Two Maps

Christopher, I agree with your comments. I wasn’t suggested that the forested green gully was ‘wasted space’ or deserved to be axed, just pointing out that it wasn’t previously urbanised land ‘lost’ to the motorway (it was mostly untouched green space lost to the motorway). In the narrow terms of the built environment the CMJ created a large barrier between the city and its surrounds to the west and south, while one already existed to the east due to the gully. I’m no more proud of the motorway in Grafton than I would be if they drove one through the Domain or over Mt Eden.

Joshua, from a functional perspective the CMJ is anything but a success, the curves are substandard, the sightlines poor, the ramps to sharply curved and too closely spaced, it is far too close to the CBD, cars go from city arterials to the interchange in the matter of a hundred metres. The CMJ is basically worlds worst practice for interchange design, and it suffers becuase of it. It is something a victim of the desire to thread the motorways through those inner valleys, which itself is the result of the early push to drive the motorways right into the heart of the central city rather than bypassing it. It is perhaps spectactular (in a general sense) because it crams so much into such a tight space. Sure there are many bigger and more elaborate junctions in other countries, but how many of those are compressed into a system of cuts and valleys encircling a CBD?

I’m 100% sure the city would be a better place had the CMJ not been built (say if the morningside deviation were built instead, and the motorways ended further out and bypassed the central city). I am very fond of the idea of building over some of the cuts to reconnect the urban fabric, particularly along the K Rd Ridge and Queen and Symonds streets.

On the topic of road engineers, what you say is true, and that is a problem. New Zealand has little local talent in terms of specialist rail or public transport engineers due to sixty years of the most road biased transport and infrastructure policy in the world. New Zealand only trains and retains roading engineers. I think it is sad that the Busway and project Dart have been implemented by persons mostly trained and skilled in designing and engineering roads. Perhaps if Auckland had some specialist human capital like they have in Asia or Europe the outcomes of our rail and public transport projects would be better.

I think this is visible in the busway stations for example, they are park-and-ride facilities for car drivers first and foremost, bus interchanges a distant second, and a local stations integrating with and servicing the local community a very remote third.

Joshua, although born and partially educated in Auckland – I did my PhD in the UK – I’ve spent most of the past thirty years living overseas; I’ve also taught aspects of the history of architecture and design in universities in the UK, Belgium and Australia, so I tend to look at urban design from a different perspective than that of practitioner engineers. I must hasten to point out that while I’m no urbanist, I’ve experienced cities that have, by comparison with Auckland, balanced mixes of good urban infrastructure and, over the years, have been involved in a number of debates on the subject – notably with those urbanists associated with the Paris schools of architecture. So I’m reasonably well-informed about urban design and, from an empirical perspective alone, would argue strongly that Auckland’s transport infrastructure is a disaster. If you think that devoting about a third of a CBD footprint to motorways (and this figure doesn’t account for all the land reserved for motorised vehicles) is symptomatic of a successful urban transport system then I’m afraid your concept of what a city should be like is most distinctly at odds with mine. As an aside, I’ve nothing against engineers per se; my uncle was one; and surprisingly I’ve known one or two socially and I even translated a book on one, Marc Mimram, but then he’s also an architect!

I’d love to know how to work out area using shading, as you’ve done. That’s clever. But by my rough estimate, the Wellington rail yards run about 1300m long by an average of about 300m wide. 40 hectares? While the bulk of Wellington’s CBD (between the Railway Station and Willis St) is about 500m long by 300m wide. 15 hectares? Rail only uses land efficiently if it is buried. But it takes an enormous area to rearrange and park trains, and that land must be flat, which isn’t that common in either Auckland or Wellington.

I’ve also noted if you go to Microsoft Bing maps they have old aerial images, pre grafton gully project etc. You can clearly see the significant consumption of land in the Gully as part of the motorway extension from what it was before.