I have spoken at length on the pros and cons of the Waterview Connection throughout this year. The story will undoubtedly continue next year, as it is likely the project will end up going through one of the more high profile and acrimonious consenting processes yet seen for a transport project. However, in the meanwhile there is a lot of work seemingly going on behind the scenes, to sort out what I would call “the mitigation package”. The kind of “well, you’re really screwing up that part of the city, what are you going to do to compensate for it?” question is quite an interesting one, and the latest meeting of Auckland City Council’s transport committee explored some of this mitigation package (possible wider transport improvements) in quite a bit of detail.
This is outlined below:
The Council has consistently supported the early completion of SH20 Waterview, as part of the Western Ring Route, due to the range of city and region-wide benefits. This support was based on the understanding that a variety of transport and community projects would occur as a result of the motorway project (i.e. SH20 Waterview is a catalyst for them). The Committee will recall at the August 2009 Transport Committee that a draft submission has previously been prepared to NZTA identifying a wider range of issues that need to be addressed in our engagement with the NZTA. This submission focussed on the following eight key areas:
• Ensuring that affected residents and the wider community are fairly recompensed;
• Reconstruction of Great North Road as a boulevard with bus and cycle lanes;
• Careful treatment of tunnel air emissions;
• Quality open space replacement and enhancement at Waterview and through Owairaka/Mt Albert;
• Protection and enhancement of Oakley Creek;
• Providing for built form along the planned Richardson Rd bridge edges and Hendon Ave;
• Local access along and across the corridor;
• Ensuring that international best practise in catering for light spill is followed through the whole route including junctions.
Perhaps most critically though, the Council has started to look at the integration of other transport projects into the changes to traffic patterns that the Waterview Connection will bring, so that this can be analysed in a more holistic fashion. I have a bit of a sneaking suspicion that Council is merely doing this in hope that NZTA can be persuaded to undertake a few transport projects that are really ones that Council should be doing itself, but their argument is actually quite a good one – that the benefits of the Waterview Connection need to be “locked in”.
Now what does this mean? How can a benefit be locked in, or more to the point why would a benefit disappear if it was not locked in? This comes back to the matter of induced traffic demand. Let’s look at things step by step to work it out more clearly: when (if?) the Waterview Connection is constructed and opens, quite a lot of traffic will be removed from certain local roads in the area, most particularly Mt Albert Road, Richardson Road and Blockhouse Bay Road (I think). Somewhat ironically, Great North Road through Waterview is unlikely to have particularly significant decreases in traffic volumes, but anyway – in general there will be a reduction in volumes from local roads in the area because the traffic will instead be travelling along the motorway. However, over time the faster travel times on these local roads (in comparison to before), and a growing population will mean that traffic volumes are likely to somewhat build back towards their previous levels (although it may take a long long time for them to get right back there). This effectively means that the benefits to the local roads of the Waterview Connection may only be relatively temporary – and efforts will need to be made to “lock in” those benefits.
Next question arises though – how do you lock in a benefit? A clear example to me is taking the opportunity to reallocate road space away from provision for general traffic and towards either more pedestrian space (through wider footpaths), more room for cycle lanes, or the introduction of bus lanes. By taking these measures you would be effectively taking the opportunity to both improve walking, cycling and public transport (and opportunity that was probably not in existence before due to the high traffic flows) while also removing some of the ‘over-provision’ of road space so that there’s a disincentive for induced demand.
Here’s how Auckland City Council describes the concept in any case:
A key element of the study was that an integrated package of projects was required in order to ‘capture’ the benefits SH20 Waterview would bring – notably a drop in regional through-traffic on local roads. For instance, where a drop in traffic on local arterial roads was to occur, this would create the opportunity to implement corridor improvements (e.g. safety enhancements, bus priority or pedestrian/cycle improvements, etc) without impacting upon network capacity. The study recognised that the coordinated delivery of all the projects in the package would achieve much wider benefits for regional transport, growth and related community outcomes than would be realised if any of the individual projects were delivered independently.
So what kind of projects are we talking about here to “lock in” the benefits of the Waterview Connection? Well, actually there’s quite an impressive list that Council has come up with (amazing how long wish-lists are when you’re not the one having to pay for them isn’t it?). Firstly the “core projects” list – ones that are considered directly related to the Waterview Connection and are of strategic priority:
And secondly, the more peripheral projects that are not quite as directly related to the Waterview Connection, but which council considers would benefit from moves to “lock in” the benefits of the new motorway:
I think it’s pretty obvious that Council have adopted a “heck let’s just try for everything, hopefully we end up with something” approach here. However, despite that fact I think it would be fantastic if some of these projects were to go ahead, and I completely agree with the Council’s logic that now’s the time to lock in the benefits of the new motorway through constructing these other projects that, in the longer term, will make a massive difference to this part of Auckland. At the very least it would be good to see Great North Road bus lanes, Mt Albert Road bus lanes (as part of the future quality transit network along that route), a variety of pedestrian and urban design improvements, and the St Judes Street railway crossing sorted out.
It will be interesting to see how the Waterview Connection consenting process unfolds next year. Clearly there will be a lot of opposition to the project full stop that will remain (and I am still opposed in principle to spending this amount of money on a motorway rather than the CBD Rail Tunnel), but I do think that if people take the position of “well, if you are going to do it anyway, here’s the mitigation package you need to do…” I think we might actually end up with some lasting improvements to transport in this part of the city that go beyond simply the new motorway. It’s good to see Auckland City Council take this approach, and I await with interest to see NZTA’s response.
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It’s an interesting set of projects, most of which appear to be “dependent on higher bus frequency”. I think Gt North Rd between Pt. Chev and K Rd. is a good example of not doing anything to ‘lock in’ the benefits. A huge motorway runs alongside and yet it remains an excessively large road (albeit with bus lanes) but destroys the Pt. Chev and Grey Lynn town centres. Along the entire length there exists a measly 10 pedestrian crossings for a road close to 5 kilometres. Areas like Pt Chev could be drastically improved simply by reducing the desirability of using Gt. Nth as a bypass for the congested motorway – rather than its defacto state as a motorway flow over. Gt Nth Road through Waterview is particularly atrocious with high traffic volumes, along with high speeds, esp. people exiting the motorway, if the community there is to be recompensed it really needs some major re-engineering to make it more people friendly.
Doesn’t need major engineering, it could be done quite simply. We start by planting, putting in pedestrian links, making one-lane a bus lane, with footpath integrated bus stops and of course widening the footpath. The most effectively proven way of slowing down traffic is by changing the environment of the road.
Don’t need major engineering, just a ‘slick coat of paint’.
Will add some extra cost however, but not much compared to the amount that needs to be spent on the motorway itself. Plus the resources will be there while creating the motorway so they should be used.
I guess two projects stand out for me: bus lanes along Great North Rd through Waterview and then Mt Albert Rd bus lanes. Both projects would require road widening, although hopefully NZTA can be roped into paying for them.
I’m always pretty proud to be a NZer and of the RMA when I see submissions like these:
• Ensuring that affected residents and the wider community are fairly recompensed;
• Reconstruction of Great North Road as a boulevard with bus and cycle lanes;
• Careful treatment of tunnel air emissions;
• Quality open space replacement and enhancement at Waterview and through Owairaka/Mt Albert;
• Protection and enhancement of Oakley Creek;
• Providing for built form along the planned Richardson Rd bridge edges and Hendon Ave;
• Local access along and across the corridor;
• Ensuring that international best practise in catering for light spill is followed through the whole route including junctions.
My parents just got back from a swing through Asian developing countries and said if infrastructure is required it is built no matter who complains or what environmental damage is done, I’d rather have 3% year on year growth and have requirements such as the above than 8% growth and air you can see, wildlife and water sources decimated…
I think the council should focus on the “core requirements” and I think the NZTA are going to have to give them and the environmental requirements or the protest could be huge..!
Good to see, it seemed to me the council was in a rubber stamping mode earlier this year, maybe they realised how pissed off some of the local residents were about this approach, votes, votes, votes…
I think major reengineering is the right word for what needs to be done. Gt North Rd through Western Springs up to Pt Chev runs parallel to the motorway and has bus/cycle lanes. However, I would call it far from a pleasant environment to walk or cycle along. It’s wide, cars travel fast, it’s full of traffic from people rat-racing to avoid the motorway, hell, I’ve used it for said purpose on multiple occasions. If this road was full of pedestrian crossings and traffic calming measures esp. in front of Western Springs and in Pt. Chev it could potentially be a quite different street – however, I think nothing was done to it after the NW was built and I am guessing traffic levels are above those when the motorway didn’t exist. The stretch of road directly through Waterview is a de facto motorway people travel 80ks plus through there and it will take a lot more work than widening it yet again and installing bus lanes to improve the situation. There’s only a single crossing option outside the petrol station and cars exit from said petrol ignoring pedestrians meaning it’s a horrible place to walk. The pedestrian crossing also takes literally 5 minutes to change meaning people often resort to just running across, I would say it is an extremely effective block to people accessing the park across the road. When the motorway is built the entire connection from Gt Nth Rd to the motorway needs to be completely redone, if cars are ever to be discouraged from treating it as an continuation of the motorway – a mere lick of paint will not achieve any of this.
Yes Jeremy, the RMA process gets a lot of stick but I think it finds quite a good balance between providing for people to do something with their land whilst at the same time ensuring good environmental outcomes. Of course it’s not perfect, but these matters are always grey issues.
RTC, yes I think that Great North Road between Pt Chevalier and the CBD is a good example of what happens when you DON’T lock in the benefits of building a motorway. SH16 along that stretch was not constructed until around 1980, but unfortunately because nothing was ever done (except for bus lanes along much of it) to discourage traffic growth, over time it simply built back to where (at least between Pt Chev and Western Springs) volumes are probably back to where they were pre 1980 – which is quite an achievement considering there’s a 6 lane motroway next door.
I’ve talked to an NZTA manager who was talking about how the Western Springs area will need to become a full interchange in the next 10 years due to traffic volumes, hopefully we can push for corridor improvements along GNR as part of this upgrade…
Having spent most of my life using that interchange, yup it’s pretty damn busy and the St Lukes bridge needs a bit of work for sure.
Some improvement of the pedestrian connectivity between the different sides of SH16 around there would be great. It’s pretty annoying that there’s only a footpath on one side of the St Lukes Road bridge.
Especially given a large park and stadium (usually pretty ped friendly activities) are on one side of the motorway…
What do the following mean we will get:
“Careful treatment of tunnel air emissions”
“Local access along and across the corridor”
Not terribly well defined.
“An update report on the combined Western Ring Route project, including information on
the revised integrated projects list and responses from NZTA is planned to be available
for the February Committee meeting.”
And time goes on.
It just needs a change of environment, by the plans so far it looks like a step in the right direction however more improvement needed.