An interesting agenda item in the recent Auckland City Council City Development Committee meeting provides an interesting insight into how the supply of parking can impact upon the need to build expensive roading projects. While the whole report is an interesting read, basically in short there is going to be a lot of redevelopment around the Wynyard Quarter/Tank Farm area of Auckland’s CBD over the next 20-30 years which raises some potentially difficult traffic problems. One way to solve those problems is to restrict the supply of parking that is constructed in the area quite severely, so that on average only 30% of people travelling to the area will use their private vehicles. The other option considered was to build a $100 million grade separation of the Halsey Street/Fanshawe Street intersection.
This is detailed below:
So basically, through restricting parking supply, we’ve managed to save $100 million and have avoided having to build a pretty damn ugly grade separated intersection. Hopefully this is a bit of a lesson for Council, that in areas of the city with the potential to be well served by public transport, restricting the supply of off-street parking means that other transport modes will be encouraged and they won’t have to build super expensive roading upgrades.
Imagine if we put that $100 million into the tram-line that the ARC envisages for the Tank Farm area? Heck, for that price we could almost extend it along Tamaki Drive out to Kelly Tarltons or Mission Bay.
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The current Auckland city council seem to be getting it much more these days. What concerns me is the unknown over how the new council will treat these kinds of situations from later this year. Will we start to see a howl from workers (perhaps ASB to start with) that they can’t get there leading the new council to change their stance?
I wonder how many other 4 lane arterial routes will be needing grade separation to cope with the expected traffic growth? At $50 million – $100 million a pop they make a very good argument for improved PT.
Then there are of course the awful urban design outcomes of grade seperation, New North/Dominion is a great example of the mess they make of the surrounding area. This image here shows what it used to look like.
Interesting photo Luke. I totally agree that “intersection” completely ruins that little part of Kingsland/Eden Terrace. Having a normal intersection there would actually create a really useful activity node.
I thought New North Road was older than that, or is it there at the bottom of the photo?
Unless they get rid of the MPRs in the tank farm I don’t see how they won’t have to do this eventually… Shows why AMETI is so much, I remember when I first looked at the scheduled works I thought is that it..? As there is quite a few grade seperations now I know why $1,330,000,000 is going so little way…
** Random thought *** Could ASB sponsor the tram to their own building in the Wynyard Quarter?
Jeremy, there are no minimum parking requirements in Tank Farm – as it is part of the CBD. There are actually quite strict maximum parking requirements, which is how we are getting away with not having to build this ugly and expensive underpass.
Cam, good idea. ASB will want to be able to get their staff to work somehow.
ASB is just going to rent car parking in the nearby, still-unused sites…
Your right Josh I forgot…
Max, one very interesting thing in terms of parking and Wynyard Quarter are the unresolved appeals relating to Plan Change 4 (the plan change which provides for the redevelopment of the area.) For example, NZTA’s appeal outlines their concerns about this 70/30 traffic split not being met, and requests that development be constrained unless the 70/30 ratio is proven to actually happen. While ASB’s building is just a first step, I think it’s unlikely there will be the unconstrained supply of parking we see elsewhere in Auckland. The planning rules are being quite strict about it here due to worries about the effect on Fanshawe Street.
Josh can you clarify, are you saying that NZTA are concerned that there will be more than 30% of people using cars to get to the area and they want to ensure that it is enforced. If so that is good news.
Yup that’s right Matt. However, their concern is not necessarily to encourage more sustainable transport options, but rather to ensure the continued functioning of Fanshawe Street effectively.
To get some idea of how much light rail we could build for $100m Adelaide in australia recently completed a A$21m light rail extension of 1.2 kms through the CBD.
Asuming the light rail network for Auckland costs $20m per km we can probably build the entire 4 stage network proposed in the map on the post http://transporrtblog.co.nz/2009/12/05/waterfront-trams and further such a network will probably ensure that 70% of people use public transport to get to the area
EDIT: misread map scales and read 500m as 1km, so we can for 100m afford the entire network plus light rail the whole length of Queen Street.