Regular commenter Andrew W is in Bordeaux, France at the moment – and has kindly sent in this Guest Post:
I’m staying in Bordeaux, France at the moment and thought I’d share a couple of observations and comparisons.
In both Bordeaux itself and in nearby towns, there aren’t small token shared spaces here and there, instead in town the pedestrian rules – shared and pedestrian-only spaces are simply how streets work, and they are packed with people. These are cities that were built long before the car and have resisted its onslaught, and as a result they’re now thriving.
Roads are very narrow yet there is no bad congestion that I’ve seen so far. Arterial roads, so far as I’ve observed, simply don’t exist, and it works. This seems to imply that all our arterial roads’ very existence is counterproductive, both in terms of how they directly attract traffic, and how they spread out development which also attracts traffic.
Reading Wikipedia, I see it was not always this way and Bordeaux was once strangled by traffic late last century under leadership of Mayor Jacques Chaban-Delmas and his “car-only” transport approach. It didn’t work and as soon as he retired, the city started planning to return to light rail.
Bordeaux’s light rail system began operating in 2003 – the same year as Auckland’s Britomart. It operates at street level but is usually lane-separated from traffic or has its own right-of-way. It is surprisingly fast. All stops have names and the distance between them is similar to Auckland’s inner West line. This was much bigger than Britomart (despite no central railway station as a terminus) and has completely revitalised the city.
The articulated LRVs draw power from either overhead or on-the-ground power. They are separated from road lanes and always get signal priority – an approaching tram changes traffic lights ahead no matter what – none of this ineffective “only if it’s late” rubbish as per Auckland buses – and much easier to implement. They’re surprisingly fast too. Generally, trams only give way to other trams where the three lines cross. They do share some of their route with bicycles but the two do get on – bikes usually pull over for, or stay behind the trams.
For a service that didn’t exist just eight years ago, patronage is excellent – they run every six minutes during the day, more often at peak, and are quite packed. We’ve stood almost every time we used them, yet it’s not uncomfortable at all.Last Sunday was Labour Day here and buses replaced the trams – but at least on Line B, they followed the exact same route by driving over the tracks, so you still knew where to get on.
The trams are arranged as three lines that go from one end of the city to the other via the CBD. None of them terminate in the CBD itself.
The city centre streets have been returned to pedestrians after the obvious failure of giving them to cars. Most streets are either shared spaces or restricted vehicle entry – where entry is protected by rising bollards and only authorized service vehicles and bikes can enter. The city thrives – Rue Ste Catherine is a bustling strip mall with amazing shopping, and there are cafes and wine bars everywhere.
You simply couldn’t efficiently get this many people into the city centre by using just cars – there wouldn’t be room to put them anywhere. The tram system successfully supports a lively city.
Cycle lanes and cycleways are usually two-way, and are separated from the road by at least a rounded kerb, sometimes to the side of the road, sometimes in the middle. Bus lanes are also separated by a rounded kerb which makes their separation obvious and difficult to “accidentally” cross.
Articulated buses are also very common here and run all day. I noticed the same in LA when there last week. If they can afford them here in such large numbers and on such narrow streets, I don’t get what makes them so hard in Auckland.
I think trams like this that would additionally be able to be coupled together, able to run in multiple, would suit Auckland’s Northern Busway corridor well, and could cross the current bridge. On that note, given this recent post about Mike Lee calling the second harbour crossing debate a distraction, it should be noted that the Northern Busway has increased the carrying capacity of the Bridge without adding another one. A well-functioning light-rail system could further increase the carrying capacity over the Bridge while further reducing the number of vehicles traveling over it. Light rail along the busway would also allow it to continue to be used by buses during construction and once it is completed. It will also cope with the steep grades of both the bridge and the busway.
Street-centre tram stops work, despite the street width being narrow, and could be easily applied to Dominion Road. Seeing all this working so well is both amazing and frustrating at the same time. I see how well it works and how Auckland could be so much better than it is, if only we’d build things properly. We’re making a start by introducing a few token shared spaces in the CBD here and there, but while the car is allowed to continue to rule the city, and while we’re too afraid to upset “the motorist”, we’ll be doomed to be average.
Processing...
Wonderful post, thanks Andrew, an example of transport investment as a means to transformation and improvement of quality of place…. sigh
Great post….that last shot is how High St should look.
“Arterial roads, so far as I’ve observed, simply don’t exist, and it works.”
Did you get out of the ancient center? Because Google Earth shows a ring motorway, radial motorways, a motorway that runs right along the river in to the center, and a network of arterial roads converging on the city center Place de la Victoire. The network of Boulevards that circle the center put any non-motorway road in Auckland to shame and Avenue Francois Mitterand is a motorway in every aspect except lack of grade separated junctions.
It also shows the population of one million people fit in to a city about 10km across… whereas Auckland must be 50km from top to bottom.
Obi its 63km from Warkworth just to the Auckland CBD. The new super city is closer to 120km north to south.
Wiki says the centre of Bordeaux has 250, 000 people, the 1million is the greater area. So yes no arterials in the centre, just lucky to be old enough to have a centre that was not formed by the car, and that also got through the horror 20th century without half of it being demolished to force the car through. Unlike Auckland, of course. Shows, once again, that the quality of your cityscape is ALL about keeping cars out. We can do it to central AK no problem, just need to get on with it.
However due to Auckland’s geography most of the 60km radius from downtown Auckland would be water.
Warkworth might be part of the super city, but I wouldn’t count it as part of metro Auckland. I think the city runs from the southern edge of Papakura to the northern edge of Albany, but no doubt there are better definitions around.
89 stations – pretty impressive! Nice map here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tramway_Bordeaux.svg
The lines form a triangle in the centre, making sure every line crosses any one of the others (just like the Prague underground system). I love that, you’d only ever have to transfer once…
“Shows, once again, that the quality of your cityscape is ALL about keeping cars out.”
Did you even look at the photos? They don’t just keep cars out – they also keep houses out. The cityscape isn’t all about keeping houses out though, the alternative high-density dwellings need to be attractive like the ones in these photos and what you’ll see in St Kilda or Surrey Hills.
They don’t seem to like trees or bicycles either since most of the photos have pretty much the same number of cars, trees and bikes in them.
Kevyn, I said ‘ALL about keeping the cars out’, not ‘about keeping ALL the cars out’. Concentrate. Auckland is overrun with cars, we must reduce their dominance not banish them completely from everywhere, no one is proposing that.
Patrick, Obviously I did not make myself clear enough for you to understand the critical point. High quality cityscapes are not ALL about keeping cars out because they are MOSTLY about keeping houses out. Once you have a city dominated by apartments and terraces, as most european cities are, especially with no free on street parking, then cars will naturally disappear from the city as there is no need for them. You will probably still have demand for car rental agencies and perhaps car storage on the city periphery.
I presume you haven’t been to St Kilda or Surrey Hills otherwise you would have recognised that these are parts of Sydney and Melbourne that look very similar to Bordeaux and many American innersuburbs. That we have none of those sorts of residential areas in any of our towns or cities explains why we have had to have the most car fixated urban transport in the entire developed world for the last 100 years or more.
I don’t entirely disagree, although you still put the cart before the horse. The extreme auto dependency of Auckland is the result of policy decisions not habitation structures. The extreme privilege accorded to car movement and the failure to provide quality alternative to private car use is still the biggest driver of urban form in Auckland. A city with the most extreme severance issues caused by the isolation of the CBD from even its inner dormitory suburbs by a vast roiling State Highway. And yes, less free on-street parking could be a good controller of this, a way of pricing parking more realistically.
By the way St Kilda does not look like Bordeaux, in fact Melbourne suburbs are a lot more like Auckland with mostly detached buildings or low rise terrace houses unlike Bordeux’s higher rise attached mixed use buildings. Where it is similar is in having a tram system, like Auckland once did, and which drove the form of the suburbs that still retain good scale and amenity and therefore high value. My point is, and I stand by it, sort the transit priorities and the urban form will follow. Obviously planning regulations etc can help or hinder this but all roads [excuse the pun] lead from transport decisions.
By concentrating on fixing Auckland’s transport imbalance we will go a long way to improving pretty much everything else that’s wrong; poor air quality, poor interconnection, poor accessibility, dreary streetscapes, poor land use, low value property, and so on….. The good news is that there is money in the transport sector that if only it was well directed could go a long way to effecting this transformation.
Ps love your tone.
Just got back to some Internet now after refusing to pay £5 per hour for it in London. Sorry Obi, I did dee outer Bordeaux but it was after sending in the guest post.
We stayed in Talence which distance wise would be equivalent, I guess, to Balmoral (but with nothing like Balmoral Rd!)
The arterials are further out and they do get congested during the peak, but not anywhere near as bad as Auckland. The arterials (and the motorways) don’t really serve the inner city.
Patrick, Nothing I say will convince you that the cause and effect is suburban housing subsidies leading to car-centric transport investment, and to its most extreme in New Zealand, but maybe this book might:
A home of one’s own : housing policy in Sweden and New Zealand from the 1840s to the 1990s / Alexander Davidson.
It was the terraced housing that I was alluding because, for most people making their first trip away from New Zealand, it is totally unlike anything they will have seen before. Admittedly they don’t have the ground floor shops and are really more British industrial revolution than traditional european city but the impact on transport needs and on attitudes of what is normal and acceptable urban living is huge.
Kevyn I think we are looking at the same thing through different ends of the telescope. But the thing is we’ve got it [poor urban form], what can we do? My answer, as above, sort the transit model and people will move to densify willingly as it will be in their interest, so:
My point is, and I stand by it, sort the transit priorities and the urban form will follow. Obviously planning regulations etc can help or hinder this but all roads [excuse the pun] lead from transport decisions.
By concentrating on fixing Auckland’s transport imbalance we will go a long way to improving pretty much everything else that’s wrong; poor air quality, poor interconnection, poor accessibility, dreary streetscapes, poor land use, low value property, and so on….. The good news is that there is money in the transport sector that if only it was well directed could go a long way to effecting this transformation.
still leaves a big issue of what to do with the vast lowish density residential areas that make up most of Auckland.
We can do alot with a good public transport system, especially one that is poly-centric, ie not just serving CBD trips.
I think land use and urban form of destination points is actually more important than residential land use.
For example even if the North Shore was higher density the urban form of Albany, and North Shore (such as William Pickering Dr and Apollo) is terrible. Therefore PT use wouldn’t be that much improved and that PT would be inefficient.