If you live on the North Shore – especially if you live north of Constellation – then I feel really quite sorry for you tonight. Following the incident this morning involving a police shooting parts of the Northern motorway remain closed. In particular the northbound lanes through the Constellation interchange which means that everyone heading north of that point will need to exit the motorway and cross Constellation Dr before re-joining the motorway again.
Commuters face slow trip home on Auckland’s North Shore
The NZ Transport Agency and Auckland Transport say congestion will be extremely heavy around the Constellation Drive interchange on Auckland’s Northern Motorway (State Highway 1) during this afternoon’s peak.
The Police have closed the northbound lanes of the motorway over Constellation Drive while they continue investigations into a fatal shooting.
The Transport Agency’s Regional Traffic Operations Manager, Kathryn Musgrave, says the northbound section of the motorway from Tristram Avenue has been re-opened only as far as the Constellation Drive interchange. All traffic will be diverted down the off-ramp at the interchange, across Constellation Drive, and on to the northbound on-ramp to rejoin the motorway again.
“There is going to be a lot of pressure on the interchange and the temporary layout we will have in place to try to keep traffic moving,” says Mrs Musgrave. “We’re expecting the afternoon peak to continue a lot longer than normal and people will have to be patient and drive with extreme care while we have this temporary traffic management in place. All road users will be affected – drivers as well as those people who rely on public transport.”
Mrs Musgrave says people do have a number of choices to try to avoid delays. They include leaving for home early to avoid the rush, delaying their journey to avoid the heaviest periods of peak, leaving the motorway earlier and using arterial roads as an alternative, and using the Northwestern (SH16) and Hobsonville/Upper Harbour (SH18) motorways as another alternative route to link up with North Shore arterial roads.
Auckland Transport says traffic will be slower than normal around the Wairau Road, East Coast Bays Road Constellation Drive, and there may be delays to bus services on many areas of the North Shore.
The NZTA, AT and Police are all working together to try to keep traffic flowing as freely as possible and road works on some arterials have finished early to alleviate congestion where possible.
All southbound lanes of the Northern Motorway remain open, but the NZTA appeals to drivers not to slow down as they pass the Police examination scene at Constellation Drive so that traffic continues to flow freely.
Bus users should have a little bit of a reprieve thanks to the busway however that will still have to fight with the rest of the traffic to enter the motorway again at Constellation.
While this is certainly a unique incident it is just one of many that we have been having lately that has caused havoc on our roads. To me it is just another prime example to show that we can’t rely on one mode alone to solve our traffic congestion issues and that means we need alternatives to help provide real travel choice to people of this city. The timing – on the eve of our launch of the Congestion Free Network – is a coincidence but is hopefully a timely reminder of how much it is needed.
I also note that none of the projects announced just over a week ago by the government will do anything to give people on the North Shore real choice. The additional crossing will serve to get a few more people to tail of the backlog a bit faster while the works around the SH1/SH18 interchange and the Greville Interchange only loosely refer to busway improvements.
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If the busway went to Albany it’d be fantastic in this situation.
Nice, use a guy getting shot to try and push PT.
You clearly didn’t read the post correctly. The issue isn’t about a guy getting shot but that we are having an increasing number of incidents that are causing massive network disruptions and the point is that we need alternatives available that are unaffected by disruption on any one mode.
I read the post correctly, and saw it for what it is.
That aside, to you think the premise holds (that additional modes leave us better equipped to deal with disruptive unforeseen events)?
Are you trolling, an anti-public transport advocate, or some lonely soul trawling the internet for things to be offended by? I don’t quite get what your point is – is nobody allowed to talk about transport implications out of respect for the dead? Should I call Newstalk ZB and instruct them to stop talking about traffic in the event of fatal car accidents? Of course not! The circumstances are moot; the point is that a single, isolated incident has heavily disrupted the ability of a massive percentage of Aucklanders to get home. The cause is irrelevant, particularly seeing as the article doesn’t reference the death, the deceased or the circumstances thereof directly at any time. Go over to WhaleOil or the Daily Blog if you’re so eager to take offense, there you might actually find a valid reason to build and torch a straw man.
Wonder what other PC country would keep a motorway closed just so a blessing can be held. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
Ditto KBilly’s comment, and I’m relieved that this shooting at police by a fleeing fugitive was only coincidental to your launch of the Congestion Free Network, not part of the launch. And no, I’m not making light of a tragic incident, however, infrequent events such as storms, signal failures, multiple nose-to-tail collisions, bus breakdowns etc have little relevance to “normal” congestion. What is important is contingency planning and management of such situations when they occur. It would appear that on this occasion the police, AT and NZTA are doing their best to mitigate the problems, and clearly the police must carry out an extremely thorough investigation. I wonder how long it will take for someone to blame the police for the incident.
EDIT: If what Owen says is correct then yes, that’s bizarre [first time I’ve agreed with Owen!].
Why not jonno? After all, AT and PT were lambasted after the RWC fiasco. ‘All PT is shit because of a single event’.
Sorry, but why not what Bryce?
Sorry, I wasn’t clear.
You agreed with KBilly’s comment and then went on to: “however, infrequent events such as storms, signal failures, multiple nose-to-tail collisions, bus breakdowns etc have little relevance to “normal” congestion”
The post was using the congestion caused by the event to make a point about PT, not circumstances of the actual event. What the event is, be it a shooting, a multiple car crash, cows on the motorway or what have you, there will always be unusual events that will have a very negative impact on some form of transport. In my instance, after the RWC opening, PT was described in many different negative ways by the media and various posters on transport blogs when in reality, it was a large, one off event.
I don’t think our points of view are very different here Bryce, except that the RWC problems related to a planned event so were rather different from an unforeseen situation. It just seemed in poor taste to link a single tragic event to support of PT, when a deranged person could just as easily turn up on a train or bus, where the road, train or bus user is already committed to that particular mode. I fully understand that provision of multiple modes can assist in delivering more people from A to B in a given period of time, as can improving the capacity of any given mode. For example, the primary argument for the CRL seems to be an increase in capacity coupled with a reduction in travel time, which is no different in principle from adding a lane or two to a motorway.
I’m sorry but can’t agree with you at all here: questioning the resilience of our infrastructure is a valid point especially when the unexpected happens.
If I understand your point correctly jonno1, then the upgrade to Auckland’s power supply resiliency following the 2006 Otahuhu broken shackle that cut power to the whole city for most of the day, with the resulting chaos ranging from traffic to overflowing sewerage, was unnecessary as it was a one-off event?
Love your spin Andrew. For the benefit of other readers, the Otahuhu outage was a maintenance failure, albeit a very serious one. However, correlation is not causation and the bigger problem was that Transpower and successive governments had deferred capital expenditure for years, hence a massive catch-up. Fortunately Patrick Strange was appointed soon after and has presided over major Transpower improvements since 2007.
Strangely, Patrick also took over Vector after its 1998 debacle, which again was primarily due to lack of timely capital investment. Sure, the tunnel had finally been started, but too late to avoid the meltdown.
Other examples: Auckland’s historic failure to replace its ageing water and wastewater infrastructure (which will hit the fan before long, especially if intensification goes ahead), or indeed to upgrade its PT network…
But the cause of the power cut was, using your words, “an infrequent event” – but an event with a huge domino-effect of consequences. Just like the Northern Motorway closure on Monday (which clogged up most arterials on the Northern Motorway, the Northwestern Motorway, and many arterials near both), just like the Newmarket Viaduct crash in on March 7 caused similar chaos – and note that’s two this year caused by incidents on Auckland’s motorways alone.
The last part of your comment confuses me – it is the “congestion free” PT network – that you now say does need upgrading – that would provide a bypass for the motorways and roads providing an alternative to both regular congestion and “infrequent event” caused gridlock – just the same as the roading network can provide relief if a rail line gets blocked – providing choice and a degree of failover redundancy.
So I can’t work out if we’re agreeing or disagreeing here?
(strike “most arterials on” – typo. Should read “Just like the Northern Motorway closure on Monday which clogged up not only the Northern Motorway, but also the Northwestern Motorway, and many arterials near both…”)
That a relatively minor incident like this (one guy going troppo) can hold up the only transport option available to thousands does seem like a flaw in the system to me. You don’t think it is valiud to comment on that on a transport blog?
Got my info from National Radio news at 5pm.
What do you suggest, Owen? Get the street sweeper in asap to clean up after any death?
I believe the Police need to conduct a thorough investigation immediately. You will see that I only questioned the madness of blessing a motorway.
While I strongly support PT and getting the message out about the fragility of the motorway network and the desperate need for alternatives, I do agree with Jonno and KBilly’s comments regarding the appropriateness of this particular post.
As for the motorway blessing, that does sound rather strange. But I suspect it is best to stay on the good side of Maori tribes who can postpone projects indefinitely via costly RMA consultation.
Why Stop at Pukekohe……(Auckland boundary ?????) with 5000 houses being built in Pokeno, why not go that little further……