Waitemata Local Board’s March meeting took place on Tuesday this week. One of the matters considered was a “notice of motion” by board member Christopher Dempsey (who sometimes comments on this blog) relating to measures to improve the safety of Parnell Rise by slowing down traffic. The whole agenda can be read here, and I’ve extracted the two-pages of the notice of motion here for your convenience.
Here’s a background to the transport situation on Parnell Rise:
Compared to the relatively nice pedestrian environment of Parnell Road, the “highway” design of Parnell Rise is pretty strange and unnerving when you’re trying to cross the road there. The ‘capacity’ of four lanes also seems pretty unnecessary as the road is constrained by the intersection with SH16 at the bottom of its hill, and the two-lane nature of Parnell Road at the top of the hill.
Board member Dempsey provides a useful suggestion for fixing this problem – utilising the development contributions of a nearby office building that’s currently under construction:
It’s great to see board members looking at issues like this. I can think of hundreds of similar situations around Auckland where relatively minor changes to the road environment could create huge improvements for pedestrians along with significant road safety benefits by slowing traffic down. Most of these projects wouldn’t cost much money at all, it just takes someone to get the ball rolling on fixing them up.
This is a good start.
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Seems a sensible idea, especially re-purposing the space as bus and cycle lanes. Parnell Rise carries a number of routes heading east as well as the Link, but in peak time slows to a crawl. I wonder if there is enough space further up to convert the current car parking space on each side of the road to a bus lane in the respective peaks. I imagine this would provoke protest from the retailers along this strip, as usual…
These are indeed the sort of nice small projects that council should be carrying out around the city. They cost very little if done with road markings or through installation of concrete medians, and have the potential to make great improvements. They also have the advantage that once people see the improvement they bring, it will be easier to make the changes permanent. The shared spaces in the CBD are great but the time taken to get through all the planning and submissions means it’s pretty slow going – whereas what’s proposed for Parnell could happen pretty quickly.
Also good to see from those minutes that Mike Lee is pushing the idea forward that admin presented of two-laning Nelson and Hobson streets.
Speed cameras anyone?
“Speed cameras anyone?”
Speed cameras? Well, people drive to what the road design telss them to. And Parnell Rise says “put your foot down!”. So I prefer solutions that go closer to the actual problem.
Cameras are good for red-light running though, and it’s a sodden shame we have so few of those cameras.
A solid planted median would be nice, narrow the road, gives pedestrians crossing a refuge space, and gets a bit more green into the city.
I agree, Nick. As long as the resulting lanes don’t end up too narrow for cyclists (which of course would not be the case if there were cycle lanes instead), a raised median is often a very good solution for many different issues.
Hey this a really good idea, I think it all got a bit lost in other events…. keep up the good work, as a walking route it could be greatly improved….. I’ve often wondered about the worth of that triangle of park that’s never used. It used to have a big timber school I think on it. Burned down? when?….
Hi all
Thank you for your comments, appreciated.
The triangle park is called Fraser Park, and the former Parnell Primary District School stood on site. It was I understand a two storey wooden school building, which unfortunately burnt down in 1973.
For your information, tonight I observed the following all exceeding the speed limits: late model Audi, BMW sedan, a Subaru station wagon, a Mercedes, a Mercedes SUV, a Toyota sedan early model and many more.
Christopher Dempsey.
Where’s this notice of motion at Christopher? I guess we’ll typically need a truckload of studies before anything can happen?
Not sure where it has got to. AkTransport is required to report back to the Board at some point.