Last chance to give feedback on Dominion Rd

There are just a few days left for people to make submissions on Auckland City Council’s proposed changes to Dominion Road – submissions close this Sunday (August 29th). To give a brief history, back in June the Council’s Transport Committee considered a report on Dominion Road – which largely focused on changes to the long-standing designation. These changes generally related to a change in approach for the proposed bus improvements: instead of taking the buses around the back of the Balmoral and Valley Road shops the new approach was to put the buses through the town centres, which involved shared cycle and bus lanes.

Interestingly, the recommendations of the staff report mentioned nothing at all relating to T2 lanes. In fact, the staff recommendations were these:

To be fair to the Council, there was always going to be some controversy about this proposal in terms of the way it reduces on-street parking. If there’s anything that will rark up local businesses and residents it is removing on-street parking. I’m mixed on the matter, in that I can see the huge gains from having a continuous cycle lane and from having the bus lanes operating for longer hours than the 7-9am and 4-6pm timeslots they currently have; but at the same time I think on-street parking can bring a calming influence to busy streets, as they narrow down the street, provide more “friction” between the moving traffic and the side of the road – which slows down the traffic.

While I imagine the Council were aware of this potentially difficult issue, they then went on to compound the problem by suggesting that the bus lanes not actually be bus only lanes – but instead become “T2 lanes”, allowing vehicles with two or more occupants to use them. Those worried about the removal of on-street parking now had to worry about all four lanes of traffic potentially being full of cars, rather than two of the lanes being dedicated to buses only, and therefore being fairly empty of vehicles (though critically, not empty of passengers as each bus carries a lot of people).

It actually took me a while to register that the Council had done something this stupid, as I blogged a couple of times on the proposed changes before finally realising the crazy decision on T2 lanes.

A good question is “what’s wrong with T2 lanes for Dominion Road?” and the answer to that question is fairly complex. For a start, I think it’s certainly useful to recognise that in some situations T2 lanes would make a lot of sense. For example, along the section of Great North Road that passes through Waterview (one of Auckland’s busiest arterial routes) a lot could be gained from turning one of the lanes into a T2 lane during the peak hours. Many buses are held up in the congestion along this route, but the sheer number of cars that have little choice other than to drive along here (and it’s one of the great ironies of life that the Waterview Connection motorway won’t actually make a difference) mean that a bus lane is probably not feasible. A T2 lane could be a great compromise, making priority for buses possible while also encouraging people to carpool and make more efficient use of the roadspace that is clearly in high demand.

North Shore City has similarly created a number of T2 lanes that seem highly successful – largely because they operate along roads with a relatively small number of buses. But that is not the case for Dominion Road – where there are around 38 buses arriving in the CBD between 8am and 9am that travel along this route. That’s a bus every 90 seconds roughly. Allowing a number of cars to enter into this lane would hold up the buses – and also potentially mess with cars in the general lane as those vehicles using the T2 lane are likely to have to pull out into the general lane to get past a bus every time it stops to pick up passengers.

Looking first at the “saturation issue” of simply ending up with too many cars in the T2 lane, research by North Shore City Council into  the impact of turning the Onewa Road T3 lane into a T2 lane suggested some pretty staggering results:

The most significant result of the modelling done on Onewa Road is the revelation that if the T3 lane was turned into a T2 lane, you could actually end up with more vehicles using that T2 lane than would be using the general lane. That would mean the T2 lane would be more congested than the main lane – entirely defeating the purpose of the exercise and meaning that we have two congested lanes rather than one congested lane and one free-flowing lane.

Such an outcome seems likely for Dominion Road as it has many similarities to Onewa Road. For a start, both roads have a large number of buses at peak times. Secondly, both roads suffer from severe congestion in the general lane – giving people a strong incentive to use the ‘priority lane’ – whether it be bus or T3. Therefore, if Dominion Road’s bus lanes were to become T2 lanes, it seems logical to expect that we would end up with two lanes of congestion and everyone would be worse off.

The other study that is very insightful into the effects of turning a bus lane into a T2 lane comes from Tamaki Drive, where such a change was made earlier this year. Now Tamaki Drive is very different to Dominion Road – as it has far fewer buses travelling along it and – quite crucially in my opinion – the buses that do travel along it tend to stop far less frequently than they do along Dominion Road, particularly in the Mission Bay to CBD section as the bus route doesn’t really have much of a residential catchment. The council’s analysis of the change makes for interesting reading, particularly the following bits: The big winners in the change were the 374 vehicles that used the T2 lane and could make the trip in 100 seconds less than before. The buses were only held up marginally – largely because of the wide stop-spacing and the relatively low (13 per hour) number of buses travelling along the route. But, quite fascinatingly, the biggest losers were those single occupant vehicles that remained in the general lane – whose trip times increased by nearly two minutes, a bigger increase than the improvements gained by those in the T2 lane. This means that the average time taken for anyone to travel along the corridor increased from 189 seconds to 214 seconds – a sign of failure in my opinion (although oddly enough the council didn’t quite see it that way).

One could expect an even worse result for vehicles in the general lane if the same changes were applied to Dominion Road. This is because the buses stop much more regularly, forcing vehicles in the T2 lane to chop into the general lane – holding up traffic in that lane.  Furthermore, with the larger number of buses it seems reasonable to expect the delays for buses to be greater, and the gains for T2 vehicles to be not as significant as was seen on Tamaki Drive.

All up, the proposed change for Dominion Road’s bus lane to a T2 lane is complete and utter madness. It is what happens when Councils don’t properly analyse the effects of messing around with important traffic priority measures – effectively it is what happens when Council don’t think before they act. Fortunately, the one good thing the council has done is give us the opportunity to make a submission on the proposal and to tell them exactly how stupid it it. So make sure your voice is heard – make your submission here before Friday.

If you’re running short of ideas about what to say – my submission is here.

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