually have an effect on businesses. However, that argument is long gone as most of the free P15 parking spaces were actually removed from Queen Street to widen the footpath. Most of the remaning spaces are loading zones rather than parking spaces, but for most of the street’s length (between Customs Street and Mayoral Drive in particular) there are simply the four lanes of traffic and then the footpath.
I also don’t get how having bus lanes would adversely affect business activity. The lanes are not going to take up parking spaces, they would take up a lane of general traffic in each direction. So there is no sense in the previous argument made my Mr Spencer. Furthermore, the argument that “far more people drive than catch the bus” is probably moot point. Perhaps council did over-estimate the number of people riding the bus along Queen Street during the course of a day – particularly when one considers that buses don’t actually operate 24/7. However, it is clear to me that the average passenger load is far more than seven people per bus, unless of course you’re counting right at the bottom of Queen Street when everyone has either already got off the bus, or the bus is only just starting its route and has yet to pick people up along Queen Street.
So all in all, with the recent changes to the signals at two of the major intersections along Queen Street and the irrelevance of the “parking space” argument, I think it’s high-time that Auckland City Council looks again at installing the bus lanes along this critical public transport route. I recognise that this is not a time that they want to be embarking on huge projects, but I can’t see how implementing bus lanes would be a huge project. You just need to paint some of the road, put up a few bus lane signs, perhaps install a ‘bus priority’ signal at all the traffic lights and you’re done. No costly earthworks, no massive disruptions to the street itself. And once you’re done with it, the buses will flow easily up and down Queen Street in a similar manner to how it works on Lambton Quay in Wellington. Even more people will be able to easily access the CBD, bringing in more shopper for those complaining businesses. For those who insist on driving their cars along this street, well they can continue to suffer in the traffic jams that will inevitably occur. And all I can say is shame on them for being stupid and choosing that street to drive along. It’s not like there are no other options. Perhaps in their gridlock they might even be held up long enough to pop out of their cars and into the nearby stores – now that would make the business owners happy!
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