Continuing the Auckland tradition of digging up roads as much as possible, we learned a couple of days back that necessary works by Vector to upgrade power cables under Quay Street will result in that street being narrowed for quite a few months in the near future. The NZ Herald ran an article on – here’s an excerpt:
Downtown Auckland faces months of traffic chaos from next Monday as Quay St is dug up again for more power supply and telecommunications upgrades, and a roading rebuild.
Although commuters from eastern suburbs will face the most misery, others will be affected by congestion through the central business district.
The galling thing is that we went through all of this just a couple of years ago:
First in on December 27 will be electricity lines company Vector, which will lay new cables and ducts for power supply and telecommunications in the second phase of a capacity upgrade which began in 2008.
Auckland Transport will follow closely, piggy-backing on Vector’s presence to rebuild the main section of Quay St, west from Tangihua St, which it says has become “peppered” with short-term pothole repairs.
The two organisations expect to impose traffic restrictions along the busy waterfront road, which normally carries close to 30,000 vehicles a day, until late March or early April.
General traffic will be reduced from two lanes to one either way for one or two street blocks at a time, although the street’s city-bound bus lane will stay open.
A Herald editorial yesterday lambasted the fact that we’re going to have such a critical road into the CBD dug up twice in the space of a couple of years:
Residents of Auckland’s eastern suburbs must have uttered a groan when they read of looming traffic chaos as Quay St is dug up yet again. The busy thoroughfare will be reduced from two lanes to one either way for one or two street blocks at a time while power supply and telecommunications upgrades and a roading rebuild is done. The work will start during the Christmas break, and will continue until late March or early April. That is more than three months of misery for motorists caught in the congested inner city.
The same thing happened when similar work was done only two years ago. At that time, motorists’ only solace lay in their belief that disruption of this magnitude was surely a one-off. But now, electricity lines company Vector says it was not possible to complete upgrade work – involving the laying of new cables and ducts – in the summer of 2008. And Auckland Transport will piggy-back on Vector’s presence to rebuild the main section of Quay St, which has many short-term pothole repairs.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, given the Herald’s hatred of bus lanes, they’re eyeing up closing down the bus lane along Quay Street as a possible solution to the problem:
Equally, there should be no question of motorists being unable to use the bus lane from Monday, when the work starts. This should not be a matter that becomes open for debate only when more commuters start returning to work on January 10.
Actually, I’m still trying to decipher what’s actually being said here. I’m assuming that the mangled couple of sentences above are suggesting closing down the bus lane.
While that might be a good idea at first thought – in reality all it will do is discourage people from using the bus (and a fairly decent proportion of commuters from along Tamaki Drive and Quay Street do use the bus) and push them back into cars, making traffic even worse. So I think Auckland Transport should strenuously resist calls to close the bus lanes.
If we look at ways to get around the problem that will occur over the next few months, why don’t we take a lesson from the way the closure of the Newmarket Viaduct in September was handled? Sure, that closure was just for a weekend, but all manner of ‘carmageddon’ outcomes were anticipated. But in the end, thanks to the clever thinking of Mike Lee, trains were made free. The rail system ended up carrying around six times its usual number of passengers over the weekend, and ‘carmageddon’ was averted.
So why not apply this lesson to Quay Street too? Why not make Tamaki Drive buses free over the next few months to encourage as many people onto public transport as possible – thereby averting the likely congestion problems along the route? Obviously this is likely to cost a reasonable amount of money, particularly because of its extended timeframe, but it would be reasonable to ask Vector to make up the difference – as they are the ones creating the problem in the first place. Not only would this plan assist greatly in alleviating congestion, it is also likely to discourage utility operators from digging up our streets over and over again in the future – as they will know that for works that will cause major disruption, they’re likely to be required to pay for a free public transport alternative.
It’s a win-win all around surely?
Processing...
The herald have never liked bus lanes so as you say it isn’t surprising they are calling for them to be opened. Free or perhaps just half priced travel is a great idea and could have real benefits after this work is completed as more people see the benefit of using PT rather than driving.
We can hope that this will finally force trucks heading north from the port to use Grafton gully now that there is a direct link but even if they do for the mean time I bet they will quickly return after the works have finished. It is also a shame AT aren’t taking the opportunity to narrow or even pedestrianise the street west of Britomart Pl as suggested by Jan Gehl.
How much are they budgetting for this renewal? and why aren’t they looking to pedestrianise it since this was promoised when they slammed through the Grafton motorway works – now we have both the motorway and Quay street. What gives?
through trucks (ie port traffic) should be banned from Quay St east of Tangiahua St. They also should be banned from Beach Road, and forced to go up the Strand and turn left onto Quay St there. This will only add another 1km to their route so cant see it being a problem.
Ive even seen trucks going up Queen St that looked like port traffic, this is totally ridiculous. Pity the truck lobby would be so hysterical if these bans were proposed, and the herald would jump on the bandwagon to.
Another good thing would be if more rail shuttles from Wiri and the Southdown/Onehunga railyards were subsidized.
This would help to reduce truck congestion.
When this kind of thing happens Councils should monitor and study the effects. In many cases you’d find the traffic just dissapears never to be found again and congestion levels remain constant. I’ve noticed this is what seems to happen in Wellington whenever they take Victoria St, a one way two lane street down to one lane for any period of time (e.g. just recently with the Manners Mall works, prior to that with a stormwater culvert works, etc).
Yes or the Wellington Street onramp. Wasn’t that meant to cause “traffic armageddon”? I’ve barely noticed it being closed.
To add to all this they are closing Kepa Road Eastbound for a month from 7 Jan to 7 Feb. Would seem logical to provide some incentives to use trains or buses. On that note, a park and ride could easily be vreated at the old Tamaki Station.
It’s midnight and my 3 children have been woken up yet again by road works that were not completed in the time allowed for. Hope they’ll send a note for their teacher…..