Somewhat as the result of my pleading, the Regional Transport Committee back in April resolved to take a further look at the best way to provide public transport along the Northwestern Motorway in the medium and long-term future. As I have outlined before, SH16 is to be upgraded by NZTA over the next few years – at a cost of over $800 million. This upgrade will involve a huge widening of the motorway: from 4 to 6 lanes west of Te Atatu, from six to eight lanes on most of the stretch between Te Atatu and St Lukes, except for a stretch along the causeway where it will be nine lanes wide.
Yup, nine lanes of motorway. Five lanes westbound and four eastbound. This is shown in the picture below:
As I have also noted before, history (and the well known to all but transport engineers theory of induced demand) tells us that within a few years the widened motorway will be just as full of cars as it is now. The northwest motorway has been widened on many occasions in the past, and the result has been a year or so of congestion relief, before various factor lead to more cars using the motorway and the same congested outcome. To me, that seems pretty dumb: $800 million pretty much completely wasted (even a herald editorial on Saturday recognised that most Auckland motorway projects result in the road being just as congested as it was at the end of the project as it was at the start).
So while the idea of putting a busway down the northern side of State Highway 16 would definitely not be my first transport priority in Auckland, it seemed to me not entirely unreasonable to hope that we might actually end up with some lasting benefit out of this $800 million – and a busway would provide that. The extra lanes on the motorway would, in the longer term, make very little difference to the level of congestion on that road, but actually building a busway would create a lasting public transport benefit for west Auckland, serving an area that is a long long way from the western railway line.
It would appear as though the Regional Transport Committee thought long and hard about this issue back in April, and resolved to seek some further information from officers. This is what their resolutions were:
This month’s regional transport committee meeting agenda includes an item which reports back on these matters – which itself is largely based on some additional work that ARTA have undertaken on this issue (which is included as an attachment). The item is from pages 23-30 in this file.
The agenda item itself reports back the main matters outlined in the ARTA letter, which details what public transport upgrades are being proposed for SH16. This is outlined below:
There are some promising signs here. For a start, it is good to see that the bus priority lanes between Westgate and Waterview sound like they will be half-decent: with a 3.5 m width, and also somewhat continuous. It is also excellent to hear that interchanges will be future-proofed for bus priority and bus interchange measures (whatever that actually means). Achieving something close to an RTN standard would be good. Obviously, service patterns will change over time.
However, there are also some rather strange aspects to the improvements, like why the Lincoln to Westgate section of SH16 is an RTN while the rest of SH16 is just a QTN. I certainly recognise the efforts to improve connections between Waitakere and North Shore cities along the SH18 alignment, but this route struggles to maintain even a standard bus route at the moment, so even the consideration that it might be suitable for rail in the future seems somewhat premature – to put it mildly!
The ARTA report contains a bit of further information around why SH16 is seen as a QTN (which would mean bus lanes) rather than an RTN (which would mean a full busway). It’s quite interesting:
We are probably close here to finally getting an answer about why officials aren’t too keen on the NW Busway idea. It is true that the catchment served by an SH16 is not particularly huge, with Te Atatu and Westgate being the main additional areas (I would add Massey and West Harbour to that list though). It is also true, to some extent, that we would want to be wary of the busway and the railway line competing with each other and thereby not being the most efficient use of resources.
However, I also do take some issue with the arguments put forward in the above paragraphs. While the catchments served by the busway might not be particularly large, once you add in feeder buses for areas like Te Atatu, Massey, Westgate, West Harbour and Hobsonville, you are probably looking at a fairly large population being served. Secondly, in terms of the busway ‘competing’ against the railway line, one would think that ARTA would be more worried about a brand new nine-lane wide motorway competing against the pathetically slow western line. If some passengers shift from using the train to using the busway, then surely that is better than the inevitable alternative of passengers shifting from using the train to using the newly widened motorway?
Nevertheless, perhaps ARTA’s most genuine concern is not so much about the practicalities of whether the projects would compete with each other, but the perception that politicians (particularly those who hold the purse strings in Wellington and don’t seem to like public transport very much) could use a Northwest Busway as an excuse to not build the CBD rail tunnel: which certainly is a much more needed project. The CBD rail tunnel will offer significant travel time benefits to rail users on the western line, and in order to push for that project to have the best possible “return on investment” (which seems to matter for public transport projects, unlike motorway projects) it seems necessary to ensure the ‘problem’ is as bad as possible. Somewhat bizarre, but true.
So where does this leave the dreams for a Northwest Busway? Well I think that it will come down the “the devil in the detail” about the quality of the bus-lanes proposed along SH16. While we know that there will be 3.5 m wide shoulder lanes, and that there will be ‘some’ future-proofing for interchanges, the details of that remain pretty unclear. It seems as though we will still have the stupid outcome of bus lanes ending just before each on and off-ramp, and potentially ending before each over-bridge. To be honest, if that is the result then it’s not much of an improvement on the current situation (and would stink of “PT-washing”).
However, if somehow the lanes can duck behind/underneath the motorway ramps, and that genuine provision is made for interchanges where people can get off feeder buses and onto express buses operating between the CBD and Westgate, we may well end up with something of a de-facto busway – even if it’s one lane on each side of the motorway rather than the whole thing on one-side. This would be a pretty reasonable outcome, particularly if sufficient land is set aside for a future upgrade to a proper busway. Here’s a map of what seems to be proposed:
Ironically though, one of the main advantages of a busway would have been to negate the need for all these extra lanes along State Highway 16 – if it were proposed as an alternative to the additional lanes rather than ending up with all the additional lanes plus some bus priority plus the potential ability to create a busway in the future. Which leads me back to the start of this point, and the point that the $800 million proposed to be spent on widening SH16 is an enormous waste of money – with perhaps the only legitimate part of it being a couple of auxiliary lanes to handle traffic exiting from the Waterview tunnel and the raising of the causeway. The rest of it is a huge amount of money wasted in the vain hope that perhaps this time adding a lane onto a motorway might ‘fix’ congestion – even though it didn’t work last time, or the time before that.
If the motorway widening proceeds, then it is likely that people will be ‘induced’ away from public transport through the momentary congestion-relief that will be offered by the widened road. Perhaps over time, as the widened motorway starts clogging up again, they will drift back to public transport – but if ARTA are really concerned about the effect on railway patronage of a NW Busway, I think they should be even more worried about the effects on railway patronage of a hugely widened SH16.
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You can see the effect of induced demand happening on the Mt Roskill SH20 extension, very congested in peak now around Maioro Rd and that is new motorway..! This will be full in 2 years, all while reducing train and bus use from West Auckland, therefore increasing subsidies (oh no farebox recovery ratio) AND costing $800 million…
Is anyone as bad at their jobs as NZ transport engineers..? “Building the wrong infrastructure really well”, should be their motto… It’s like a priest saying trying to stop sin isn’t my job, only forgiving it…
It seems ARTA completely miss the whole point of this. Also in their diagram they have all buses coming off at Waterview then trundling along Gt North Rd, why not carry them on along the motorway to Nelson St? It is also interesting that the interchange stations almost identically match the locations you suggested.
I agree about the RTN from Henderson to Albany, this effectively means a busway or railway along Lincoln Rd, the only space for this is underground unless you wiped out either lots of houses, schools and businesses, hardly a popular option for a service that isn’t likely to be highly frequented.
I’m starting to think there is a new kind of PT wash and that is CBD tunnel wash, almost everything now talks about not wanting to upset it which is great because we really need it but it is almost halting any other talk of improvements around the city.
I’m not sure how you have planned to implement this busway. But if the lanes were implemented along the middle of the highway, there would be no conflict with on and off ramps. But for this to work, bus stations would need to be installed and bridges would need to have room for bus stops. I believe this would be a cost effective approach to installing a busway system along this route.
I like the idea of going down the middle, though accessing the bus lanes from the surrounding area (for buses and pedestrians) could be pretty difficult.
Not really, stations would be at overbridges or could be reached with a nice pedestiran bridge, like some of the cool ones NZTA have already designed on their recent motorways. As for buses, I saw a busway in LA that went down the middle of the motorway, every so often it would have an opening to allow buses in and out of it, similar to how an offramp veers off. The idea would be that a local bus would join the motorway with cars, move across traffic into the inside lane, when the opening came up they would move into it and the cars would carry on along in the lane they were in. The only thing would be that some enforcement of the lane would be needed which would be easy enough to do from the next station.
With the buses on SH16 likely to be less frequent than on the northern busway it might allow for some T3 cars as well perhaps.
Why not to one side, like the Northern Busway? They can simply widen the motorway to one side.
How about a station at Rosebank so the process of most buses diverting to the Patiki Road roundabout can be canned, this would save 5mins jorney time for a vast majority of the passengers.
Or would this be catered for by running seperate Te Atatu – Avondale services maybe?
I think a Lincoln Road station needs to be built asap as this will mean all the off peak buses can stop their torturous diversions via Henderson, with those bound for Henderson and New Lynn from NW changing to local services there.
Looking at that map I would have a busway from Westgate to maybe Pt Chev. However this will
so rail can eventually branch off from the Western Line just west of Morningside, then onto Western Springs, Pt Chev…. and to Westgate and beyond. One day maybe it could go through Ponsonby as well.
Could it be possible to have Heavy Rail as well as light rail running on the same line. Both running from Westgate alongside SH16, but with Heavy Rail meeting up with the Western Line before Morningside (onto the CBD loop) and Light Rail meeting up with the Orange Line that you proposed here
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2010/07/18/is-there-a-place-for-light-rail-in-auckland/
As much as I love rail and any new developments, the Lincoln Road route is largely pointless.
None of the bus stations proposed will be anywhere near residential zones. If you go to Brisbane you see dedicated bus roads which run under and through residential zones withtheir own crossings of the Brisbane River.
Personally I would write off SH16 as a hopelessly congested lost cause. You could use bridges/tunnels to connect up West Harbour, Te Atatu Pen. and south, Avondale, Glendene/Glen Eden, Henderson, Massey. Waterview, PT Chev as none of them are actually far apart as the crow flies. No reason why a North Shore busway needs to come into the city overland either.
Nine lanes. That IS pretty obscene. Where are we – California?
Oh, wait – I forgot that our car ownership rates are in fact similar to California. Why don’t we just join the USA then – then we can simply call any attempts to stop further motorways UNPATRIOTIC. Rather than having to fall back on weak stuff like “Aucklanders like to drive, so we are just giving them what they want”.
Surely the issue with congestion on the northwestern is not going to be solved by more lanes. The bottlenecks citybound are the city itself (and the ramps to Northern and Southern). Westbound the capacity of the offramps at peak times surely are at their maximum? Or will there be little mini motorways with complicated overbridges and the like.
You commented last week that the motorway network was almost ‘complete’. I suspect this is the start of the post complete ‘improvements’. Wait to hear lots of commentary on how the completion has only brought it up to the plan from 1970 and we need to move it into the 21st century.
I don’t understand the large number of posts talking about induced traffic as being a bad thing, or failure to “solve” congestion as being a bad thing. An increase in capacity (of road or rail) allows more people to do the things they want to (such as live in a particular suburb, visit friends, go shopping, take a new job, or go out for the evening) before the congestion delay constraint is reached. In my opinion that is a good thing… My ancestors spent their whole lives living in a village where a trip in to the nearest town was a rare treat. I quite enjoy living in a modern mobile society where I can travel medium and large distances as I please. Besides my enjoyment, this mobility is necessary to support a non-agrarian economy and all the benefits that gives us.
It’s like the TV ads at the moment talking about olympic swimming pool volumes of hot water. I love hot water. I luxuriate in it, while my ancestors would be lucky to sit in a tub of coal-heated warm luke-water once a year. Using less hot water makes as much sense as rejecting the internet, or university education, or modern health care, or MP3 players, or any of the other modern things that make our lives better than those of people 100 years ago.
No one thinks that road widening “fixes” congestion rather than adds capacity. Politicians might mention it because it makes a nice sound bite, but you’re mostly attacking a straw man.
Obi, I totally agree with you that there are benefits from being able to shift more people around, and for them to travel further.
The problem is that they aren’t what’s sold as the benefits of building a new, or widening, a road. The benefits are always trumpeted as “this will reduce congestion”. The economic evaluation is based on “this will save you this many minutes”, which I have shown in past posts is rubbish as people drive further, not take shorter trips.
I think it’s highly valid to “call bullshit” on the false claims that projects will fix congestion.
“No one thinks that road widening “fixes” congestion rather than adds capacity”
Yeah they really do. That’s whole justification for doing it in the first place.
Like Obi I want to get around, but also I want this to be possible without those places I might go to not being so compromised by the systems we build to get around that they are no longer any good as destinations, and I don’t want to be bankrupted by being committed to funding an unsustainable system. Auckland City is so devalued by its motorway system, we’re used to it so we don’t really see it, but really it was put in place by a mentality and a time that did not value the inner city, a suburban culture, that saw inner city clearances and escape from the ‘old’ inner city as good and modern. Motorways and carparks are place flatteners and place separators. Building more and more capacity to this system pushes out the desirable places further and further into the countryside while at the same time destroying and dividing that very countryside up which leads to yet more rootless and marginal areas. As Auckland gets bigger and if we concentrate on this auto- dependency what are these destinations going to be like? Vast carparks. Traffic engineers have a narrow focus; flow, so the rest of us must keep asking will this movement be worth it when we get there? Will there be much of a there of any value left if we have pave everything. I want more and better PT because I want a better place to live in as well as to move around in.
Brilliant comment Vincent. You nail on the head exactly why I support public transport improvement too, as it creates a balance between getting through the city while still maintaining the quality of the city.
There are plenty of cities in NZ that don’t have motorways. But people vote with their feet… 1.4million of them choose Auckland, including most of the people commenting here. They’re drawn to jobs, education, shopping, entertainment, and all the other attractions of a large and growing city. But there is plenty of choice in NZ if you prefer a town that is slower and more walkable.
But at the same time if you ask people “what’s Auckland’s biggest problem”, chances are they will say transport. I think that people choose to live in Auckland despite its transport situation, not because of it.
And plenty of people vote with their feet by leaving Auckland too. Just today the Herald reported migration to Australia was up 18% over the last 12 months.
I’m not sure I see the significance of the Australian reference. All the Aussie cities Auckland’s size or greater have motorway networks. Except Adelaide, but I’m guessing that Aucklanders aren’t moving in droves to Adelaide. And if they’re moving to a regional Australian city to get away from motorways and congestion then there are easier and closer NZ alternatives, such as a move to Palmerston North or Invercargill.
I suspect that migration to Australia isn’t motorway connected, but due to the higher salaries and the pro-growth economy.
Meanwhile, there is a net flow from provincial NZ to Auckland, even though there is far less congestion in Wanganui and Oamaru than there is in the city.
“Traffic engineers have a narrow focus; flow”
SOME traffic engineers have that narrow focus, thank you very much.
“No one thinks that road widening “fixes” congestion rather than adds capacity.”
Obi, that’s untrue. Many do believe exactly that, especially amongst the voters to which this is being peddled. Also, even if everyone secretly (or publicly) acknowledged that all it does is add capacity, no one dares to say where this will lead to: Kumeu becoming the next Auckland suburb (Westgate is already slated to double and triple in size).
Once THAT occurs, how many more lanes do we have to add to the Northwestern then? We should be building more sustainable ways of getting around if we agree that we want to have growth. Instead we sneak it in, and then say “Well, now we really HAVE to widen the motorway”.
Definitely we shouldn’t tar all road engineers with the same brush. I work as a resource management planner and certainly planners are as much “the problem” as they are “the solution” when it comes to making better cities.
Fully agree Karl, and that’s the problem with the ‘finished ‘ motorway idea; it can never be, they just keep finding the ‘need’ to re-build every part over and over, bit by bit. My point about traffic engineers is not necessarily perjorative: They are ‘traffic’ engineers after all, not human engineers. Funny how the moment you step out of your car you are suddenly much less supported by salaried and qualified professionals, in fact in some ways you’d think we are a city made up of motorists not citizens- at least in the eyes of some in power…. And tragically they’re probably right [and on the right] Thatcher famously said anyone not driving is a loser- and that in a city with real PT and real PT use. What she meant, of course is that her voters, her people, only drive, or aspire to only drive. Steveo ain’t no mug, he knows who his people are too.
‘ But there is plenty of choice in NZ if you prefer a town that is slower and more walkable.’ Not sure I get what you mean Obi; Is it that because AK is bigger than Te Kuiti it has to put up with bad planning and auto-dependency? Well clearly there are much bigger cities than AK with different ideas. Its is calculated that if Manhattan had no subway it would need 167 new bridge and tunnel lanes to get on to the island and then the only business there would be carparking. I don’t want to run away; I just want AK to be better.
I’m just saying that people have looked at Auckland’s bad planning, auto-dependency, and plans to build and widen new motorways and decided that it is still a better place to live than where ever they lived before. And moved to Auckland. Around one million over the last 50 years, ignoring the natural population growth.
I’m not saying not to develop public transport… I’m rather fond of it actually. I just think you can do that AND widen motorways to allow more people to drive if they want to, because at the end of the day a 9 lane road is going to attract far more people to Auckland than it repels.
In general people move cities and countries for work opportunities ( advancement, increased salary) very few I suspect are actually in a position to move for purely lifestyle reasons. I very much doubt anyone is attracted to Auckland by 9 lane roads ( they certainly aren’t featured in any immigration advertisements). I like Obi love to travel and enjoy the wide range of options a city the size of Auckland has to offer, I feel the promotion of the car over other modes impacts negatively on the “culture” of a city. Much prefer to be around live people not the canned variety.
“because at the end of the day a 9 lane road is going to attract far more people to Auckland than it repels.”
What a statement. Just… amazing. Absolutely amazing.
I don’t see why you’re amazed. A nine lane motorway probably opens up an opportunity for another 100,000 people to live in West Auckland. And we KNOW that people will move and live there. But how many people decide not to move to Auckland because a six lane road has been widened to nine lanes? Few. Maybe none.
It isn’t the motorway itself. But the opportunities the motorway gives for people to travel, and the ability it provides for the city to grow.
It enables 100,000 to sprawl out west, wheras spending that money on a more sensible project would mean a more sustainable land-use outcome.
Obi the significance of the Australian migration reference is that the east coast cities Aucklanders migrate to all have much more developed alternatives to motorways than Auckland. So yes these cities do have motorways and congestion but you can live quite happily in them without ever using a motorway. You can’t say the same for Auckland.
Sure you can live quite happily in small towns of NZ where there aren’t motorways at all, but if avoiding a congested road based lifetyle is on the agenda you can see why Aucklanders chose to do that in Brisbane and Sydney instead of Palmerston North or Invacargill!
Putting a busway out west, or even (*GASP*) putting a new rail or tram line out west or north would easily accommodate more people than widening a motorway. You are putting more and more eggs in one basket, ignoring all the reasons why one should do something like that, and ignoring all the disadvantages by pointing out the one-sided advantages.
In short, you are comparing “more apples” with “no extra apples”, rather than with “more orange”. And despite my attempt to use a funny metaphor, your (and Steven Joyce’s) arguments are leading to another horrible set of mistakes for our society.
“should NOT do” regarding putting all eggs in one basket, of course.
How about we just import some of these….? Look like they would work well along a motorway. I’m pretty sceptical on some future transport concepts, but these look like they hit the mark for alot of situations. If the Chinese build enough of them they could become pretty cheap and effective….
http://www.umiwi.com/video/1541.swf
Coverage in english at:
http://www.gizmag.com/chinese-straddling-bus-china/15931/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e83e4a240f-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
Those look cool, I’m not sure many routes which could justify the 1200 person capacity though. Lets let china be the lab rats on this one.
It’s amazing that they are actually going to build it.
It IS amazing that it will be built, because it sounds so ill-conceived in some regards. Sorry, but I am expecting this to fail, badly. Too much opportunity for various, various problems.
But hey, maybe they will amaze me.