Auckland City Council has opened up consultation to the general public on their utterly stupid idea of allowing vehicles with one passenger to use the bus lanes along Dominion Road. Give your feedback here.
Here’s what I’ve said:
1A: Overall, what do you think of the proposal? Please provide reasons for your feedback.
I think that the proposal has many excellent aspects to it. Removing parking from the sides of Dominion Road is an excellent idea as it allows the bus lanes to operate for extended hours and also allows for the lengthy cycle lanes.
Extending the hours of the bus lanes is absolutely essential as bus frequencies along Dominion Road are fairly high even during off-peak times (such as every 5 minutes during weekday offpeaks and every 10 minutes on Saturdays). During off-peak times bus users are being significantly delayed by congestion, so therefore extending the operating hours of the bus lanes is excellent.
At peak times, a huge number of buses (in excess of 25 per hour) travel along Dominion Road, and therefore improving the quality of those lanes is essential.
I strongly disagree with the proposal to turn the bus lanes into T2 lanes, and that is detailed below.
1B: Bus lane/T2 lane: The new plan includes changes to the bus lane. Currently the bus lane operates city bound (7-9 am) and outbound (4-6pm) in the peak hours. Under the new plan, the bus lane will operate all day, but will also be used by cars occupied by two or more people. In other words, the bus lane will become a T2 lane which can be used by BOTH buses and cars carrying 2 or more people. What are your thoughts about this change?
I think that turning the bus lanes into T2 lanes is an incredibly poor idea. Dominion Road is one of the most heavily used bus routes in all of Auckland City, both at peak times and off-peak times. More than half of the people travelling along Dominion Road at peak times travel along the bus lanes, and they are provided with an excellent service at the moment: hence the popularity of buses along Dominion Road.
North Shore City Council has recently analysed whether turning the Onewa Road T3 lane into a T2 lane would be a good idea. Officers have shown that doing this would result in more than half the vehicles along the corridor at peak times being buses or transit vehicles: thereby completely removing the entire point of the priority lane as it would become more congested than the general lane. It is likely that turning Dominion Road into a T2 lane would result in the same outcome: completely ruining the best bus lanes in Auckland City.
While there may be some value in having the lanes as T2 or (more preferably) T3 during off-peak times (outside 6am-10am, 3pm-7pm), if the lanes were T2 during peak time it would completely ruin the bus lanes as outlined above, and actually reduce the carrying capacity of Dominion Road.
1C: At the moment the planned T2 lane, that is, the lane for buses and cars carrying 2 or more people, is being proposed to operate from 6am to 7pm. However, we want to get your opinion on when the T2 lane should operate. What should the hours of operation be for the T2 lane
There should not be a T2 lane.
1D: How should the T2 lane be used outside of its hours of operation?
Well I would say “there should not be a T2 lane”, but that’s not an option so I said for parking, rather than end up with a 4 lane highway.1E: Cycle lane: The new plan includes a separate cycle lane. The cycle lane will merge with the bus lane in the shopping areas at Valley Road and Balmoral. What are your thoughts about this change?
Merging the cycle lane is not ideal, but I see why it is necessary. I fully support the provision of the cycle lane along the route.
1F: Right hand turn restrictions: The new plan will prevent some right hand turns from Dominion Road on to adjoining roads. These will include George St, Lisnoe Ave, Bellevue Ave, Elizabeth St, Herbert Rd, Ewington Ave, Dunbar Rd, Tennyson St, Queens Ave, Hazel Ave, Foch Ave, Kings Rd, Donald Cres., and Cambrai Ave. What are your thoughts about having these right hand turn restrictions?
I think it is logical to remove right-hand turns along these roads as right-turns are currently quite dangerous.
1G Parking removal: The new plan also removes parking on Dominion Road at any time. This is to allow safe operation of the separate cycle lane and T2 lane. Plenty of parking will still be available on side streets and in the shopping areas. What are your thoughts about having parking on Dominion Road removed?
I think that parking removal is a necessary part of the plan to improve this route for buses and cyclists in particular.
I do think that removing parking and simply replacing it with lanes that will generally be used by cars will effectively turn Dominion Road into a wide four-lane semi-motorway (like Balmoral Road). This would have terrible results for the town centres like Balmoral and Valley Road, making them very unfriendly for pedestrians as cars will zip through very quickly. Therefore, this is just another reason to ensure that the lanes are for buses only.
1H: Are there any other comments you would like to make about other aspects of the proposed design?
Further consideration should be given to placing the bus lanes in the centre of Dominion Road. This would eliminate many of the problems associated with the current bus lanes (conflicts between cars turning into and out of driveways with buses, conflicts between pedestrians and fast moving buses on footpaths etc.)
Dominion Road should be considered primarily as a public transport corridor (this is outlined in the Council’s arterial plans) and therefore the best part of the road should be given to buses: that being the centre of the road.
Further information on the project and the T2 proposal is here.
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On a somewhat related topic. I find the use of the outside lane as a fast lane dangerous. This is the lane that is closest to cyclists and pedestrians and where there are typically retail and civic street functions that are being marginalised.
One lane each direction has the key advantage of traffic being regulated by the most prudent driver (only takes one of ’em).
When will we say enough is enough to the through traffic travelling from the outer suburbs all the way to the cbd on ill-suited streets?
That’s part of the reason why I think that median bus lanes could be a good idea for Dominion Road. They would put a relatively slow moving general traffic lane next to the cycle lane and pedestrians – rather than a fast moving bus lanes being next to the cyclists.
What about better utilisation of parking on side streets – ie. angled parking in adjacent avenues, and signage to indicate parking on side streets. I think this would allay some of the serious retailer concerns (which aren’t entirely unfounded).
There already is angled parking on some side-streets I think. But yes, that’s something worth mentioning I reckon.
I have provided my feedback
Good stuff Matt. Hopefully quite a few PT advocates take the time to help save Auckland’s best bus lanes 🙂
Done! I hope it doesn’t just fall on deaf ears.
I like how they gently, gently try to push you to give T2 lanes a thumbs-up on 1C, 1D and 1E.
Submitted too – it’s still a complete unknown as to how PT-friendly or otherwise the new AT will be and whether stupid exercises such as reviewing bus lanes will continue to be something they waste their time on rather than moving forward on planning expansions…
Oh I think it’s pretty unlikely that Auckland Transport would have a bar of this kind of stupidity. If for no other reason, it would actually end up costing them more money as the buses would be less efficient and require more subsidies.
That being said, most peak-time Dominion Road (actually most services full stop) are commercial – which means that NZ Bus would be the biggest loser from this change. I’m surprised they haven’t made more of a song and dance about it.
Which I guess is another reason why rolling all this transport planning into the agency that’s collecting the fares will be a huge advantage, as it stands ACC is messing around with these things for the votes (and the votes alone esp. seeing as we’re coming up to an election), as any reduction in bus usage won’t have any affect on them but on ARTA.
Some time ago I had an argument with a German about bus lanes. I was living in Stockholm at the time and he was complaining about the empty bus lane and how in Germany you were allowed to drive on them if you were carrying a passenger.
The argument went something like this:
German – Cars with 1 passenger should be allowed on the bus lanes as they are more efficient than those with just the driver
Me – OK, but with 2 passengers they are more efficient so they should have an even higher priority
German – Yes, that’s my point!
Me – And a vehicle with 30 passengers is that much more efficient, isn’t it?
German – … I see where you’re going but I still think I should be allowed on those bus lanes.
We decided it was better to share a beer than to argue any more.
In a way, it’s good that they are offering a questionaire – makes people much more likely to enter a “submission”. Of course they (and others, admittedly) have a habit of totally disregarding consultaion. Two-edged sword – I like my Council to ignore moronic, NIMBY complaints in a consultation process – but on the off-hand, it also means that the most stupid things can be pushed through even despite clear public opposition.
Oh, and thanks for your submission, admin. A good template – though I thought it was quite important that the Copenhagen cycle lanes be continous. There was some crazy talk of them having the raised lanes be interrupted for every driveway, which would be horrible – a roller coaster that also gives the hint to the car drivers that they have priority over the cycle lane when moving into and out of their properties.
I’ve just dug up an interesting statistic from RTC on this blog.
I’ve posted this comment on Jon’s AucklandTrains blog referring to the Remuera Rd bus lanes but I think it deserves attention:
From a comment by RTC a year ago, in turn quoting The NZ Herald:
“The committee also yesterday noted that the Remuera Rd bus lanes were creating greater than expected public transport benefits, after officers reported that buses accounting for just 2 per cent of peak-time traffic carried up to 45 per cent of people travelling along the corridor.”
45% of all trips going down a lane that looks empty. This is a testament to the spacial inefficiency of the vehicles in the general traffic lane, not of anything wrong with vehicles legitimately in the bus lane.
The bus lane is not the problem here. The problem is that the people who
are stuck inare the traffic in the general lane see the empty-looking lane and want it, not realising that it’s their presence that is the cause of the problem in their own lane and they’d just spread, rather than solve, the problem.… and that was Remuera Rd. I’m sure Dominion Rd’s percentage will be far higher.
Something similar will form part of my submission.
BTW the Auckland City Council ad in the Auckland City Harbour News (21 July) for the Dominion Road consultation has the deadline for feedback as 1 August. The most recent City Scene also has the feedback period ending on 1 August. I’ve checked with the call centre and the date on the website is correct. We have until Sunday 29 August to give feedback. Cycle Action Auckland will be sending out details of the consultation (and why we oppose turning the bus lanes into T2 lanes)to members and friends next week.
As Pippa said, the submissions period has since been extended.
http://www.aucklandtrains.co.nz/2010/07/22/t2-feedback-extended/
Yes submission has been extended ONLY because of pressure. NO PARKING on Dominion Rd is absolutely stupid, council says there is sufficient parking on the side street, are they blind? (seriously) have they walked around Eden Valley? John Campbell was along Dominion Rd today and evidently it will be on CAMPBELL LIVE tonight (Friday)….keep fighting everyone or council will slip this one through before you have time to blink, it is probably just a revenue gathering exercise (more ticketing) nothing to do with having people use the smelly buses more…also alot of owners in Balmoral and Mt Roskill cannot understand English, they will just come outside one day and WOW no parking, how did that happen.
Katrena – Most people here actually want the parking completely removed along the road and the council actually plans to increase the parking on the side streets to make up for what is lost, this has absolutely nothing to do with revenue gathering but rather more effective operation of the road. There are enough buses scheduled along the route throughout the day to justify the bus lane being made permanent. There is plenty of parking around Eden Valley but it is tied up by places like the supermarket there. If that was made available to all people it would more than replace the lost street parking.
As I suspected. Now everyone here in Auckland is entitled to shout “revenue gathering!” about every Council measure they oppose (supported by their own Councillors undermining their Council!)
Good work, C&R. Good work. I am fully expecting you to cave in totally. Bring on Auckland Transport and a more courageous Council.
Remove all the parking along Dom Road, except for off-peak parking maybe. ALL of it.
Excuse me, where is the off street parking?? do you live here? I have to drive around for 5 mins at least to get a carpark at the supermarket, alot of the parks are marked yellow, not for supermarket use. Ask any business owner or operator what they think of no carparks, or may be you would prefer to ask the people who “drive thru”
and who do not mind as it is not their “community”. How would you like it in your backyard? I doubt it somehow…..
I lived on Burnley Terrace for three years, never had a problem parking at the Foodtown except around christmas time. In fact I never really parked on Dominion Rd at all because there just aren’t many street parks there. It was usually at the big shopping centre carpark or in the angle parking on Bellwood ave.
If you look at this aerial photograph you can see that about half the area of the shopping precinct is take up by carparks, plus there is the lower level underground car park too.
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Burnley+Terrace,+Auckland,+New+Zealand&sll=-25.335448,135.745076&sspn=53.077486,79.013672&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=Fd1Hzf0d_GZqCg&split=0&hq=&hnear=Burnley+Terrace,+Auckland,+New+Zealand&ll=-36.877192,174.750885&spn=0.002952,0.004823&t=k&z=18
Just looking at that photo I counted 282 car parks at the Foodtown, not including the underground park. There are another 38 angle parks on Bellwood, and 43 off street parks behind the shops across from foodtown.
As for liking it in my own backyard, personally I would love to get rid of parking on my street and I’d be totally stoked if it had a reliable frequent bus service with bus lanes!
Hi Nick sorry to say but you do NOT KNOW what is proposed. It is for NO Parking on Dominion Road (perhaps) and all the parking will be re directed to side streets like Burnley Tce…….where you live, this is the problem people do not know what is proposed.
I understand exactly what is proposed, all parking removed from Dominion Rd and replaced with parking on adjacent side streets within the first 40 metres from Dominion Rd. This is what they already have on Bellwood Ave.
In terms of where I used to live on Burnley Tce there would be absolutely no problems, 40m down from Dominion Rd doesn’t even reach the first house. All this would mean is that all along the side of the Columbus Cafe would be angle parking like it is along the sports store opposite already.
I actually think you would find this much easier than what they have now. Same amount of car parks, but you would be able to pull into an angle park on a quiet side street rather than trying to do a parallel park on the busy main street.
Perhaps you should read more about the proposal yourself:
http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/auckland/transport/dominion/default.asp
Ok if say your are “right” and correct, (anyhow I do not think you are) what about the business owners and operators in Balmoral and Mt Roskill shopping centres…. I can verify that alot do not understand English. they do not know what is proposed, is that fair? will they just go out one day and find out their carparks are gone and their business is dead, is that ok?
It’s the same amount of carparks, but maybe easier to park in. Why would their buisiness die?
And with improved buslanes or T2 lanes that would mean the road can carry more people past their shop each day than currently. That has to be good for advertising the business. Also the whole project involves new paving, planting, streetlighting and stuff, that will make the shopping centres more pleasant places to visit so they might attract more customers to the area that way.
I do appreciate your point about the local traders, we can only hope that the council takes the language issues of the proprietors into account when they are conducting consultation with the affected buisiness owners.
Hello Nick again! I do not know any business owner who thinks NO CARParking outside their business is good, you are the first, but heh perhaps you are the first person in the whole of NZ who feels thats no carparks outside their small business is a good idea. Perhaps we should be thinking about the cyclists (I counted 6 today!) enjoying Dominion Road, one without a helmet….
Katerina, If I was a small business owner (i.e. dairy) I would much prefer a busy bus stop outside my business than, say 6 car parks, especially considering that car parking would still be available nearby. The new market train station manages to support 3 (crazy i think) new dairy’s in its station square. Remember dominion road car parks are currently not available during peak times in the direction of the peak flow, the side road ones will be.
Do you actually think it is the single parallel park in front of each shop that provides them with their buisiness? Of course not, it’s the availability of car parking and other transport access near the shop which is important, in addition to good foot traffic. I can’t be the only person who realises this, there are plenty of streets in Auckland and throughout the world that you can’t park on at all, and these still have thriving buisinesses on them.
You wouldn’t be pretty foolish to base the viability of your buisiness on the availability of one car park on the side of the road out front. What if someone parked there for an hour but went somewhere else?! Your shop would be completley empty for a whole hour! 🙂
Are you saying you wouldn’t go to a shop unless you could park directly infront of it’s front door? Surely if there was a convenient angle park nearby you’d happly park there? I was in a mall yesterday and the shops were chock full of people buying stuff and I didn’t see a single carpark in front of any of the buisinesses, in fact there wasn’t even a street, it was all pedestrian. All the parking was outside round the back in a parking building, funnily those buisinesses didn’t die.
Furthermore, the actual process of parallel parking is a pain in the neck. I would rather park on a side-street any day if it were angled parking.
Katrena – perhaps you should make a submission along the lines of ensuring that any parking lost from Dominion Rd is replaced nearby.
Scott, considering a parallel parking space is about 5m long your average shop frontage would be lucky to have two of them, let alone six!
Ok, so what is effectively happening here is the council is planning to replace all the part time hard to use parallel parks with full time easier to use angle parks, as well as making the road work better for car drivers, buses and cyclists. Sounds like a good idea to me!
Matt, she doesn’t have to. Replacing all the lost parallel parking with angle parking in the first 40m of each side street is explicitly mentioned on the council webpage for the project.
Nick – Yes I know they plan to but that could always be dropped at the last minute due to cost cutting. Making a submission confirming you agree with replacing the parking will help to ensure it is done.
Campbell Live story on Dominion Rd, as usual businesses think that if parking is removed then it will destroy them.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Bus-lane-proposal-for-Dominion-Rd-unwelcome/tabid/367/articleID/167123/Default.aspx
Actually if the outcome of all of this is that things just stay as they are for now, then that wouldn’t be too bad. Goodness knows why Auckland City Council just didn’t leave this issue to the Transport CCO.
Interesting new technology from China, the straddling bus. Enables traffic to flow underneath the bus. Could be useful along Dominion Road I think, although I would think it would work better as a tram.
http://www.chinahush.com/2010/07/31/straddling-bus-a-cheaper-greener-and-faster-alternative-to-commute/
I just got a letter from Auckland City Council informing me of the proposed changes (I live off Dominion road) and to let me know that the deadline to give feedback on the proposal has been increased. The new date is the 29th of August, in case anyone has yet to provide feedback
Not everyone agrees with the no parking on Dominion Rd part of the proposal. There is a public meeting at Balmoral School,Brixton Rd Monday 16 August at 7.30pm – many members of the local business community will talk about their concerns there.