There’s an interesting item in the minutes of the most recent Albert-Eden Local Board meeting: the full document outlining the feedback Auckland City Council received on the Dominion Road project that caused such controversy last year. I’ve updated a copy of the report prepared for the Council here.

One rather strange aspect of all this is how low-key the release of this report has been. As far as I know, the Council Transport Committee hasn’t been made aware of the report (at least not officially) while the agenda item was only a tiny summary buried deep inside the meeting agenda. Fortunately the Albert-Eden Local Board members were smart enough to request that they be provided with the entire report and ensured the report would end up on the Council website – hence we’re able to have a look at what people actually thought about the proposal.

To jog our memories a bit, in the middle of last year Auckland City Council announced that the long-awaited Dominion Road project would proceed to consultation, based on the following general aspects:

  • One lane of general traffic in each direction
  • One “T2” lane, allowing buses and vehicles with two or more people, would operate 6am-7pm.
  • A cycle lane would be constructed along ‘mid-block’ sections of the route to a fairly high standard
  • All on-street parking would be removed along Dominion Road
  • Right-turns into and out of a number of streets would be banned

There were three parts to the consultation. People were encouraged to give feedback by way of the council’s website or through other channels. There were also random telephone surveys of local businesses and residents to enable more of a ‘representative sample’ of people potentially affected by the project. The very summarised results of the surveys and feedback forms are shown below: The first thing to look at is the difference in opinion between the three main groups of the project as a whole. In general, it seems that residents were most supportive, those filling in the feedback form next and businesses least supportive. This followed through into a number of more specific elements of the project: with the businesses particularly disliking the removal of parking, and residents particularly disliking losing right-turns. Both are pretty non-surprising results one would think.

Some other results are a bit more surprising though. Residents were particularly supportive of cycle-lanes (though it’s a shame people weren’t asked to choose between cycle lanes and on-street parking) and the T2 lane (though this seems to be because the potential disadvantages of turning a bus lane into T2 weren’t explained).

Of course not everyone had a simple “like/dislike” opinion on the project – with often parts of it being supported but not others. Here’s a typical response that was quoted in the report: That seems like what my submission might have said actually.

I won’t go through every last detail of what the survey found, but it seems to me that the biggest community concern was certainly the loss of on-street parking. This was seen as a major concern not only for its perceived adverse effects on businesses, but also because it would turn Dominion Road into a “four lane highway” This is clearly indicated in the petition (that got over 6000 signatures) organised by “Save Dominion Road”. I would suggest that whatever solution we finally end up with for Dominion Road, it will probably be necessary to retain as much on-street parking as possible. While in some respects this illustrates how auto-dependent Auckland is – even along its best bus route – there may be some urban amenity advantage in having on-street parking as a buffer between traffic and pedestrians. If the buses end up down the middle of the road and there’s room for both a single lane of general traffic plus on-street parking, then this might be the best solution we can hope for.

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22 comments

  1. Retaining carparks – Unless they put the cycle lanes inside the carparks, this outcome will just suck for cyclists. Suckity suck suck!

    The most dangerous roads in central Auckland (in my opinion) for cyclists are either the ones that are basically motorways (e.g., Hobson, Nelson) or the ones that have a lot of traffic, a lot of parked cars by the side of the road, a lot of people moving in and out of those cars, and a lot of pedestrians.

    Dominion road, Ponsonby and Tamaki Drive are all great examples of this.

    I personally think that removing the carparking will probably make MUCH Less difference to these businesses than they think. Look at Queen Street – they got rid of the parking and the street is way busier now than it used to be – even in the middle of a recession.

    Also, anybody who thinks a 1 metre cycle lane would be worse for cyclists than the current situation is NOT a cyclist.

  2. I agree Lucy, in terms of parking for access (particularly as the last proposal involved relocating the car parks with no net loss)

    However I do think there is a very valid point regarding the loss of a buffer between the footpath and the roadway, and turning what is for the most part a local road into a four lane highway.

    But what if a decent cycle lane could be added kerbside instead of parking, wouldn’t this also serve to buffer the traffic from the footpath? On one side we would have pedestrians, on the other traffic doing 50kph and in the middle cyclists doing 20kph or so.

    Of course this leads us to the other issue of fitting general traffic lanes, public transport lanes and cycle lanes all within the same narrow corridor.

    In this regard trams might be the saving grace. I was just looking at the spec sheet for adelaide’s new flexity trams, these things are only 2.4m wide and being trams they run on rails. So a similar tram on Dominion Rd would only require a lane 2.8m wide.

    If I remember correctly the constrained sections of dominion rd are 18m wide. This would be sufficient for two 2.8m median tram lanes, two 3.5m general traffic lanes, two 1.5m cycle lanes and two 2.2m footpaths/verges.

    Naturally the Luddites will scream about taking away parking to put in a ‘useless’ cycle lane, but I think this sort of arrangement would be a good mix of private and public transport modes while improving the urban environment.

  3. Funnily enough I was one of the 300 they called for the resident’s survey…

    It was a long interview – 10 or so minutes…

  4. “Also, anybody who thinks a 1 metre cycle lane would be worse for cyclists than the current situation is NOT a cyclist.”

    Also, Council never proposed a 1m cycle lane, but a 1.8m cycle lane. So they couldn’t be bothered to fact-check even their most basic allegations? The petition also ignores the fact that Council was/is proposing to make up the majority (potentially all, can’t remember) of the parking in nearby side streets. The petition painted eveything in BLACK and (very little) white. I can understand some of their concerns, but the way they went about it was extremely disappointing, and populist.

  5. Out of curiosity, what’s the scope for increasing carparks on the side-streets and the blocks behind Dominion rd.?

    I’m loathe to encourage parking, but if the parks on Dominion road could be replaced with ones on the side-streets,thereby leaving space on Dominion rd for the cycle lanes and a wider footpath, then everyone would win?

    I’m guessing there is little scope on the side streets – all sounds too simple….

    1. KLK, There is plenty of scope for that and it is exactly what was proposed in the last concept: replacing all the carparks to be removed from Dominion Rd with new carparks on the ends of adjacent side streets (largely by making lots more angle parking).

      As a trader I would have loved this suggestion as parallel parking on a busy road like that can be a real bastard, angle parking on side streets would have been easier. But no, apparently their entire livelyhood depends on having one carpark directly in from of their shop.

      I live on Burnley Tce for two years and very frequently shopped up around Eden Valley and Balmoral shops… but I can’t recall a single time I actually parked on Dominion Rd. It was so much easier to park off street or on one of the side roads.

  6. Is LRT on Dominion Rd intended to also capture passengers from south of SH20 motorway? What if we were to build the Avondale to Hillsboro Rd section of the Avondale-Southdown railway designation. This would give you fast heavy rail service right into town via the Western line into the city tunnel. (Via a slightly circuitous looking route I grant you, but I suspect if we ran the numbers we’d find it’d be similar to taking LRT down Dominion Rd.)

    We’d reorganise buses in the area around the stations along this line and synchronise them with the rail services. The catchment of the line would cover part of the area to the north as well. And we could time this to be built as part of the Waterview motorway project reducing cost.

    Thoughts?

    The outcome of this is that LRT on Dominion Rd is about serving only Dominion Rd and adjacent neighbourhoods which might positively affect it’s design/cost/scope/whathaveyou.

    1. Thats one idea I have thought about a bit and something I was thinking of doing a post on soon, the idea being that we take most of the patronage off the routes south of SH20 which frees up space along Dominion Rd.

      1. Surely the Dominion Road to Mt Albert section of the Avondale-Southdown Line would be pretty dirty cheap too as the corridor has effectively been constructed by NZTA (or will be). You just need to slap down some tracks and put up some wires and you’re done.

        1. Its a little bit more than that but yes it would be pretty cheap and the only bridge needed would be New North Rd so the whole thing might only be $50-100m with two stations, Richardson Rd and Dominion Rd. I wouldn’t go to the expense of rebuilding Dominion Rd at this stage, it was the only part that wasn’t built for a rail line to be easily laid so will require rebuilding, as we need to sort out how to get it from there to Onehunga. Using the old designation isn’t ideal due to the number of houses now in the area and the fact it doesn’t join up till after Alfred St and the route suggested by the 2008 SW study had it follow SH20 but that is extreemly steep so would require a long expensive tunnel that probably wouldn’t emerge till about Dominion Rd anyway.

          I believe that the NZTA even offered to build the formation for the tracks at the same time as they are doing their works for the Waterview project however Kiwirail didn’t want to pay for it so they won’t even though it will probably be much cheaper to do it at that time.

  7. “it will probably be necessary to retain as much on-street parking as possible…there may be some urban amenity advantage in having on-street parking as a buffer between traffic and pedestrians”

    This is hardly visionary solution for a city clogged with cars. It’s just more of the same, tinkering around the edges. It also tells me that cycling advocates have not been doing their job very well.

    I would love to hear the opinion of a parking expert about the real cost of using public roads for parking.

    1. You’re right Mark it isn’t particularly visionary. How can we get the message across to local businesses that the world won’t cave in if they lose a couple of on-street parking spaces?

  8. My wish would be for a interchange station at Mt Roskill in the Avondale-Southdown line (although as suggested above it would probably be better to run it to the city via Mt Albert). At this station would be the tram terminus, plus the terminus of various circulator buses to Blockhouse Bay, Green Bay, New Lynn etc. There is even the ideal location for it by the existing bus stabling facility.

    1. Nick do you mean at May Rd? There certainly is space for an interchange station there, shame though that this would make it so far from Mt Roskill Grammar. Where else do you see a station and how do you see this line running? Are you thinking of the circular line, so therefore needing the the CBDRL complete too?

      1. The council have already asked that enough space be left at Richardson Rd for a station behind the shops there so that would be one location, Dominion Rd is about 2km away and that is likely another location. After Dominion Rd if the tracks followed SH20 like the ARC suggested it would have to dive into a tunnel emerging down by the water, it may be possible to have a station around Queenstown Rd it would likely have to be underground and as it is also meant to be a freight bypass it might cause problems.

      2. I had between May and Dominion in mind for the station location, with the stabling facilities in with the buses.

        The ARTA report on South Western Rapid Transit Corridors had three stations, one at the corner of Stoddard/Richardson Rds, one at Dominion Rd and Hillsborough Rd.

        I think these are ideal as there are a good station spacing (approx 2km, including from Mt Albert to Stoddard/Richardson) but more importantly they line up with Sandringham Rd/Maioro Rd, Dominion Rd and Hillsborough Rd/Mt Eden Rd respectively making them ideal interchange points between these QTN routes and the rail network.

        The walk up catchment in these areas are fairly limited, but these stations are excellently placed for interchanges from both circulator style bus feeders and linear style bus/tram lines.

        My idea with routing would be to have an Ithsmus Loop Line using the inner parts of the western and eastern lines and the Onehunga branch. This way the line can function as a reasonably direct radial route from Mt Roskill to the CBD, but more importantly provide interconnection between the four main lines. Furthermore if this line was servicing the stations of the inner west and east there could be the potential to have a lot more express services skipping these stations for points further out. I guess this does require the CBD loop, although a shorter loop via Newmarket and the Southern could be possible in the mean time I guess.

        In the long term I would like to see this ithsmus loop line cut across the western line (under St Lukes Rd maybe?) to join a Northwestern line in the vicinity of Western Springs, then continuing in the NW Line’s tunnel under Grey Lynn and Ponsonby to the CBD and back to the eastern line (I’m a fan of having rail in the NW corridor because it provides a much more direct route to the upper harbour and Kumeu, Huapai etc).

  9. One idea I was thinking about, the proposed cycleways were 1.8m each however cycle paths like that along SH16 tend to be about 3m wide, could we put one 3m cycleway down one side of the road and provides a buffer to traffic on one side. That then frees up .6m of space which if added to the median strip of 1.6m gives us 2.2m which should be enough for a car to park in and could run down the other side of the road. That way there is still some parking and a decent cycleway. The only major issue would be in the town centres but I think they should almost be shared spaces if traffic was slowed it shouldn’t be to much of an issue.

  10. I definitely support having a single 2-way cycleway. It will require less space and provide a better buffer for cyclists away from exhaust fumes. If you look at what cyclists use along the NW motorway 3m width would be luxurious by comparison. I expect it would be safer also having half the exposure to road traffic alongside.

    1. I’m not so sure about a two-way cycle lane to one side being safer, in fact my personal experiences suggest they are much worse. The have one here in Melbourne that I use fairly often and I think it is just a seemingly good idea that doesn’t work in reality. There are two main problems which would be particularly problematic on a road like Dominion Rd that has lots of driveways and side streets.

      Firstly motorists, (and people crossing the road for that matter) just aren’t expecting a cyclist to be coming the ‘wrong way’ down the ‘wrong’ side of the street when they are pulling in or out of a side road. So you have to just ride along real slow and eyeball every single vehicle that is using the road, because sooner or later one will whip over right in front of you without realising you are there.

      Secondly, because motorists have three metres or so to cross from the kerb to the road lane then end up having to pull right out across the bike lanes to be able to look for a gap in traffic. This means effectively every driver coming out of a driveway or side road without traffic lights ends up parked perpendicular across the cycle lane, blocking both directions entirely.

      (if this link works you can see an example of what I mean: http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.861184,144.974664&z=21&t=k&nmd=20101020 …click back to 20th October 2010 image using the slider bar)

      In my opinion the number of driveways and side streets on Dominion Rd rules this out as an option.

  11. Thank you for posting this, Josh. I’ve been waiting to see these results come out, and it is heartening to see the strong objection to taking away one of Auckland’s main and most successful bus lanes.

    I’m hoping this new council will look forward, and plan for light rail rather than back to private cars. Adding bike lanes is also a priority for me. I’m not too fussed about the parking either way, assuming it doesn’t interfere with reasonable space for public transport, cyclists and pedestrians. As one of the submissions stated, the last thing you want to do is turn Dominion into Lincoln Road.

  12. You’re right; “…it’s a shame people weren’t asked to choose between cycle lanes and on-street parking”. Once it became obvious this was the tradeoff, I found that people generally tended to favour on-street parking over cycle lanes. These are some of Auckland’s most walkable village centres and are used by thousands of pedestrians each week. On-street parking, particularly in the narrow village centres, provides a valuable buffer from traffic for pedestrians -and is a source of pedestrian traffic as well. Walking next to traffic is unappealing which is why you see so few people walking along Balmoral or St Lukes Road. The width of the road going through villages means other forms of pedestrian buffer zones are hard to create. An environment attractive to pedestrians creates an environment that is good for businesses – and public transport. The ‘open all hours’ nature of many of the businesses on Dom Rd helps creates a pretty safe environment for public transport users on this most successful route even late at night.

  13. What constantly amazes me is the ability to ignore the real problem that is holding up all progress. We are beholden to the motor vehicle and until we appreciate the real costs and problems caused by them, we will never make any progress. Count the number of single occupant vehicles going up and down Dominion Rd or any road in Auckland. But instead we focus the negative attention on those pesky people on bicycles or people trying to cross the road. “Get out the way of my car. I’m coming through. BEEP BEEP!”

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