In the past the use of our streets wasn’t so defined as it is today. Sure there were footpaths however people, cars, trams and even horse drawn carts all had equal access to the road. The image below of Queen St in 1922 shows this well, after all can you imagine the reaction you would get today if a group of guys decided to stop for a chat in one of the traffic lanes on Queen St.
But over time we went from this and turned over as much of our streets as possible to the movement of cars. For the reason why, I believe the answer lies partly in human nature and partly in the saying “you can only manage what you can measure”. For the former the car is meant to represent freedom, the ability to go where you want and when you want so I doubt there is a single person who gets behind the wheel of a car and enjoys it when they held up as it goes against the very dream upon which cars were sold to us on.
As more and more people took to driving, there became increasing problems with congestion. In an attempt to solve that congestion traffic engineers looked at ways of increasing the amount of road space available, taking over road space that was once used by everyone and devoting it solely to the movement of vehicles. I believe that one of the key ways they were able to do this is because they realised how important it was to count traffic. The engineers were able to fairly accurately point out just how much traffic there was and how fast it was growing. Over time the movement of as many vehicles as possible became the most important aspect and justification for nibbling away at the pedestrian environment for which there was no such usage information.
But why was there no information about the pedestrian environment? I suspect there are two reasons. The first being that we forgot that a street isn’t just a place for movement from A to B but that it is a place for interaction and activity. In effect we took it for granted that we could change the quality of it but that the use of it would stay the same. We also didn’t have any way to measure the pedestrian use of a street. In fact up until recently the only way to really get a feeling for how many people using a street was to hire a whole bunch of people and have them manually count every single person. As you can imagine that isn’t a cheap proposition so it can only be done very infrequently which means counts are subject to issues like weather, special events or other influences.
Thankfully that is now starting to change. Just over a year ago, Heart of The City (HoTC) in conjunction with the Auckland Council started installing automatic pedestrian counters in various locations throughout the city. Here is the press release from the time.
We are excited to announce that we are taking real steps towards understanding how people use the Auckland City Centre at all times of the day with our new high tech counting equipment. The new 24/7 monitoring system charts pedestrian numbers and provides meaningful performance data to assist property owners and retailers and track the impact of events and other activities that occur in the city.
The previous ‘snapshot’ system provided data gathered on a Wednesday in mid-October every year – rain, hail or shine. Of course the weather, or road works or a cruise ship or even a blockbuster sale all had huge impacts on the results. but a lot can happen over a year in such a vibrant place like the City Centre, so getting better data was essential.
With this new technology, we now have automated pedestrian counts on a 24/7 basis, which enables us to better understand the pedestrian numbers at any time or day of the year, and compare current and long term trends in the City Centre.
Understanding pedestrian counts is also key determinant for setting rental values, as well assisting businesses in determining where they want to locate, and even their opening hours.
On Saturday 17 March when the city centre hosted both the Volvo Ocean Race and St Patrick’s Day celebration, pedestrian numbers at the bottom of Queen Street increased by 63% on the previous four Saturdays.
Four locations in the City Centre have the automated counting technology – three in Queen Street and one in High Street. The data is instantly sent back over the 3G network to a server at HOTCity offices, where ‘real time reports’ can be downloaded over the web at any time. Heart of the City members will be the first to see the counts.
One of the important ways of keeping a tab on a city centre’s progress is to monitor and report on pedestrian foot traffic. The system is already proving it’s worth and we hope, in partnership with others, to be able to expand the number of locations over time to cover the whole City Centre.
HoTC are able to get some very detailed data from these devices and since that press release have added three more sites to the network. They eventually intend to have 15 of them scattered around the city centre and they have been publishing a summary of the data collected on their website. The current locations are:
One of the things I like about the summary data provided is that HoTC show the average Weekday, Saturday, Sunday and Public Holiday counts which means that the numbers aren’t subject to the changes in the calendar like we have with the PT stats. Here are the average weekday pedestrian counts (excluding public holidays).
This shows quite nicely just how many more pedestrians are walking up and down Queen St every day compared to the other streets in the CBD. The numbers suggest that depending on which part of Queen St you look at, pedestrian volumes tend to range from 45,000-60,000 people per day. It is also surprising that Darby St seems to have better pedestrian volumes than High St – although admittedly it is compared to the worst end of High St. Unfortunately we can’t compare these Queen St pedestrian volumes with vehicle numbers as the last traffic count that I can find for it was done in 2004 which was before the upgrade which delivered significant improvements to pedestrian priority. Back then there were around 20,000 vehicles per day using the road but I suspect it is much less now.
Here are the volumes for Saturdays
And here are Sundays.
I have left out Public Holidays as they are obviously a bit more sporadic.
Overall this is a great development and I hope we eventually see more around not just the CBD but in other areas too. It’s just a shame that we didn’t have these counters sooner, how great would have been great to be able to see the impact that the various upgrades have had?
I have been keeping an eye on these numbers for a while and post them more regularly from on.
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‘Queen St you look at, pedestrian volumes tend to range from 45,000-60,000 people per day’
Looks more like 25,000 to 35,000 to me unless I’m reading it wrong.
That’s one side of the road.
Yep the counters are just on one side of the road so roughly double those figures.
Queen St ped traffic is fairly asymmentrical though, noticeably more on the eastern side than the west (although both still very busy).
Great post, covers a really important reason why pedestrians get second rate treatment. Data is power in highway design.
I am wondering if there is scope for expanding this, perhaps through a uni research project? Can someone come up with a cheap DIY counter by which much larger areas could be surveyed? Something like the DIY traffic counter,
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/08/next-generation-diy-urbanism-projects-will-be-so-much-cooler-parklets/3078/
Unfortunately, the increasing use of quantifying pedestrians is also used as justification for not improving their facilities where numbers tend to be low. We’ve all heard some version of, ‘Well, there aren’t very many pedestrians in this area so why are we bothering to [fill in blank]?’ Very frustrating, but engineers simply can’t help themselves. In such cases, you either have to justify improved pedestrian investment with dicey utilisation forecasts or do so simply on strategic grounds. Justifying incrased car-related infrastructure investment based primarily on strategic rather than analyitical analyses is something the Government does as a matter of policy. However, would two wrongs make a right? Curious to know your thoughts.
Quite. After eighty odd years of redesignating the streets for cars, it’s amazing that there are any pedestrians left in Auckland.
And of course the very absence of pedestrian can also be a sign that investment is required to fix whatever is keeping them away…
But TimR above is right, numbers are persuasive in the unimaginative ‘Predict (or measure) and Provide’ school of public works.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10884174
SPAM
This is only just happening now?
I thought I read earlier that Auckland had an adaptive traffic light system. How did this system dynamically change crossing times before if they weren’t keeping track of how many pedestrians there were crossing intersections.
I think you’ll find any adaption is based on and entirely for vehicle traffic only.
In fact it is worse than that: on Queen St some crossings have inverted ‘adaption’ rules whereby lower traffic volumes lead to a halving of the Barnes dance for pedestrians and a greater portion of time given to cars. Yay!
Traffic light phasing at the intersection of New North and Blockhouse Bay Roads was changed last night. It appears that pedestrian crossing times have been reduced in order to facilitate the passage of more cars, faster, while increasing the level of risk for pedestrians. AT’s rationale is that pedestrian numbers are insignificant at this crossing; an example, I guess, of an ex post facto argument. Another example of AT continuing to marginalise Auckland pedestrians; it’s just that the focus has now shifted from the CBD to the suburbs.
crossing times reduced? that is highly unlikely. Engineers are sticklers for safety requirements. can you clarify?
I’ve yet to do the timings (it was pissing down while I was waiting, so I couldn’t use the stopwatch function on my phone) but the red arrow controlling left hand turns from New North Road turned green during the blinking red man phase which didn’t happen before. So the 12 secs allowed for pedestrians to cross Blockhouse Bay Road (in a 3-5 minute cycle) would appear to have been reduced to about 8 secs. Needless to say a left turning vehicle from New North Road decided to take this new found opportunity deliver a close encounter with a more than slightly pissed off pedestrian but, of course, to an AT traffic engineer that’s just a behavioural issue, nothing whatsoever to do with the design of the intersection.
Are you saying the red arrow went out while the red man was flashing or that the green arrow came on while red man was flashing? The later would be insane.
Yes, the green arrow comes on while the red man is flashing; and, yes, it is insane, particularly since change of phasing only occurred yesterday at a time when AT is supposed to be encouraging walking, etc. Serendipitously, I encountered the traffic engineer who was designing this particular ‘improvement’ as he was gloating over his work a couple of weeks back. He stated he wasn’t against improving pedestrian facilities per se; he’d worked on some pedestrian improvements in the CBD; but you’d have a hard time convincing AT to do anything out here [in the sticks] because there weren’t the numbers of pedestrians. Arguments as to why there were apparently deficient numbers of pedestrians and why it was important to ensure the safety of the few remaining pedestrians (including large numbers of risk taking school students) evidently fell on deaf ears. Why does this not surprise me?
Sorry to bang on about this but I’ve now gathered some times: The green man cycle lasts for 6 seconds which is matched by the red arrow. After 6 seconds the red man flashes for a further 6 seconds and then turns blank. The green arrow starts simultaneously with the flashing red man. For an able bodied person, Blockhouse Bay Road takes approximately 25 seconds to cross at a brisk pace. By the time anyone crossing from the St Jude Street side of Blockhouse Bay Road gets to the other side there is no indication to motorists turning from New North Road that a pedestrian may still be crossing. In the ten minutes I observed the crossing I saw to motor vehicles nearly hit two pedestrians. I note that the new phasing has doubled the time available for motorists turning left from New North Road. So much for pedestrian safety let alone convenience.
Can you name this engineer? Sounds like an idiot if the above is true.
Question: could he or AT be charged if a pedestrian is injured there now, if the change was made knowing there is increased danger?
Christopher, what you are suggesting is not possible. Legally or otherwise. The green arrow cannot come up until the red man has stopped flashing. left turners need to give way until such time. is this the crossing to the North or south?
Also, last I heard Queen street vehicle volumes are about 20k a day total both ways near the south end and less near the north end.