In NZ the regulations are know as Austroads.
The video itself reminds me very much of this post (go and read the entire thing).
After graduating from college with a civil engineering degree, I found myself working in my home town for a local engineering firm doing mostly municipal engineering (roads, sewer pipe, water pipe, stormwater). A fair percentage of my time was spent convincing people that, when it came to their road, I knew more than they did.
And of course I should know more. First, I had a technical degree from a top university. Second, I was in a path towards getting a state license (at the time I was an Engineer in Training, the four-year “apprenticeship” required to become a fully licensed Professional Engineer), which required me to pass a pretty tough test just to get started and another, more difficult, exam to conclude. Third, I was in a profession that is one of the oldest and most respected in human history, responsible for some of the greatest achievements of mankind. Fourth – and most important – I had books and books of standards to follow.
A book of standards to an engineer is better than a bible to a priest. All you have to do is to rely on the standards. Back in college I was told a story about how, in WW II, some Jewish engineers in hiding had run thousands of tedious tests on asphalt, just to produce these graphs that we still use today. Some of our craft descends from Roman engineers who did all of this a couple of millennia ago. How could I be wrong with literally thousands of years of professional practice on my side?
And, more to the point, what business would I — let alone a property owner on a project I was working on – have in questioning the way things were done? Of course the people who wrote the standards knew better than we did. That is why they wrote the standard.
Processing...
Love it Matt. Some road engineers have moved on and have realised that people want communities, walkability and to be able to ride a bike safely. The rest a dinosaurs from a different age. Get out of the way. SF, I suggest you read the post that Matt linked to. Written by a roading engineer. An enlightened one.
That was quick 🙂
Help is available to the unreformed – http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/22/confessions-of-a-recovering-engineer.html
I got the link to that through this story at NPR. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/08/what-happens-when-town-puts-people-cars/6600/
“Improvement.” “Upgrade.” “Level of Service.” The traffic engineering profession is full of buzzwords laden with meaning — and, for the most part, the embedded meaning is something to the effect of “cars are king.”
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/06/03/attacking-the-language-bias-in-transportation-engineering/
Actually, all those words are pretty neutral. It is the ASSUMPTION what they should lead to in real life that is laden with inertia of the 50s and 60s…
I mean, level of service is a pretty awesome concept when applied to pedestrians and cyclists, for example.
Yet for Cycle Action Auckland, I have been trying – and failing, despite various attempts – to get AT and NZTA to give me the Level of Service for the planned signalised crossings of the Grafton Gully Cycleway. Despite the fact that checking for CAR level of service is one of the first things that gets done whenever a new concept layout is tested at any signals, it seems that it is …still too early… to give me anything about the LOS of the ped/cycle crossing signals. I am certainly wondering whether they will provide anything before they build it (or even afterwards…)
It’s this bit that really hit me:
RoNs anyone?
“We go to enormous expense to save ourselves small increments of driving time”
Which reminds me of an airport taxi driver interviewed in the NZ Herald a few weeks after the SH20A motorway spur was opened. He had been asked what difference the new road made to city-airport drive times and said that a journey that used to take around 45 minutes now took about 40.
I believe that the upgrade cost $45m or thereabouts. I still feel that was a lot of money to spend for a mere five minute time saving.
don’t worry. Soon it will be 6 lanes to the airport. Yippeeeee
‘dripping with sarcasm’ in case anyone was confused 🙂
I would consider $45mil for 5 minutes pretty good. There aren’t that many transport projects (both rail & road that can beat that) on a minute per $mil setting.
9million per minute. Skypath will be about 330,000 a minute, cheaper by a factor of 30.
I agree with you that the Skypath is a great project but many of the larger projects, both road & rail don’t perform very well.
Northern Busway, 300m for a hlaf hour saving on the bus?
AMETI is probably likely to be a half hour as well on the bus and the busway for that was 300m.
meh, US /= NZ.
What Mr Marohn wrote bears less resemblance to what is taught at university in this country. NZ engineers put safety above other things like capacity and efficiency because of the social cost of accidents that we have to pay for collectively. The problem is that engineers completely ignore livability which has far less to do with safety or efficiency and more to do with subjective opinions. some people want walkable communities others like myself couldn’t care less as long as we don’t pay more rates and a minority are opposed for some strange reason.council is beholden to ratepayers and as long as motorists are the most vocal group then council,engineers and consultants will deliver that biased result. change can only really come when people get vocal.
If Engineers put safety above other concerns why aren’t they all clamouring for lower speed limits?
Because the safety part of it is mostly about people in cars. 30km/h should be the new 50 km/h. ie. the base is 30km/h and then speed limits can be set above that based on circumstances.
Because speeds in NZ are based on what the cars actually drive at, not on what the safe driving speed should be. The basis being that if we give motorists a nice straight road and ask them to drive at 30km/h, none of them will, so why bother? Otherwise it will reduce respect for the law. (And yet we still enforce recreational drug laws in this country. Where is the consistency?)
That is how it was explained to me by a traffic engineer when I asked why we cant just ask for a 30km/h road for the cycling/walking boulevard I am working on. You need to slow the traffic and then, once the traffic speed is down, you can lower the limit. Of course if you ask for traffic calming you have a real battle because the speed limit is 50 km/h so why are you slowing motorists? Classic catch 22.
really despair for this country sometimes. When’s the revolution again?
“If Engineers put safety above other concerns”
They don’t.
In my experience, having worked as a traffic engineer in New Zealand for over 8 years, the first concern is “How can we get as much car traffic through as possible?”.
The slightly (but only slightly) more enlightened engineers go “How can we improve other modes without making it WORSE for car traffic.”
I am not saying that they ignore road safety. But “capacity” for cars is almost treated as the background assumption, like gravity. It’s something you have to provide for, and then you can look at what else you do.
That is interesting because I have been working with CAA to get a traffic calming project done in the Bayswater area. We will be asking for traffic calming to encourage lower speeds on the road of 30-40km/h. Currently drivers are regularly getting up to 70-80 km/h. The road is 2.7kms so the difference in time is 5 mins 30 secs at 30km/h against 3 mins 30 secs at 50 km/h (the posted speed limit). We can expect massive push back from NZTA and the local residents. Clearly 2 mins of drive time is worth more than the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, many of whom are school children.
As part of getting support for that project, I spoke to the principal of a local school who told me that he had been asking for improvements from the old ARTA to the Bayswater Ave/Lake Road intersection area for 8 years (yes EIGHT YEARS). These were pretty modest changes involving some paint to discourage motorists entering the intersection. He had been consistently told that the measures he wanted were not feasible as they would impede traffic and school childrens’ safety be damned.
This is a school that has been signed up to TravelWise and really encourages cycling and walking. He wanted to protect school children (not bunches of lycra clad cyclists) cycling and walking to school. He said TravelWise is a joke and that all they want is a tick on a survey box and then you never see them again. The disgust and frustration in his voice was palpable. That is the reality on the ground.
In the experience of anyone trying to get measures that will increase safety and calm traffic, the emphasise seems to be very much on capacity and efficiency and safety (even of children) is a long way behind. I think when you say safety, you really mean the safety of motorists. I am sure what you are saying is what traffic engineers are told in theory but in practise the emphasise seems to be to have cars driving as fast as possible in all circumstances with very few exceptions.
yes.
Ari you’re more or less correct to say that NZ engineers put the safety of vehicles ahead of capacity/efficiency for vehicles.
But this does not mean that NZ Engineers put the safety of pedestrians, bus users, or cyclists ahead of vehicle capacity/efficiency. In my experience the NZ hierarchy looks like this:
1. Vehicle safety
2. Vehicle efficiency
3. Safety of all other modes
4. Efficiency of other modes
Amen – it is a disgrace and has to change.
With “cost” normally coming between 3 and 4, although often it comes before cycle safety too. Not to mention the safety of any pedestrians who aren’t patient enough to take the long circuitous “safe” routes provided.
Stu I agree the hierarchy is wrong and not providing for a liveable environment. And also agree now is the time to turn this thing upside down. Time for a new Auckroads 101. Peds, Cycle, Buses, Trucks. then cars. We need a Mayoral and Transport Minister mandate. Civil/Roading Engineer’s are just instruments of what is wanted. I’d be the first to mark large vehicle symbols on the left lane of the motorway as can see that would change things big time, at the sametime arterials, then optimisation of strategic collector roads.
When I worked in the same building as a large civil/roading engineering firm, you could tell the guys who worked for them by the fact that they wore brown trousers and shoes…
Another anecdote from Welly: Centennial Highway, that infamous section of SH1 between Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki. For any who don’t know it, it is a narrow 2-lane stretch of road which hugs the coastline for several kilometres and achieved its fame due to a high number of fatal accidents. Once upon a time the open-road (100Km/h) speed limit applied, and accidents were indeed frequent, although not all were speed-related. Anyway, the interesting thing was the response of the then Transit New Zealand to calls to reduce the limit to 80K. “Doing this would be counter-productive as it would be very hard to police and would bring the law into disrepute” (my paraphrase of the words of a TNZ spokesman). So for several more years, nothing changed and the casualty rate remained high.
A significant factor was that many “ordinary” motorists considered that 100Km/h on this curvy road was indeed too fast. Not unreasonable given that the stretch was garishly signposted “Accident Area!”. So the number of drivers who would have objected to a lower speed limit and would have been prepared to break the law was probably quite small. Yet it was this minority who received all the consideration.
Eventually, a package of improvements was implemented including 1) removing passing lanes, 2) installing a wire-rope median barrier, 3) installing a static speed-camera and 4) LOWERING THE SPEED LIMIT TO 80K! The safety record of this stretch of road imrpoved almost overnight, and traffic now flows smoothly at a steady 80K. So the assertion that “you can’t impose lower speed limits because motorists won’t observe them” in this case was patently untrue.
And a similar story can be told of the Ngauranga Gorge, closer in to Wellington
that’s an interesting example and not completely unusual. Lower traffc speeds and simpler road network configurations can often lead to better flow and hence higher capacity, as well as benefit pedestrians.
It’s like when they close passing lanes on holiday weekends. Traffic flows, not quickly, but it flows better than when drivers are trying to speed up and merge. Less grumpy drivers as well.
The duller end of the spectrum always make me think of these great lines:
Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He’s like a detuned radio
Always grumpy at engineers, Huh.
Grumpy at any ideology that overvalues the quantifiable over the qualitative.
Or, to put it another way; whenever the important and useful technical tools of measuring and counting dominate policy for the built environment we get a crap outcome.
I don’t blame traffic engineers for making our cities so shitty, I blame the society that handed over placemaking to this group, who, in fairness, probably still have no idea that that’s what they’re doing. They’re just trying to keep the traffic moving. Everything else is collateral damage.
Give engineers a different task, principally not to over-privilege vehicle needs, and they’ll do that just as well, and sometimes brilliantly. The great engineers throughout history were absolute geniuses, if only we had a system that encouraged more creativity and holistic thinking from this important group….
Old school highway engineers (and unreformed mayors and councillors) must take the rise of the quality urbanism/public transport/active transport blogosphere as a bit of worrying social development. They must rue the democratisation of development, where anyone can have a say (well except for one cranky contributor, hey, hey). Fancy some nobodies questioning public and private spending and analysing and opining on the consequences of that spending who don’t have a very narrow set of interests, nor even, heavens forbid, a profit motive. How surprising that they don’t get to define best practice, but all of these unwashed nobodies and activists do. Some of these goddamn hippies even don’t like automobiles. They talk about a sense of place, and quality places, and don’t they know their place is really just to shut up and be grateful.
I for one am thankful for the interwebs. (Except for what it has done to old school computer programmers like me).
“as a bit of worrying social development”
Cue “Do you want public transport and sustainability, or do you want Western Civilisation?”-type questions as during the recent CFN presentation. At best these hardcore old-school people see such aspects as idealistic and expensive fluff – at worst, as a clear danger for our economy and way of life.
It makes one wonder why people who have so much get so greedy about it – it is like richer people (i.e. those who haven’t lived on a budget, let alone starved for their whole lives). They seem the ones most determined to fight tooth and claw against anything that might make them roll in even slightly less money or privilege. Similarly, in those cities where the cars are treated the most generously, the cries of pain at the slightest reduction of that convenience are the loudest. Entitlement writ large.
While you may not like it, the reality is that most transport nowadays is on cars & most people don’t particularly mind it. After all most of our new suburbs are car orientated & people are happy to buy those houses up.
Regardless, I don’t think there’s any reason that we can’t have both postmodern suburbs & what you call quality urbanism. You may have a dislike of the ‘burbs’ but I don’t think that entitles you to banish them,
Balance is all we want. It’s all out of whack at the moment. But the trend is all in the right direction so we will get there.
As for what is being a perfect expression of everybody’s choice; that is a poor argument because people cannot choose what isn’t there. Adding more variety to Auckland’s fabric is an important aim too.
No need to fret; driving amenity and detached houses will still be the dominant forms, simply because they are already so dominant.
” After all most of our new suburbs are car orientated & people are happy to buy those houses up.”
Sorry what are the average land prices in Ponsonby and Dannemora?
based on my own person experience I can confirm that they also wear pink woollen vests.
What most of you guys likely don’t know is that geometric road designers these days like myself are more like architects than engineers.
The common conception, as shown in the video and the first sentence of the post people think we are governed by a fixed set of rules, however as given by the name “Guide to Road Design” these are guidelines which a great level of subjectivity is required to be applied.
In regards to the appearance of a road a quick read through the guidelines shows that they are all about form and place with about 20 pages of the first part going on about alignment and fitting the terrain.
In most cases what gets provided on a road is controlled by town planners and transport planners with us road designers being left with a very defined layout that can’t even fit in the space provided yet we need to make it safe and able to meet the objectives our clients demand. Pretty much it’s like telling your architect to design a blank box and then complaining that they designed you a blank box.
If you want to know what road designers do when they have a bit more freedom you can look at the new section of glenfield road by wairau road or the hobsonville deviation including both of the pedestrain bridges, the colour of the bridges and the noise walls was the architects however. I do actually quite like their choice.
I can confirm however that none of us wear woolen vests let alone pink ones.
Of course as with most things human nature will make the less ethical of us think the guidelines are there to be ignored and so the various road controlling authorities need to set minimums which designers can’t go past without approval.
Of course just like minimum parking requirements if nobody challenges these or the person making the approvals treats them as a hard in fast rule you can get adverse results. Interestingly I found that the rules for toilets dictate that men get 60% more than woman which explains why there are always queues outside the woman’s toilets. A left over rule from the 60s housewife days I suspect.
Tellingly what you think an architect is actually describes the role of a draughtsman. No idea. Design is not about following guidelines. Perfect description of the problem.
You two should get a room.
Well I’m a chartered roading/civil engineer with 26 years studying/designing/building roads, retirement village infrastructure with interconnected paths, bridges with walkways underneath (or allowance later in 2 cases) -built 3 + 3 at scheme stage , arterial roads with cycle lanes, and now trying to get Flat Bush multi-modal arterial funding at the moment . Plus 100% supportive of the congestion free network in fact recommending we remark now with the overall priority peds, cyclists, buses, trucks then cars. I cycle in fact my daughters was an age group top ten triathlete .Not sure generalisation always works. But can take a joke and hope to enjoy a beer with you whatever profession you are once we get the buses moving for real.
Another confessional:
http://sdapa.org/go/transportation-planner-as-visionary-a-call-to-action-for-a-new-paradigm/