I’ve said many times before that we can learn a lot from the way Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark, has remade its town centre over the past few decades to be more pedestrian friendly.
Here’s a great video from Streetfilms on what Copenhagen has achieved:
As we kick-start our venture into “shared spaces” with Darby, Fort, Elliott and Lorne Streets being turned – at least in part – into exciting shared spaces, my hope is that we can expand on this start, keep up the momentum and make Auckland a truly fantastic city for people, not just cars.
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Great video. I’ve always thought that it would be great to close off the lower sections of Queen St to traffic as a “trial” over January, when there isn’t that much traffic about anyhow and there is a holiday vibe.
Jeez……..Auckland better get started! Such beautiful public spaces in these parts of Europe.
I just came back from Belgium, and it was the same. Lots of people around enjoying their city centres and public squares, even in the rain. And the cars there kept slowing down to let me cross the road! Wow! You dont get that much in London and you certainly don’t in Auckland!
The more I travel Europe, the more I think that Wellington is about the only NZ city thats getting it right.
Isn’t the “We cant increase the flow of people at the expense of car flow- cars buy the goods, while people are useless” argument what stopped Queen Streets bus lanes a couple of years ago- it really makes no sense to me. Copenhagen is a great model city for many reasons such as this
Yup – read this and either weep or bang you head on the desk in frustration: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10453784&pnum=0
My guess is that the City Circuit make up 10% of the buses down Queen St .The bus trip down Queen St makes up about half the travel time on the 025 route is on Queen St from my experience so he totally incorrect.
I come from Holland, and sometimes go over for a holiday. What I found hard to get used to was that cyclists always have the right of way. Its great how they make roads separate to the vehicle road for cyclists to travel on. In the city multi levelled parking is dedicated for cyclists. Over 95% cycle to school every day, even when it snows.
V.g. video. I checked out Copenhagen this Easter and was particularly impressed with the walkability of the city and its surrounding suburbs. The pedestrianised shopping precinct, the Strøget, was hugely popular and acted as a great drawcard for visitors. I live in hope that one day Queen Str could benefit from some forward-thinking planning, perhaps involving pedestrian priority from Quay Str to Wellesley Str or Aotea Sqr. What do people think about the impact on bus services though? Which would be better – a fully pedestrianised Queen Str mall (perhaps with crawl-speed access for delivery vehicles to supply businesses) or a bus-only thoroughfare, which would presumably permit better but not unlimited pedestrian access in between passing buses?
I’m of the opinion that Queen st is too wide to fully pedestrainise from Aotea to the waterfront, I think the best solution would be to maintain a narrow pair of transit lanes down the centre, initially for buses with later conversion to tram tracks. Rather than converting the street to a public square (which might work with a short section), I think the aim should be to create a car free street, and maintain the linear ‘streetyness’.
The swanston st upgrade in Melbourne will provide a good model for this concept. They are removing private vehicle access from an eight block stretch of the city’s main north-south street, leaving just two tram tracks and a pair of bicycle lanes. The intersesting part is that Melbourne already has it’s main east-west street in this pedestrian tramway format, so the intersection of these two will be the centre of a whole car free precinct.
AC: Christchurch is ahead of Wellington in terms of city centre shared space.
They also have the trams.
Nick: Would you just do city centre Trams or would the Queen Street trams actually go somewhere like Dominion Road? And wouldn’t closing Queen Street push more traffic onto the other corridors?
“And wouldn’t closing Queen Street push more traffic onto the other corridors?”
Since the Queen St upgrade a few years ago traffic levels along Queen St have dropped hugely. A lot of this is probably due to the fact there are much more and longer pedestrian phases so reducing it further probably wouldn’t make much difference. Also at the same time roads like Albert St are also quite quite, if I go out of my building at anytime other than peak it would often be unusal to have to wait for the pedistrian phase as there isn’t that many cars their either. Peak time is a different story but not that bad.
The introduction of trams in Queen St would have to be part of converting the busiest bus routes to be worth while. Dominion Rd is the obvious first candidate.
Vehicle traffic isn’t fixed, it is fluid (or gaseous even)and responds to the conditions of the road network. Closing Queen St to private vehicles and improving the speed/amenity of public transport would reduce the amount of traffic in the city and increase public transport usage.
Queen St isn’t a very good arterial route anyway, over the 1.1km from Mayoral Drive to Customs St there are ten major signalised intersections plus two more mid block pedestrian crossings. Pedestrainising this would reduce this to two major intersections and two cross steets. So it would remove six intersections entirely and reduce two more to having only two phases.
Doing this would improve traffic in the CBD by removing a huge amount of delays at intersections. At the end of the day with Albert St and Symonds St in parallel and Nelson and Hobson St with six lanes each there is little need for Queen St to carry traffic.
I want rid of (diesel) buses too. The noise and and emissions are not wanted on our main street. Trams running from mission bay to dominion road via queen street would contribute to the city. I feel they should not exceed 25 or 30 km/h on queen street and have stops close to medium spaced stops.
Re the issues with too much width, this could be used to improve the street scape. More outdoor seating for bars and restaurants could be allowed. Garden’s could be added.
I think light delivery vans/ light trucks (permit for anything over 4.5 tonnes gross) should only be allowed on queen street (under shared space type speed) at night. Plenty of stores in malls cope fine without trucks stopping outside there door to deliver stock.
AT should enforce better minimum standards for buses, focussing first on buses using Queen St.
Modern, well maintained buses would provide a big improvement on what we have currently.
I agree.
There are other reasons I prefer not to have buses on queen street also. A lesser number of trams will be needed, making tram tracks easier to cross than bus lanes. Trams will be able to stop “online”, reducing the space requirement. Trams look more sophisticated…
Minimum Standard for the bus routes too, at least for the QTN.
ie:
Must have pedestrian refuge near bus stops if road width is greater then X metres
Minimum LOS for buses on approach to intersections
OK, as with all these proselytising film, it’s a tad idealistic (not to say slightly cheesy) in it’s depiction of Copenhagen streets (all those people just hanging out eating Weinerbrød and drinking Tuborg Grøn!), but, having lived there for a couple of years, I’ve got to say it’s largely true. There are, of course, other factors in the success of the ‘de-caring’ of Copenhagen: the original street layout of Copenhagen K was established in the 17th century; until the 1860s the city was bound by walls and while the demolition of these provided the city with a network of encircling lakes and parks it also enabled the construction of vast ring-road boulevards that, in part, act to moderate car access to the centre. Historically, the city has been well-served by an extensive commuter rail system; this has now been enhanced by an extraordinarily efficient and rapidly expanding metro network. Most significantly though is the predominance of a building type which integrates ground level retail with multi-storey apartments. And there are NO multi-storey car parks in Copenhagen!
Cool video. Although I can’t help think the quality of the surrounding buildings helps create great spaces, and Auckland doesn’t come close to Copenhagen in that respect.
You will notice in the film that Copenhagen has a 4-storey height restriction in most of the city, giving a liveability feel and human scale to the city (it has about the same population as Auckland). Let’s start tearing down our sky scrapers in Auckland.
The problem is not the height it’s that so much of Auckland’s architecture has weak engagement with the street. Architects in the past seem to have the idea that street level appeal isn’t necessary in a commercial building. Besides which if we started tearing down skyscrapers the city would quickly be filled with cheap concrete and glass boxes which would end up impacting on Ponsonby, Parnell and other inner suburbs. I’m all for pedestrianising as many streets as possible, but we are never going to be Copenhagen.
Indeed. New York City has great street vibrancy and it’s the capital of the world when it comes to skyscrapers.
Easy to see why the Danes rate as the happiest people on earth. I had a great time in Copenhagen too (http://uroskin.blogspot.com/2007/05/copenhagen-when-in-denmark.html). The easy walkability of much of the city centre is a great drawcard. Not sure whether it would work in the windy canyon of Queen Street as I can’t see many street cafes springing up because Queen Street is shady and windy most of the day except lunchtime.
Uroskin, Melbourne’s most popular street cafe strips are in dark windy streets. Degrave St and Centre Place for example get almost no sun. People go there mainly because of the urban environment (i.e. cars are banned and tables and stall fill the street). There are plenty of bars and cafes that trade off the back of a big sunny courtyard or beer garden, but lots of sun doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite for steet cafes here.
“…also enabled the construction of vast ring-road boulevards that, in part, act to moderate car access to the centre.”
Sounds similar like the vast motorway ring road surrounding the Auckland CBD, except for that last bit of course!
Or perhaps at a pinch Mayoral Drive, the ring road for the Aotea precinct.
I’d be in favour of digging a canal up QEII Square and Queen Street to create a Nyhavn effect. Those yachties sailing up the canal can look at the shops and we can keep the cars out.
Looks like we still have some way to go in NZ, this architect is complaining about making pedestrian areas and how it will kill retail. A couple of really concerning quotes from him
“People cruise from their car windows looking at shops. You need parking alongside for those shops to survive.”
“I’m frustrated by planners and politicians using pedestrian developments as sweets to draw people back into the inner cities. Cars are actually the pills.”
The really worrying thing is he has been appointed the Architectural Ambassador to help rebuild Christchurch
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/business/4320334/Cars-not-the-enemy-architect
Hmmm… I don’t need any fingers to count the number of times “People cruise from their car windows looking at shops” I’m usually way too focused on the road as you should be as a driver.
Nick R, the difference between the Kbh ‘ring road’ boulevards (H C Andersens Boulevard and Nørre Voldgade spring to mind) and the Auckland motorways is that the former are on the level and are visually integrated into the urban fabric of the city, while the latter are seemingly intended to demonstrate the moral superiority of suburbia. The boulevards are early 20th century creations based on the Haussmann model rather than on the North American behemoth. There are motorways leading into and around Copenhagen but they have managed to avoid stuffing the city itself full of cars, in part through the proactive measures referred to in the film. And Danes are as besotted with cars as the populace of any other nation although they do pay hefty taxes to own them.
My main point was there is no reason to have a lot of traffic moving through the Auckland CBD, as it is effectively bypassed on all sides. This should be used to moderate car access to the centre too, but unfortunately Auckland seems to do the opposite.
From the same article:
” Mr Athfield said suburban shopping patterns had become entrenched in New Zealand. “These can’t be changed by legislation. You have to work them … we are never going to get rid of them.” ”
Perhaps Mr Athfield should stick to designing buildings and leave the planning and legislation to those who have an idea what they are talking about!