One of the ideas within the “Transport in Auckland: 2011-2016” plan I helped the Campaign for Better Transport present to the Auckland Council Transport Committee on Monday that seems to have captured the imagination of a lot of people, is the idea to ‘humanise’ Hobson and Nelson streets by turning them from one-way de-facto motorways into normal two-way boulevards. Today’s NZ Herald picked up on this issue in an article:
Auckland’s Queen St should be pedestrians-only and other streets turned into boulevards in an effort to turn the down-town area from a wasteland into a world-class city, a lobby group has said.
The Campaign for Better Transport wants to convert Hobson and Nelson streets into two-way roads, have40km/h speed limits in some inner-city areas and limit Queen St to pedestrians at weekends.
Group representative Joshua Arbury said the current one-way system was tantamount to having motorways running through the CBD, and a revamp would humanise the streets for pedestrians.
“Auckland’s western CBD is a bit of a wasteland because of what those two streets are – basically two motorways in the heart of Auckland’s CBD.”
Instead of leaving them as four-lane one-way routes for feeding traffic to and from Spaghetti Junction, one could be linked both ways to the Southern Motorway and the other to the Northwestern.
Councillor Richard Northey hoped the proposal would be given precedence as he believed the area between the two streets and Victoria Park could be developed into an attractive commercial precinct without “that motorway there”.
“There are a lot of people living in apartments but it’s a very unappealing environment – I hope it can be given priority.”
Transport committee chairman Mike Lee said the idea could be linked to Auckland’s proposed spatial plan, making it a direct responsibility of a body such as his committee.
“It’s a brilliant idea to open up the whole area which is a bit of a wasteland – it’s a very creative idea from the Campaign for Better Transport.”
It’s good to see that both Richard Northey and Mike Lee picked up very quickly the true benefits of such a project: to help humanise and revitalise the western parts of Auckland’s CBD. Nelson Street and Hobson Street are such horrifically wide roads, promoting traffic to travel so incredibly quickly, that they do form something of a ‘wall’ dividing off the western part of the CBD from the rest of the inner-city. The photo below shows a typical shot of Hobson Street (and to be honest, Hobson is probably the nicer street of the two):
One of the beauties of Nelson and Hobson streets is that they’re so incredibly wide at the moment you have a lot of room to play with when it comes to how they could be realigned into two-way streets. As the diagram below shows, there would be plenty of room to provide two lanes each way, a full-size median strip and retain all-day on street parking on at least one side of the road – without any need to widen the road corridor:
Obviously we would need to play around with how these two roads connect to the southern and northwest motorways. But here’s where another very useful part of the project kicks in: creating two separate streets and linking each with its own particular motorway would split the traffic up and potentially reduce congestion as you wouldn’t have as many vehicles concentrated on the one road – as happens with Hobson Street in the evening peak.
A broad way the motorways could be realigned to meet the new street network is shown below:
Nelson Street would solely link with the southern motorway and Hobson solely with the northwest motorway. There would be relatively little change required to the ramps, with the only major change being the new bridge where the SH16 ramps pass over the SH1 onramp.
I will certainly follow with interest what happens to this idea over the next few months. It would be awesome for it to become a reality.
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I think that the potential traffic benefits alone would probably make it worthwhile, I have been driving this week and you see it every afternoon, the Southern is busy so people travel up the right hand lanes that lead onto the NW then hold those lanes up as they try to force a merge so they can go south. If you could do it on that then the pedestrian benefits would just be a bonus.
The pure arrogance of people once they get behind the wheel is astonishing! I think it brings out the absolute worst in people.
We should get to work reducing the number of lanes on Union Street too. Just look at your aerial photograph to see what I mean. Perhaps you can’t do much on the motorway side, but there is no reason you couldn’t encourage active uses along the eastern side of Union/ Pitt Street.
Pitt Street could definitely be reduced to one lane each way and a bus lane each way. The only reason Pitt Street is so wide is because it was SH1 for a number of years before they finished CMJ. We just never got around to updating the width of the street to match its enormously reduced demand once traffic could keep on the motorway.
Shame they didnt fix this street along with the motorway improvements. Ancillary local improvements should be required on any big motorway project.
When the K Road station goes in I imagine Pitt Street will need to be narrowed to provide access to the station. I would imagine a London/New York style system of four corner stair/escalators down to a ticketing area under the K Road/Pitt Street intersection with escalators then leading down to the platform would be a good format for this station. You’d also have to provide room for a lift which I would say would have to be on the one of the Pitt Street corners as the Mercury Lane corners really don’t have the room for a lift and Mercury Lane I don’t think could be narrowed by enough to provide room for one.
Yeah, Pitt is definitely there for future work.
Great idea. Huge potential for real estate re-investment along these streets as well.
I like the idea of narrowing the streets to make them a bit more pedestrian friendly. If you have 2 lanes in the direction leading from the off ramps but only 1 lane in the direction leading to the on ramps, then that’d help prevent traffic queuing back on to the CMJ while also regulating traffic entering the CMJ. Make the footpaths wider, make a wide median strip with trees, create more parking, make a proper (ie. not just a line of paint) cycle lane, or do what ever else you prefer with the former 4th lane.
It’s a great idea, it’s a shame NZTA can’t wip out $160 to redo this part of the motorway as they have for projects such as widening elsewhere. I would really like to see cycle lanes on these streets as well, I’m sure make the road lanes a little narrower/and or removing the huge painted media would provide plenty of space for a cycle lane on either side – preferably next to the footpath with parking next to that and then the car/bus lanes.
Any traffic modelling of this at all?
I don’t believe you could even contemplate this without congestion pricing to reduce demand, otherwise you’ll increase delays and emissions enormously.
It highlights the problem I have with some of the lack of analysis that comes on here from time to time. What are your objectives? Increasing congestion and consequently, fuel consumption and emissions is not a winner. Bearing in mind that all conversions to two way operation increase traffic signal delays.
So its good that I am held up getting onto the SH16 because there are a bunch of people who are heading south who are blocking the lanes as they try to force a merger with the queue for that onramp? Anyway this post is focusing more on the pedestrian benefits of the proposal rather than the traffic ones, there are a lot of pedestrians in the area due to the thousands of apartments, in fact I believe the Hobson & Nelson street area has more apartments in it than anywhere else in town.
Liberty, there’s generally a tension between how easy it is to get through a place and how nice that place is. If this project increases congestion I don’t really care too much as generally CBD bound traffic has other options – either other mode options or other ramp options.
But as Matt says, it may be possible to get a “win-win” here. If we don’t get that, I am sure the amenity & urban benefits will outweigh a bit of extra congestion.
I think traffic congestion is irrelevant in this case, this area is IMO now a primarily residential area and when taking into account the fact that 50% of people travel to the CBD by PT, I think it’s clear we should be focusing work in CBD on pedestrians not on cars travelling through. Times have changed since Hobson and Nelson streets were made into mororway onramps and consequently things need to change in the CBD.
Fully with you guys and not Liberty Scott. Imagine what New York City would be like if they made all their decisions based on congestion. 3 – 4 storey buildings anyone? Congestion is a part of any big city – get over it! Traffic engineers and their obsession with moving traffic have ruined our cities and we shouldn’t apologise in the slightest when we try and add some more balance into the equation!
Congestion is a form of road pricing, the experience and the cost encourages people to use other modes… [oh that’s right we don’t believe in other modes in NZ] … the movement of the private car must be made seamless at any cost. Financial, economic, and the cost to the places these roads are rammed through. Liberty we’ve had 60 years of prioritising movement of vehicles over quality of place and it doesn’t work. This is about re-addressing the balance.
Of course with reasonable investment in PT we could get many a blighted part of Auckland back in balance with ease as it will help the rush away from the car that is happening now.
One final thing: The quickest fix to our streets would be to get rid of every free left turn, the two reclaimed ones on the central connecter have made a huge difference to quality of place without clogging the road in any visible way at all.
rather then just cycle lanes there may be space for a full 2way cycle path because it’s unlikely that cars need all that space.
the other point is that the CBD is basically one of the only places in city it is easy to get to by public transport from many parts of the city. I love this idea – as a motorist I actually hate those one way streets becuase I often choose the wrong one and get lost.
As a cyclist and pedestrian I hate them because they effecitvely cut me off from entering the CBD from anywhere except Pitt or Queen St.
yes, there is a hug multiplier effect from central city projects since so many people are using the streets/facilities…
I must admit, I didn’t see the point in this orginally – it still seemed to be 4 lanes, only two going in opposite directions. There would still be a wall…..
But I get it now – widening the median strip, planting some trees, slowing down the traffic. And I really liked the sound of someone who said this was practically a residential st in the middle of the CBD. That sounds kind of cool, so the traffic characteristics should reflect this.
Good to see your hard work on this project getting in front of council and hopefully starting to get some wider traction.
One thing I think would be great to include in the longer term plan for this is something I wonder about every time I walk across Hopetoun Bridge…whether there is someway to make use of the old Nelson St offramp to link the Northwestern Cycleway with the city better.
Of course without all your changes happening you’d just be offloading cyclists into a defacto motorway which wouldn’t work.
I’ve been thinking about how this would affect the downtown end of these streets.
Using Hobson St as two-way access to/from SH16, you’d need to allow U-turns from Fanshawe St into Sturdee St, but can anyone think of any better ideas that would mean we’d no longer need that butt-ugly Lower Hobson St bridge?
Remove the ramp, widen Fanshawe Street to 4 lanes from Hobson to Albert, make Sturdee Street west of Hobson 2 lanes each way as a route from Quay Street, via lower Hobson Street, close Sturdee Street between Hobson Street and Albert Street. Finally demolish Down Town carpark and build a nice development. Problem solved.
Oh and Google really likes your idea – note that Hobson and Nelson Streets are not shown as one ways on Google Maps 🙂
Rode up the central connecter today and I absolutely love those Plane trees at the university and how they now form a wide shady barrier between the traffic and the footpath, But then you get to upper Symonds St where the trees are both on the median and squeezed hard up against the buildings- not nearly so successful. So how about: Footpath/Trees/2 lanes south/2 lanes north/Trees/Footpath? Unless there really is need for cycles too, then: Footpath/Cycle/Trees?2 Lane/2 Lanes/Trees/Footpath. There is no need for buslanes on these roads as they are still motorway feeders, at the intersections turning lanes can be accommodated.
Would be a big improvement for AK.
One of the regrettable outcomes of the vehicle movement priority in AK is that virtually every little lane has been overwhelmed by to traffic. There are so few Melbourne type laneways in AK, this is a great loss for quality of place. One example of this is Wolfe St at the bottom of Hobson St, it is a one way distributor which encourages a speed unsuitable for the city and its scale. The two waying of Hobson and Nelson will help calm down movements in this whole system and great improve the value of these types of places.
Quay St needs to be pedestrian/transit only too.
SO THATS what you sound like… Good points on NatRad.
NZTA hears this proposal every few years and rolls their eyes. The day they actually permit it will be a great one for Auckland, but I’m not holding my breath.
Dan, I think you’ll find that NZTA’s roads end at the traffic lights. This is a council decision.
Indeed these are local roads so NZTA could complain and write submissions against it but ultimately AT has the final say, it would then be up to NZTA to fix the motorway up which is probably what they’d refuse to do or allow.
Arnie03, you’re correct in that Nelson and Hobson are Council roads, but NZTA have yet to permit the 2-way conversion of either of these streets as they fear (the correct word) that it will cause back ups on their motorway. This is not a new idea.
Perhaps the old Nelson St offramp could be redeployed as a southbound onramp. There would be no need for the bridge admin suggests; just a ramp down near where SH16 joins SH1 south.
Darren i had a look from Hopetoun Viaduct today and that is a really elegant solution, although it does make for a much shorter on ramp with less space for merging and queing…. wonder if it could work. This whole plan is so do-able…. no drop off in lanes exiting or joining the motorway, and no need for cars to go around the block unnecessarily in order to access the motorway… it needs modelling but once we are all used to it it looks like it may be more efficient.
I don’t see how it could work seeing as the old offramp is at a completely different height to the southbound lanes, you would have to build an onramp down to the lanes and have it join in about the same place as the SH16 link.
Great idea Josh. I agree with Lucy – the current arrangement is like motorways slicing up the central city. I also agree that cycle lanes are a must – I cycle these roads quite regularly and especially going uphill the exhaust fumes(diesel in particular) and speed differential make mixing with traffic a health hazard on a number of levels. Introducing at least one decent set of cycle lanes will provide a clear signal that Auckland is finally becoming pedestrian and citizen friendly.
Reducing the lanes maybe a bit short sighted. Although expensive but otherwise a very “humanising” development would be drop the roads underground within the same areas they are now and then cover them over with full pedestrian area’, parks etc. I have seen this done elsewhere around the world and the effect is essentially to remove cars from the within those areas. A method such as being currently used by Vic Park project could work. Long term creating spaces without cars and the noise and fumes associated with them is the most benefiical for people working and living in the area. This option still allows the flexibility and all the good attributes associated with driving whilst not effecting those who live, work etc in the areas where we drive through.
A thought, perhaps a bit idealistic in relation to $$$
Reduce the car lanes and the cars will go elsewhere and the cost will be significantly cheaper – undergrounding it will cost vast amounts and won’t do anything to reduce the number of cars in the CBD. Compare San Francisco to Boston, both now have no waterfront freeway, however one is up to its neck in debt from undergrounding the freeway and the other is enjoying simply having the freeway gone.
It doesn’t really involve much reduction anyway, there will still be 4 lanes in each direction across the two streets plus turning lanes….
Sure my point is more that reducing the car lanes will be more effective at reducing traffic in the CBD than undergrounding the whole road – let’s manage a CBD tunnel for rail first. The proposal here, as you say, results in no net loss in car capacity.
i agree rtc, undergrounding cars is expensive and makes for yet more horrid places….. no need for that here, trains underground, however, is a different thing….