Removing/Narrowing Roads

The discussion about Danish architect/urban designer Jan Gehl that resulted from my blog post the other day got me thinking about how we could give effect to his plea to “halve asphalt in the CBD in the next 10 years”. Some changes that he specified seem obvious: pedestrianising parts of Quay Street and narrowing Queen Street (although until we have built the CBD rail tunnel I’d actually probably leave Queen Street as is but turn two of the lanes into bus lanes), but what about beyond that?

Well for a start I would hope that we look at extending the network of shared streets that Auckland City Council is about to embark upon creating. Last year I had a bit of a think about how we could extend that network, and came up with the following map (red being currently proposed shared streets, green being the immediate next stage and blue being a third somewhat longer term stage): Most of the streets I’ve highlighted are little backstreets that don’t carry much vehicle-traffic and would therefore be perfect for conversion to a more pedestrian-friendly feel. An obvious problem with this plan is how much it might cost, as Auckland City Council’s current shared streets project do seem very expensive indeed. Hopefully, once the first few have proven to be successes we can work out ways to do future shared spaces in a more low-key and inexpensive way.

However, in my opinion simply focusing on the little side-streets doesn’t necessarily go far enough to make the CBD a more people-friendly area. There are a significant parts of the CBD that are utterly hostile to pedestrians, and if we really do want to give effect to Jan Gehl’s vision for Auckland (and in my opinion we absolutely should want that as it would create a far nicer CBD to live, work, do business and generally ‘be’ in) we need to focus on improving those areas.

One such example is the corner of Mayoral Drive, Cook Street and Vincent Street. As shown in the photo below, it’s a pretty massive intersection right next to Auckland’s Civic Heart, and in its current form simply reinforces the “car is king” perception that I think we need to do away with: Five lanes of high-speed traffic, huge “free-turn” slip lanes that cars can just barrel through, no interface between the street and the Aotea Centre (that big white blimp to the left of screen), this corner of the city almost couldn’t be worse. If the intersection was narrowed up a lot, I actually imagine the council would find they had enough space to build something quite useful, particularly on the Aotea Centre corner, and reconnect the newly narrowed (and therefore, critically, slower) street with its surrounding environment.

Another candidate ripe for some “road removal” is Pitt Street in the ‘upper CBD’. It is sometimes joked that Pitt Street is as wide as it is long, which is not quite true – but does reflect the fact that the road is completely unnecessarily wide at six lanes. This is shown in the photo below:

Now I assume Pitt Street is so wide because back in the days before spaghetti junction was finished and you could travel through Auckland on state highway 1 without exiting the motorway, this was effectively the main road through the city. In fact, I imagine it probably was state highway 1 at one point in the past. But when it was bypassed, instead of “locking in” the benefits of the new bypass the road was simply left unnecessarily wide – leading to drivers speeding along it and a wholly unpleasant place for pedestrians. Some buses use Pitt Street, so I’d probably narrow it down to a single general lane and a single bus lane in each direction. The other space could be used for nicer, wider footpaths.

(There’s a lesson here actually, to ensure that you lock in the benefits of new roads that take traffic away from local streets. I hope that lesson is learned with Wiri Station Road in Manukau City.)

A third obvious piece of road to narrow/remove would be the Lower Hobson Street viaduct. I actually remember when this was being built, and it is perhaps one of the most horrible pieces of roading infrastructure in the entire CBD.My word, what idiot thought that was a good idea? With Quay Street pedestrianised, the need for this horrible piece of infrastructure would disappear, and gloriously the whole thing could be removed. I sincerely hope that we never think of building such horrible things again.

Any other roads in the CBD that could be removed/narrowed/altered to become more people friendly and to help create a truly world-class central city?

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