The NZ Herald reports that final tweaks are being made to the Victoria Park flyover this week, to enable from next Monday its use for four lanes of southbound traffic.
Drivers are being urged to be on their guard around works associated with Auckland’s Victoria Park $406 million motorway tunnel project, which will involve road closures in coming days.
Victoria St West will be reduced to one lane in each direction from today until Wednesday, and the lower section of Franklin Rd will close for resurfacing for two days from tomorrow.
All southbound motorway lanes between Fanshawe St and Hobson St will close for paving work tonight.
The motorway’s northbound carriageway will have reduced capacity through St Marys Bay at night while a cable is installed for the harbour bridge’s moveable lane barrier to be extended to the northern end of the new tunnel.
It will be used to align traffic emerging from the one-way tunnel with a widened surface motorway, once a third northbound lane is opened through the 450m structure in March, marking the project’s completion.
The project’s implementation has been a bit of a disaster so far, with the opening of the first two northbound lanes in the tunnel leading to hugely greater congestion than we had before – even though it was the same number of lanes. This has led to discussion about whether the Wellington Street onramp should be reopened at all – even once the third northbound lane has been put in place. It would be interesting to know how much the rebuild of the Wellington Street onramp has cost (as there are some pretty significant retaining walls).
Theoretically, the two additional southbound lanes should make the biggest difference out of the entire Victoria Park Tunnel project. Theoretically we should see greatly reduced queuing on the harbour bridge during the morning peak in the outside two lanes – as that traffic will be able to spread across four different lanes and split more cleanly into vehicles heading towards SH16 (Port or West) and traffic continuing further south. I say theoretically because I have been surprised at how unexpectedly badly the opening of projects like the tunnel and the Manukau Connection have gone in recent times, and you just don’t know what confusion there might be in the new lane layouts. Though one would imagine that should sort itself out.
I’m waiting with greatest curiosity to see how the supposed “Rapid Transit Network” is provided through St Mary’s Bay between the harbour bridge and Fanshawe Street. After all, that’s meant to be a critical part of the Northern Busway.
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One observable change that the closure of the Welly St on ramp has lead to is less pressure at the Nelson-Pitt Sts motorway interchange in the afternoon peak… as Shore bojnd commuters has not headed ip that way. Has Fanshaw St suffered as a result I wonder?
I’m not sure about Fanshawe, but Victoria & Wellesley streets headed west in the PM peak definitely have seemed busier and more congested than when Wellington St was open.
Well it was nuts to send cars up to the same nightmare intersection as every other departing commuter only to get them back down to the shore [and then The Shore] again, I suspect this change will stay.
On another matter I had to drive to Leigh today and indeed, holiday snafu at Warkworth: two things to say about this: 1. The town needs a bypass. and 2. Anyone who claims that the term Holiday Highway is inaccurate is mistaken, it’s got nothing to do with Northland’s economy and everything about speeding Aucklanders to their East Coast holdings [mostly still within the AK region], it is only really a problem at this time of the year. A bypass plus an upgrade of the scarier bits of SH1 would speed all commercial traffic from Northland to Ak that goes through here…. So just to be clear the Holiday Highway cannot transform Northland’s output in any way. Poor investment.
Meantime, what not to do, or how to destroy a city: a great read from LA: http://www.lamag.com/features/Story.aspx?ID=1568281
Great article- 2 highlights-
Folks on the side streets off Melrose getting property tax rebates. That could become popular round here..
And the digital systems to make sure parking operators aren’t ripping off the city. I wonder how much money our Singaporean friends are shipping out of the country every week?
Drove northwards through the tunnel and southwards over the flyover on Sunday afternoon. A few observations: the tunnel is very utilitarian, particularly the ceiling – it looks unfinished, with exposed ducting and extractor fans. Quite different to how I recall the Lyttelton road tunnel and Wellington’s Terrace tunnel to be. And NZTA can only blame themselves for some of the traffic issues with the flyover re-configuration – leaving the bridge driving south, the overhead gantries were clearly indicating vehicles wanting to continue on SH1 should use the two right hand lanes, yet at the foot of the flyover it suddenly became clear that only the far right lane was available, with the other lane coned off. Cue very quick and late lane change (after checking the lane was clear). Luckily traffic was light at the time and I was only traveling at 70 km/h as per the signposted speed limit (I seemed to the only person who had seen those signs…).
As the signs indicate, the two right hand lanes allow for traffic continuing south. The farthest lane allows ONLY for traffic heading south, but the lane just outside of that allows for traffic heading for Cook St, SH16, and further south.
Drove this today, there is definitely room for a permanent buslane each way along the new uber-wider St Mary’s Bay section… doubt they’ve got the balls to do anything on the bridge itself. But even that bit if properly integrated with Fanshaw St will be a big improvement. I guess sitting in a car and watching a bus speed along will lead to more angry North Shorers clamoring for even that bit of privilege to be annexed… all wrong; bus users are supposed to be losers
@Patrick – Maybe for 2012 you could take those well balanced sacks of potatoes off your shoulders and look at the world in a different light.
The reality is the North Shore busway can not cope with many more people, as the users I work with, who by your definition are losers, get to their stops at 7.15 to make sure they can get a park and a seat. What is needed is investment in the infrastructure to the North, and then when the second crossing is built address the issue of the bridge.
Ejtma2003, you’ve got to be kidding right?! Are you honestly suggesting that the only people who can use the busway are the ones who park their cars at the station? FYI there are only 920 park and ride parks at the stations, but around 18,000 people use the busway each day on a busy weekday. Currently less than 10% of busway users park and ride, the vast majority catch a bus! So the actual reality is that parking is almost inconsequential to the busway, there is plenty of bus capacity left on the busway proper, and plenty of potential for bus patronage growth to utilise it. The real constraint is the point where the busway stops and buses have to join the motorway over the bridge, through st Mary’s and on to Fanshawe. That section will reach capacity well before the Shoreside busway does
@nick r
Not at all, what I was saying, with probably too few words is exactly what you have said is that the capacity of the busway is limited by its weakest point, which is the bridge. Given a bus lane will open from the bridge to Fanshaw Street that will help, but capacity is limited by the number of buses the CBD can handle, as well as Fanshaw street it self.
As an aside, if they were to expand the park and ride, the peaks would smooth out, which would help with the capacity issue.
$406 million for what? – The current configuration has only two southbound lanes – which is in effect, what we had before. The “additional” two lanes have been wiped out by makeing the original southbound lanes Port and Northwestern only (not a significant % of traffic I’d wager). As for north bound. The single additional lane (which isn’t in effect until march) has been totally mollified by the poor tunnel design, that results in a curving rising unseen exit, meaning motorists have no idea what is around the corner and accordingly almost all break entering the tunnel, causing a tailback effect that makes congestion worse than before. $406 million utterly wasted as far as I’m concerned.
Nice as it is to have another example of wasted motorway half billions-
It is getting kind of expensive.
The problem with adding more general southbound lanes is that there are only two lanes that go between the SH16 exit and the Hobson St onramp. If you were to increase that you need to basically add another lane right through spaghetti junction, which is impossible, or create a brand new bottleneck.
That’s the problem with widening motorways, you just shift the problem downstream.