A presentation to the Auckland Transport board meeting next week gives some good insight into the thinking going on about an upgrade of Tamaki Drive. The upgrade is mainly focused on improving safety for what is one of the most prominent roads in the city and has been split up into three main workstreams, the intersection with Ngapipi Dr, the section around Kelly Tarlton’s and a boardwalk from Kelly Tarltons to the Millennium Bridge in Mission Bay.
I really like the idea of the boardwalk, it allows us to widen the usable area without having to do any more reclamation. For the intersection of Ngapipi Rd it appears they haven’t decided on the best option yet so two are shown.
Construction on these three projects isn’t due to start until 2014 so there is a while to wait but I think that these initial plans look great. All up AT identifed a total of 238 safety issues with the road and have been working to fix them, they say the remaining 14 high priority issues will be fixed by July 2012.
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For Ngapipi, lights will surely be the best option. Roundabouts don’t tend to work very well for intersection with highly uneven traffic, and very heavy traffic. They also dont work for peds and cyclists so well.
Yeah that roundabout design would be problematic for pedestrians. I imagine getting across there with cars zooming left onto Tamaki Drive will be difficult.
One thing I really like about that concept for Kelly’s bend is that they have both the boardwalk extension and on-street cycle lanes, in addition to the current ‘shared’ footpath. This finally recognises that there are actually three types of non-motorised traffic here:
1) Walkers, beach-goers, promenaders, pram pushers, joggers etc who are going slow on foot, often stopping and sitting.
2) Rollerbladers, recreational cyclists and other ‘wheeled pedestrians’ who are going at a relatively sedate pace, but still much faster than pedestrians.
3) Serious’ cyclists using bikes for transport or sport who are going at traffic speeds and want to be on the roadway.
If the combined boardwalk-footpath was wide enough (much wider than the current three foot wide footpath) you could comfortably combine the first two groups, but I think in any case you will always need some on-street bike lanes of realistic width.
That roundabout would be a maelstrom for cyclists headed westbound. They’d have to cross right turning traffic from the west, followed immediately by right turning traffic from Ngapipi, followed immediately by left turning traffic from Ngapipi. Technically the cyclist would have to yield for the first then have right of way for the second two… but I can’t see it being very safe in practice.
Go with the lights, especially going on what Swan say’s about uneven traffic flows. Also there would be the opportunity for bus advance signals
That roundabout looks like a step backwards – no pedestrian priority at all and takes up a lot more space to boot. The signalised crossing with bus advance lanes would certainly be better.
Kelly Tarltons corner looks nice, how they plan to do the rest of Tamaki Drive will be interesting.
The lights option would be a dramatic improvement. However I don’t agree with having two straight ahead lanes going eastbound as you end up with that stupid situation of people turning the lights into a drag strip to be first into the single lane section – never ideal for cyclists or anyone else.
Yes I agree – I can’t see how the two left turn lanes add much capacity (the right-most left turn lane looks long enough for 2-3 vehicles). I say drop one of them and narrow the footprint of the intersection.
That Kelly Talton’s bend looks very nice, I just wonder if that Pedestrian Crossing at the south end should be under lights control otherwise we get irregular traffic flows and a potential accident in that area. Also – no never mind will ask the Tram question somewhere else.
As for that intersection down at Ngapipi – traffic lights would be the best option safety and traffic movement wise. The roundabout would be damn expensive having to do some harbour infill. As for the layout – needs some work. As the person said above, I dont agree with two straight lanes going east merging into one just on the other side. Double pointless as traffic turning right would render one lane useless and as Trickster said you get the drag racing into the merge. If the intersection is heavy with traffic I wonder if the layout should be similar to the St Luke’s Road/Gt North Road intersection where the straight through lane is physically divided and allowed a straight run through while right turning traffic is controlled by a signal would work. A Pedestrian crossing would allow bikes and walkers to cross the road.
As for city bound with lights – a T3 or bus bay/lane to assist with mass transit movements?
It’s pretty standard for a single lane road to split into two at the lights, then merge back into one again. You’ll see it on any half busy road, it’s just there to give space for traffic to queue at the lights and allow a reasonable amount of cars to clear the intersection in each phase.
I think it goes back to the whole capacity v safety issue that we’ve talked about here for a long time. Those ‘dragstrip’ situations are always unsafe for cyclists. Just because our road planners have implemented them across the city in the past doesn’t necessarily make them right from a safety point of view.
Wait for the retarded Orakei Local Board to kill this off because it takes away a few parking spaces.
Yeah, I find it hard to be excited about any plan along Tamaki Drive because I just assume that any design which removes any carparks or takes space away from cars at any point will meet with so much opposition from the (extremely well resourced) locals that by the time it comes into reality it will be watered down to the point of being useless. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so pessimistic. After all many of the locals are probably recreational cyclists too.
I think sooner or later (probably sooner) this sort of ‘save the carparks at all costs’ viewpoint has to be pushed back. There really is no way anyone can keep justifying a small number of low value car parks as the best use of scarce roadspace in corridors like this.
I would hope that, as a result of the death of Jane Bishop, the priority of safety over convenience will be upheld or we will have learnt nothing from that sad incident at all.
What a fantastic vision ruined by the one glaring elephant in the room which is simply no one dares tell the lycra poseurs to sod off. Until a total seperation of bicyclists and motorised vehicles occurs there will be problems. Sports nuts should head to a velodrome, commuters can easily share the wide paved areas indicated and can utilise the old used to be compulsory bell should an ambler be awestruck by a wayward seagull. What a different picture if the green stripe was fully removed and so many other consequential traffic problems with it.
I think you’ll find recreational motorists and car parking has a much bigger impact on Tamaki Drive than cyclists ever are. Why are you against giving them a metre on each side of the road?
Why should car drivers get priority over other, legitimate users of the road? It’s this insistence that they’re ever-so-bloody-special that’s got us to this shit situation in the first place. Taking the position that anyone who rides other than purely for transport purposes has no place on the road is highly offensive. There’s no joy in a velodrome ride, no scenery, no opportunity to enjoy the company of others. That you think they shouldn’t be on the road says a whole hell of a lot more about you than it does about anyone else.
There’s also the issue that commuter cyclists are perfectly capable of achieving speeds that are dangerous on a shared space. The path along Tamaki Drive is, currently, worthless for cyclists, and I doubt that the plan includes getting the whole thing resurfaced. That means that the only place for commuter cyclists is… the road. The reason that Jane Bishop was on the road was that the footpath was too rough for her to use, and there’s also a serious choke point on the path right outside Kelly Tarlton’s.
As a commuter, I can easily achieve a 24km/h average on my old mtb. Do you really think that would be suitable on the shared path? Or, maybe you think I should just slow down to walking pace?
Are there plans for additional reclamation along any part of Tamaki drive?
I don’t think so, the idea with the boardwalk is that it can be built out over the sea wall to give more width for pedestrians without any actual reclamation.
Once those signals at ngapipi go in, expect massive queues on tamaki at the peak. If I were taking the bus or driving a car, I would oppose traffic signals and go for the round-about. Of course if I were a cyclist or pedestrian I would oppose the round-about because they are so dangerous.
Yes, another BAP (Bad Auckland Planning) moment caught in action.
In the big plan they’re looking at Trams from Britomart all the way to St Heliers.
In the plan for the stretch of road they go along- no tramlines.
Too many plans, or too many planners?
On another topic- OMG! did anyone else see Brownlee on tv3 News having a photo op with Wellington trains?
He said something like “there’s kind of a place for public Transport in Wellington, and even maybe in other parts of the country”.
I nearly fell over…
Here is the clip http://www.3news.co.nz/Old-Wellington-trains-return-to-museum/tabid/309/articleID/247239/Default.aspx