I last updated progress on the Shared Space upgrade on the eastern section of Fort St in April when there was still a lot of work to do but when I visited yesterday, it is looking almost complete. What amazed me was just how much wider this section of street feels compared to the Queen St end. The width does mean it becomes really important for people and businesses to make use of the space otherwise some drivers – especially couriers – may still use the street as a racecourse and/or rat run. Some businesses are already starting to do that and hopefully more come in time. Here are some pics of the upgrade.
The building in the centre of the image is appears to have some wonderful spaces inside and would be a really neat place with a bit of renovation but instead it is currently being used as a place to store cars. Seeing them in there behind the grated roller door reminded me of caged animals.
Looking out to Customs St
And lastly Gore lane which really needs the neighbouring building owners to punch out some walls and open up on to it. Developing the empty lot that is currently used for carparking would help here too.
All up the upgrade is looking really nice but now it really needs for the business owners that front on to the street to use of it. Hopefully they can also bring some colour to the street.
Elsewhere in the city centre, the Federal St shared space upgrade is now under-way and hopefully we will hear more about the one planned for O’Connell soon.
Processing...
With the increase in sales & pedestrian volumes reported for the other parts of the shared spaces, the property owners would be mad to keep a low-value use like car parking. We’ll see most of these “unused” properties turn into actual active uses in the next couple years, I have no fear on that account.
Fantastic to see this kind of great improvement which is of course only possible by de-carring the city… a great start and so much more to do. A public realm dividend from the investment in high quality Transit and Active modes.
Well done all involved.
It will be well done when Auckland Council delivers what they promised and get the inconsiderate drivers who park for free day and night under control.
To add to that – the speeds at which the cars drive down Fort Street seems to be ever increasing. Looks better but does nothing it says on the tin
They need solid concrete planter boxes that can periodically be shifted about. They’d slow down the cars and add some much needed greenery and colour to these places. Making them re-positionable means drivers won’t ‘learn the course’ and being solid concrete there shouldn’t be as much damage when people do drive into them. They could even cast seating into the sides maybe?
“They could even cast seating into the sides maybe?”
What a phenomenally bad idea. There are plenty of places to sit around the city. Why choose to sit on a structure that is specifically designed to absorb the impact of a motor vehicle? That’s like talking the top surfaces of the scaffolding verandahs that are intended to stop things dropping off building sites from killing pedestrians, and designating them as sunbathing surfaces.
Well the idea is people DON’T crash into them. The same way as they aren’t supposed to drive into pedestrians now. Just given how bad Auckland drivers are someone will at some point. The shared spaces are supposed to slow drivers down. They can still get to where they are going. They just aren’t supposed to do it at 50kph.
Drivers are more likely to avoid driving into a massive lump of concrete with trees on it than the ‘plenty of places to sit’ you mention visible in the photos above which seems to blend in to the background. It’s like someone said lets make the streets grey. And paint the poles grey. And the rubbish bins. And the seating.
Something like this: http://www.smartprecast.co.nz/images/Planter%20Boxes%20outside%20old%20Warners%20Bar%20Cathedral%20Sq.JPG?size=Large
With a bit of colour instead of cast concrete grey able to be positioned in the space and moved periodically would brighten the place up and slow down cars that need to maneuver around them. The Queen Street end of Fort street is a shared space but every time I have had to go there there are still plenty of drivers speeding down it as if it were a normal road. If there are things in the way and people walking and sitting there they would be a hell of a lot more careful. They shouldn’t be spaces where drivers think I can go full speed if there aren’t any people about. They should be places the drivers HAVE to slow to be able to pass through.
To be honest this section doesn’t do it for me as much as they other sections. This section is just too wide to get away with just cobble stones and a few sporadic seats and trees. It really needs more life put in there in the form of plants such as grass or trees. In a few of the photos the most prominent feature is the street lights.
I agree, but maybe the width might lend itself to a great little walkthrough street market in the future? The Fort Markets
Width is great; just needs more activation of the adjacent buildings; this is an area, say unlike High St, where the streetscape is in advance of the occupation and quite deliberately so. The purpose of this upgrade is to lead improvement and vitality. The reverse is just as valid, as would be the case in High Street or the tops of the side streets on Ponsonby Rd where there is already the fine grain of occupation without that being reflected in the quality of the urban form. Good work, now let’s hope the building owners see the value by responding with higher value offerings, especially with that great little building currently being wasting storing tin.
Yes the width is great but it needs the activation and use. Without that it is potentially compromised.
Give them a chance Patrick- it’s only been a few weeks! Gore Lane was not something you would have wanted to open up to in the very near past, so no surprise the buildings don’t present a friendly face to the lane. But with redevelopment of the Reserve Bank building underway the area will hopefully develop nicely over the next little while.
…. Just an impatient optimist!
Who would support a campaign to completely close off these streets to vehicles during weekends? Or at least on Sundays for the likes of markets or similar.
Yes that would be an excellent idea.
I’d submit to support that.
Yep just move the britomart market there.
Well, I reckon Fort is fine as a shared space, it’s Queen we should be closing off.
Perhaps for a market, but I’m not sure about closing for a whole day routinely. There is a lot property access off the shared bits of fort. One apartment building and at least two commercial towers have their vehicle entrances there. If you closed it off you’d need to manage the traffic and still let people through to their car parks, which is basically what the shared space is all about anyway. Limit all parking and through movements and your left with only those that really have no choice but to drive there.
I’d agree the candidates for full closure are the likes of Queen St and a couple of small lanes that have no property access.
That my point, Fort has car storage access; Queen doesn’t. Shared Space is the right compromise already between vehicles and humans on Fort. And Queen for that matter, but shared between Transit and active modes.
Try to resist the out of date demand for total grade separation for every mode on every place, it’s a mistaken desire for order and control that works against the very nature of urban vitality.
It’s a bit symptomatic of the old order isn’t it, either there is total priority to vehicles, or in very few cases you can ban them entirely. Nothing in between, certainly not where traffic might actually have to give way to foot.
I think the shared spaces are a huge step in that regard, it shows we’re starting to appreciate that roadspace can be shared and apportioned at various levels for various needs. That it isn’t an all or nothing battle, but really about sharing and getting the best for everyone.
A closure of Queen Street on the weekends would be great. Only question I have is what about the Central Link bus? Could it be rerouted?
Yep, up Albert St and rejoin the usual route on Mayoral Drive/Greys Ave intersection.
Ben no, keep the buses up a newly emptied Queen St: they will be so speedy and they bring the humans…. As Jarrett calls them; ‘people fountains’.
If your going to close a street you need to remove the buses as well otherwise you defeat the purpose of the exercise.
The other week here in Chatswood they closed off the main street to all vehicles including buses and it was great, on a normal day you have a constant stream of buses driving through which although providing the important PT route removes all the open space and ability to setup markets and such things.
I don’t think it defeats the purpose, at least not entirely. Queen St is six lanes wide for the most part, where you have parking lanes. Taking that down to just two lanes for a bus every five minutes or so is still a big gain over six lanes with a mix of buses, parking and constant stream of traffic.
If it were just a single bus every 5mins it would be easy enough to just reroute it for one day each week, otherwise it would be like trying to watch a cricket game where a bus drives over the field once every 5 mins.
Melbourne has more or less what you propose for which Queen Street should be like on the average day of the week http://goo.gl/maps/9mwsg however for special events it would be much nicer to not have the trams rumbling down there.
Melbourne already has pretty much what you are proposing
http://goo.gl/maps/9mwsg
This is what I would expect of lower queen street for the average working day, however for that one bus every 5mins I would think it’s easy enough to reroute it in the weekend so that people can walk and stand anywhere they like without having a bus shoving them out of the way every 5mins. Do people really need to get off the bus right in the middle of queen street when they will likely be spending a number of hours there walking a few km up and down the street?
Melbourne already has pretty much what you are proposing
http://goo.gl/maps/9mwsg
This is what I would expect of lower queen street for the average working day, however for that one bus every 5mins I would think it’s easy enough to reroute it in the weekend so that people can walk and stand anywhere they like without having a bus rumbling by shoving them out of the way.
If people are going to be spending a number of hours in town walking a few km up and down the street do they really need to get off the bus right in the middle of queen street or is only street over just as handy?
Yes precisely, Bourke St and now Swanston St in Melbourne are great examples of what we should aim for on Queen St.
If it were an occasional special event thing then diverting to Albert St is fine I think.
If it were regular or permanent then keeping two lanes for PT is a good idea, initially as a bus and perhaps eventually as a tram. Keeping those two lanes does make service access easier too, nothing wrong with garbage trucks and trade vehicles occasionally driving on the PT lanes. The Inner Link is the second busiest bus route in Auckland by boardings, simply because it is that very convenient ‘walking accelerator’ for people to hop on and off on Queen St.
Albert St isn’t ideal for a regular hop-on hop-off style shuttle because it is halfway up the hill from the centre of demand. Also it actually only has a single northbound stop between the watefront and the back of Aotea Square, and little ability to add any more due to the low level slip lanes. Queen St has four stops over the same distance, one every block which is a lot more useful for a city circulator route.
Nick, remember I was talking about special events right from the start, similar to the Sunday Streets post from the other week. If people want to set up markets or have a music stage it’s pretty hard to do with a bus or tram driving through the middle of it every 5 mins.
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/09/08/is-it-time-for-us-to-try-sunday-streets/
For the day to day operation of Queen Street the Bourke St is the way to go as it still allows for after hours vehicle access for the commercial buildings as shown in the street view link above.
Pedestrians in the middle and a pt lane each side for queen st. Ramblas style
If we are talking for many hours every Sunday I would suggest the buses should still stay on Queen St. Thats a bit different from a one off event. the city link is very busy on a Sunday, and presumably would be more so if there were a street festival on.
It would be easy to manage a lane each way for buses, you could even go down to one lane in places with a bit of management. That still leaves plenty of room to set up event spaces and zones. For example in front of IMAX you could get the whole west side from the curb to the median, that’s three lanes wide to set up stalls or whatever next to the generous footpath. Down at Wyndham you could set up a stage on half the road, leave enough room for buses to go behind it’ and use the lower part of Wyndham as amphitheatre seating.
In Melbourne I did get a bit frustrated with their closures for events, over there there is something on every weekend in summer, sometimes several events simultaneously. Roads closed to cars, trams cut short, to crowded to cycle etc. Life goes on however and some people still need to go about their business so ideally we’d keep something going normally, if not all the traffic capacity.
Fair enough, if you really think that running buses straight through the middle of a Sunday market or similar is really essential as it’s just too troubling to have a few bus passengers walk an extra 100m when they will likely be walking about 4km throughout the day I’ll leave you to that opinion. To me I see it little different to driving a bus through the middle of a cricket game every 5 mins just so that a few of the people in the stadium get a slightly shorter walk to their seats.
To be honest your argument could be made for people driving and parking, there are plenty of people you would like to drive right into the middle of the street market so why should they need to walk 400m from the closest parking building?
Why would you put the buses right through the middle of the market?
If the market takes up the entire width and length of Queen St from Customs Street through to Mayoral Drive there would be nowhere for the bus to go but through the middle of the market if one insists on running your bus up Queen Street rather than Albert Street that is 100m to the west and equally deserving of PT access.
So good question, why do you want to run buses right through the middle of the market when it only saves about 100m of walking for bus travelers who are planning on spending a few hours in the city and walking a few km while they are at it?
Queen St is a four-lane road for most of its length. If you used, say, the two normally-northbound lanes for one temporary bus lane each way, and closed the two normally-southbound lanes completely, could you put the market stalls on those two closed lanes? That would make hand one half of Queen St to pedestrians on one side, and also the footpath on the other side.
Well the good news is, we already have what you propose on Queen St right here.
http://goo.gl/maps/fXOyW
Come Sunday the bus volumes are rather low here yet it’s still hardly the place where I would be setting up a stage and having a crowd gather whilst having markets and people walking by on the sides and still trying to feed buses through. All just so that a few people don’t need to walk 100m.
I’ve been hoping that as the works come to the end, the various cafes in the area (and there are maybe 7 or 8 of them?) will start claiming more of the pavement space. You can see it starting to happen, but I think some warmer weather will also encourage pedestrians to eat their lunches outdoors. Best aspect of those photos? Pedestrians walking down the middle of the road. I’m hoping this shared space proves as successful as the Queen Street end of Fort Street – more evidence to convince the reluctant retailers of High Street that a shared space would probably benefit their business.
good point.
Cue Murray Crane bitching that shared spaces in High St will kill his business: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11121938
I understand he’s not so much concerned about shared spaces, but mainly about the current rubbish removal arrangements, and the potential for construction works to damage businesses during any reconstruction period. I agree with him on the rubbish side – my partner was a store manager on high street, and it was ridiculous how often you’d see piles of trash piled on the street during the best business times.
How does that work, cafes claiming the pavement space. As a public space, do they pay rent to the council?
Looking at the pictures (haven’t been there in person yet) i think it could use more public seating to break up the spaces.
Yes cafes do have to pay rent for footpath space.
Vast improvement but I’m still concerned with speed and volume of traffic.
Why do vehicles need to exit on to Queen St?
For the most part Fort’s purpose is to provides access to private parking and deliveries
Queen St must be closed to private vehicles soonest, far too much timidity by Council and AT on this, it’s basically the move that solves so many problems in the central city, speeds up buses North/South, and all traffic heading East/West on the important cross routes, better for deliveries, emergency access, and of course those great fountains of value; pedestrians:
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2011/08/30/guest-post-why-are-there-cars-on-queen-st/
Already some enlightened people transformed a carpark in a tiny café just down the street. I cycle that street everyday and while I.m positive private improvement will come, I think cars should be slowed down considerably.
That’s my local coffee shop. I used to stop in on them every morning walking up shortland street. When fort st opened I switched my commute to the new shared space, and was pleased to find they moved shortly after too. Really good to see that, nothing more than a shipping container and a few benches has turned an unused loading dock into a real cool place.
Durham and Swanson St on the west of Queen should be on the list too. West of Queen Street life dies very quickly, so attractive places here would really help.
Warning! Geriatric memories:Corner of Gore and Customs used to be Air New Zealand’s downtown international terminal. Next door was a model store (Martin’s?) with a slotcar racing track in the mid 60s. I worked at Blow’s Travel and Customs on the corner of Emily Place and Fort St – if I’m not mistaken, the place housing the cars used to be a lunchtime sandwich bar. That old building above and behind it just screams out for a mural…
I’ve noticed the garbage issue too, and concerns over construction impacts are certainly well founded… But those are both operational issues that can be managed, nothing relevant to the final form of the road treatment.