One of the most exciting results in the Super City election was the makeup of the Waitemata Local Board. Those elected were Shale Chambers, Pippa Coom, Jesse Chalmers, Tricia Read, Christopher Dempsey, Rob Thomas and Greg Moyle. To summarise, there are five City Vision board members, one independent (Mr Thomas) and one Citizens & Ratepayers (Mr Moyle). Waitemata Local Board covers a critical part of central Auckland: the inner suburbs and the CBD. While it’s yet to be known exactly how much power will be given to the board, one would think that – along with the excellent Mike Lee as councillor – the elected representatives for the area will have a pretty strong say in what happens in this part of central Auckland.
And this is quite exciting, as a number of the board members are known cycling advocates and really do understand the benefits of making inner-cities more vibrant and interesting places. It seems highly likely that they would strongly support the expansion of the current shared streets programme while other exciting ideas – like pedestrianising parts of Quay Street (or even parts of Queen Street) may also have the local board’s strong support.
Next year’s Rugby World Cup provides a fantastic opportunity to trial options to “humanise the CBD” a bit more. I’ve often thought that it would be a great idea to close Queen Street off to traffic on weekend days, so why not trial something like that during the Rugby World Cup? With two main fan-zones being Queens Wharf and Aotea Square – wouldn’t it make good sense to link the two via a pedestrianised street that itself represented a giant fan zone: filled with stalls, markets, entertainers and the like. Similarly, with Queens Wharf being ‘Party Central’, it would be stupid to cut the place off from the rest of the city with a four-lane highway known as Quay Street.
The beauty of using the RWC as a trial for things like this is that people will have the opportunity to see how awesome Auckland will be with pedestrianised areas, but at the same time businesses aren’t freaked out that the changes will be permanent. A trial will give businesses the opportunity to see that they actually make money from pedestrians walking into their shops – rather than from cars that drive past. If for some amazingly unknown reason the concept doesn’t work, then it was just a trial after all and things can go back to normal – though I very much doubt that would be the case.
Settings aside the Rugby World Cup, my mind simply boggles at the possibilities of what we could achieve with this local board, and with Mike Lee as councillor for the area. There are so many opportunities to humanise the CBD, to make it a far more attractive place for the vast majority of people who walk and use public transport – even if that comes at a cost to the minority of people who do silly things like drive the length of Queen Street. So what are some ideas for humanising the CBD?
- As I noted above, the shared streets programme should prove to be a huge success, and the momentum that brings should be extended to more and more streets. High Street seems like such an obvious candidate to become a shared street, as the vast majority of its users are pedestrians and not motorists.
- We should take some inspiration from what New York City has done in Times Square, with a bit of what I call “fast and cheap pedestrianisation”. You don’t need to repave roads, you just put up some barriers, paint the asphalt an interesting colour and dump a heap of tables and chairs all over the road. Even if we did this to one block of Queen Street (between Shortland Street and Customs Street perhaps) it would liven the place up spectacularly. Buses could be rerouted to Albert Street without too many problems, or could be allowed through the area at slow speeds as the only vehicles.
- The CBD is currently a nightmare for cyclists. We could take inspriation from what Montreal has done with its cycle lanes – creating a dedicated path along a street like Hobson Street for cyclists, shielded from traffic and allowing two way flow.
- We could look at rehabilitating the entire western part of the CBD by turning our two defacto motorways: Hobson Street and Nelson Street, into two-way boulevards with planted medians. The aforementioned cyclelanes could even travel down the middle of the planted medians.
In my recent North American travels it was fascinating to note how many cities were taking steps to humanise their city centres. There seems to be a growing realisation that encouraging cars to your CBD by building hugely wide roads causes far more harm than it achieves good. Turning roadspace into ‘human space’ achieves two huge objectives: making the city centre a far nicer place to live, work and play (and generating all the economic benefits that accompanies such improvements) while also discouraging vehicle use in the CBD and therefore reducing all the noise, pollution and congestion they bring.
We have a fantastic opportunity to make Auckland’s CBD a great place, a fantastic opportunity to humanise it in ways that encourage people to visit, hang out and have a great time. I hope our new local board, and the new Council in general, makes the most of that opportunity.
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That really is a great set of local board councillors, I hope we’ll also see some progress on the proposed cycle lane across the harbour bridge. With such a big City Vision majority it should also be pretty easy to get things passed that parties like C&R would have just knocked back. The independent Rob Thomas is also supportive of cycling etc so we should see some great progress.
Dijon is taking 6 lane roads, and turning them into tram, cycle, walking, tree, and perhaps a few car boulevards.
All the main roads in the city are far too wide. Queen St is four, K Rd is 5 at the widest part, Pitt St is either 5 or 6 (even the most dyed-in-the-wool car advocates must realise this is overkill), and obviously Hobson and Nelson Streets are complete write-offs. I could go on. While I would have preferred to see some more independent local representation on the board, I hope that the board we have will do something about the pedestrian-unfriendly nature of our CBD. I think the idea of pedestrianising Queen & Quay on weekends or during big events would be a fantastic start.
Your proposals to restrict cars in the CBD – and a trial period during the RWC – is an excellent idea. But please can you think through plans for bus transport. At the moment, they sound like a bit of an afterthought!
Huge numbers of people use the buses in the inner city and I worry that we are the forgotten transport-users amidst the train and cycle lobby.
Pushing buses out of Queen St up the hill on to Albert St will cause problems for passengers with physical disabilities. The bus routes up Queen St are well-used all day and every day. It’s a long way from Britomart to K Rd.
And, yes, great election result to have Board members elected who are genuinely interested in developing the CBD for visitors and residents as well as commerce.
You are absolutely right Gwen and working out what to do with Queen Street buses is quite a challenge. Ultimately it would be nice to replace them all with a tram (a link between a future Dominion Road tram and the Wynyard Quarter tramway the ARC has kick-started perhaps?)
Mixing a tramway with an otherwise pedestrianised street would work really well I think.
You are right on the button – Akld CBD such potential but so wasted at present. As a matter of interest do you know if any players of the newly elected council monitor your blog? Be good if they received some of this info first hand. In addition to the already shared spaces proposed, the three priority projects in my opinion are pedestrianization of: quay street, high street and an overhaul of Queen street along the lines of your post. The already proposed shared spaces are small bites (possibly the right way to introduce these) but we really need one major movement corridor to be redefined as a bit of a pedestrian anchor for the city. I know queen street has only recently been reworked – but in my opinion missed opportunity for some light rail linking K road with downtown and on to tank farm – perhaps Mike Lee in his new role will get this on track as it were?
“Buses could be rerouted to Albert Street without too many problems, or could be allowed through the area at slow speeds as the only vehicles.”
I wouldn’t put them on Albert St in favour of Queen St – at least Queen St is more of a central St – Albert St is out on the fringe, and it makes for a long walk down the hill to Queen before going p to High and possibly further.
Hi
Thanks Admin for your kind words, appreciated.
I monitor this blog through my RSS feed stream, and if I spot anything I usually email my fellow team members, and Mike Lee if it’s regional.
I do want to mention one other bike champion, Richard Barter, re-elected onto the Puketapapa Local Board. He has been a very dedicated cyclist and in fact inspired me greatly when he turned up to a Council meeting in the Civic Building (on Aotea Square) one winters evening on bike – and it was a blustery ride home from there to Mt Roskill. I was very impressed and started riding that summer.
Thanks
Christopher.
Thanks for dropping by Christopher. Hopefully my post has given the Board some interesting ideas to consider.
Has indeed. Feel free to ring Council on 379 2020 (until 31 Oct, thereafter 30 10 10 1) to make an appointment to speak in public forum to your ideas at the Boards first business meeting on 15th December.
Thanks
Christopher.
For what it’s worth, the new Auckland Council contact number will be 30 10 10 1 from the 1st of Nov.
Correction – first meeting of Waitemata Local Board will be on 16th December.
It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to pedestrianise Lorne St – High St from Aotea Square right through to Britomart, and permitting a handful of key crossings for vehicles – Wellesley, Shortland, Customs. Easier to do this than pedestrianise Queen St with the large number of bus routes; and close enough to Queen St for retailers to benefit. Plus there’s the advantage of Chancery and Albert Park.
I would love to see this done regularly say every Sunday for a halfday.
My 2c worth.
One thing I observed in Melbourne that we could implement quickly and cheaply in Auckland is simply where the buses stop. The trams in Melbourne pick up and set down passengers AT the lights not between them. They then have a clear run between stops/lights. Looking at say Ponsonby Rd, the bus stops could be removed from between intersections, increasing parking spaces and de-cluttering the streets of expensive, unattractive and vandal attracting shelters. Extend the footpath at the intersections out to the first traffic lane at the intersections and make these the stops, removing one car park. Car drivers would soon learn to choose the outer lane if frustrated by the stopping busses. The busses stopping time would be potentially halved. Especially if this was coordinated with transit passes so the driver is involved in less money changing. Intersections mostly already provide cover and other amenity, not to mention more useful destinations for pedestrians. Furthermore the buses would not spend time and stress leaving and rejoining the traffic lanes. In time this lane could become a dedicated bus lane. No more frustration for bus drivers and riders caused by finding their stop used as car parks as there no longer would be any. Throw in priority for buses at the lights [the driver could engage a transponder when ready] and bus speeds would increase significantly, and therefore, I predict, patronage. Removing the general opportunity for car drivers [like me] to look forward to stops to overtake the bus, would help lower frustration and acceptance [eventually] on the part of car drivers of the buses, especially as the busses will be moving with the traffic at similar speeds.
Let’s try it on the Link?!
Of course there would be some outrage from some car drivers as it does involve a shift of priority, for the only possible advantage in the current sitting of stops is the idea that it keeps busses out of the way of cars. It would also have the general benefit of simplifying the streetscape.
Thanks for your comments. I agree we have to make the most of this exciting opportunity and look forward to getting your input. I think it is an encouraging sign that at the first informal meeting of the Waitemata Local Board, of the 7 local board members, 3 of us arrived by bike, one on foot and one by bus.