This image highlights so beautifully show just how much space there is on the street for vehicles currently and once the linear park goes in, just how big it will be (it will leave one lane each way).
Photo is copyright to Craig.
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In the meantime I wish they’d do some simple things like remove that carparking left turn lane, it was clearly built by just removing the footpath, and is completely unnecessary.
So when is the linear park happening?
After Auckland Transport is done building all the roadz.
After the CRL from what I understand which means 2020 at the earliest – there are a lot of smaller works they should consider doing before then. Simply doing what cities like New York have done by placing planter boxes to turn one lane back into a footpath. Cheap, could be done overnight and would massively improve the pedestrian and cycling experience.
The bus stop next to whitcoulls had around 70 people waiting at it when I walked past, pretty squalid conditions there at present. No seating, a filthy footpath, and yet 6 lanes for cars right in front.
It’s a horrible stop, the wind and rain just whips down through it Not a nice place for people
34 vehicles and a whole lot of foot traffic, yet the cars get 3/4 of the space. Not cool.
Victoria st is looking pretty shabby at the moment especially compared to some of our nice new shared spaces downtown areas. That linear park idea sounds great, I hope it happens.
Considering AT are already wanting the Quay Street boulevard delayed because they claim the car capacity will be needed when the CRL is being built and Albert Street is reduced in size, I’m quite sure they’ll be using the same excuse to avoid spending any money turning streets such as Victoria Street into a complete street any time soon. Don’t forget they could barely bring themselves to turn O’Connell Street into a shared space, their first preference was keeping a lot of the parking and keeping a delineated road down the middle. Imagine how difficult it will be to convince anyone at AT to reduce car capacity on Victoria Street.
The o’connell thing was a matter of cost. Engineering a shared space pavement that garbage trucks and service vehicles can drive on is an order of magnitude more expensive than an asphalt road with fancy footpaths.
I think a shared spaces is the best outcome, but I’ve heard other street upgrade projects have been delayed to pay for it.
It’s interesting that AT didn’t want to admit that then, all through the consultation they came up with excuses about a shared space being unsafe, not usable for blind people etc etc, not once did they talk about the different costs involved. I wish for once AT would actually explain their thinking rather than attempting to deceive people.
It doesn’t need be expensive. When are we going to adopt the NYC style of paint and planters? Slow learners.
Personally, I’m happy for things to be done once, and done right. I’d hate to have paint and planters put in as an “interim” solution, only to still be left unfinished 10 years later. You have to admit, that would be typical Auckland style. Slow and steady wins the race! I’m sure as more and more streets get upgraded, the impetus will only grow.
I used to be of the same opinion Luke but have changed that opinion over the past few years. Better to get lots of 80% fixes done, for a fraction of the price of a single 100% project usually, and ‘gold plate’ them later once proven. Have a watch of this from Janette Sadik-Kahn http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LujWrkYsl64
Luke, surely it’s better to still have the unfinished interim solution ten years later than to still have nothing ten years later.
Ok yea that video definitely sold me, though I still would like it down properly; I doubt that paint would look as nice in 10 years, haha
Would be great to get the boulevard happening sooner rather than later. At least some summer weekend/holiday closures. Tried to cycle through here yesterday, but was impossible due to numbers of people on the footpath, and don’t feel safe on the road here.
Through traffic should be pushed to Customs St at Britomart Place, and indicating at Sturdee St that through traffic should head down Customs. Might reluctantly need to keep access down Lower Hobson to get to Princes Wharf, Rydges and Viaduct but if clear is dead end should reudce silly traffic.
Yes – it is filthy – especially Victoria St West. Some of the most run down ‘streetscapes’ in the city.
Why not just resurfacing the footpaths with tarceal or concrete would give Victoria Street west a lift, urgently needed I feel.
I agree. TBH I prefer the concrete they’ve used in places like Anzac Ave. to asphalt, which seems to wear a lot quicker.
Some New York style low cost treatment would go a treat here. How about one lane each way with no turning into Queen St? Would give huge amounts of space back to people.
Exactly Luke. For the price of the full shared space in Fort St (looks nice I admit) we could carve up half the CBD using planters, paint and re-phasing traffic lights.
I say just do a bit to start with, say Albert to Queen St. Close off some of the lanes, throw up some planters etc. Or do one block fully as a test case.
Yes!
Was so great on Saturday to see so many people in town and walking on that closed section of Queen St.
If we had a total 1-way system in the CBD we could have linear parks on every street. But no, that’s crazy because 1-way systems are obviously evil. Yes they have been done badly in the past (hobson/nelson), but 1-ways are safer for pedestrians and cyclists. If you look at the cities that took out one way streets in the US, accidents off all types generally increased, especially for pedestrians and cyclists.
1 ways per se aren’t bad. 5 lane, arterial, one ways are.
To be honest, most of the streets that one-way would work on, like Lorne, High, Federal, already are. Considering you have to do one way systems as couplets, streets like Symonds, Shortlabd and K Rd are ruled out. Albert and Queen, as far as Mayoral, maybe, but considering Albert is going to be a construction site soon, there’s no point. Customs and Quay would only work for a few blocks, to a point where it wouldn’t really make any difference. Victoria and Wellesley would require some significant changes at the Albert Park end, and again wouldn’t be of much use.
Yes and expanding on that. If you did a one way couplet on Customs/Quay, half of it wouldn’t work if you wanted to shut down the street for an event. Having both with lanes in each direction (but with reduced impact from what exists now) means that you could close one down and still have some through movement. Also a Victoria/Wellesley couplet wouldn’t be that ideal for buses on the new network.
We can have linear parks on every street without a one way system.
Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse for the street life than making Auckland CBD into a complete one way system. And belittling resistance to that as some sort of emotional hating against ‘evil’ is pretty counterproductive.
My question is why would you ever want one way streets? Well I can see two answers, vehicle throughput and travel speed. Which is really the opposite of what we want for our city streets, we don’t want more traffic and we certainly don’t want more traffic moving fast.
There are also some other major problems with one way streets. Accessibility is the main one, you can’t simply drive in the direction you need to to get to a destination, you are forced to make long circuitous detours to position your vehicle in the right direction and the right side of the street to get to a property. There is also a huge problem for street level public transport, you end up having services split across blocks with stops sometimes hundreds of metres apart, terrrible for legibility. Another is the impact on cycling, cyclists are likewise forced to ride in the one way direction, often requiring weaving across three or four lanes to make a turn. It might be acceptable to make a motorist drive around four blocks to get into position but thats a big imposition on a cyclist.
What exactly would we do in Auckland? Make Queen St four lanes southbound and Albert St four lanes northbound? It hard enough to cross Albert St as it is even with the ability to stand in the median, let alone making it four lanes to cross in one go. Have you seen the speeds people drive at when they have a roadway four lanes wide in their direction? It’s a simple fact of human perception that people drive faster when the roadway is wider, and slow down when it is narrower. And the buses, so the Queen St buses would have to run on Queen southbound and Albert northbound. Problem is you’ve only got one left hand kerbside lane to load buses from, so what happens to all the buses currently on Albert St? Well we would have to move them over, which means northbound on Hobson and southbound on Nelson. All of a sudden you need bus lanes at the kerbside on every single street in the city, and people have to walk 500m over the hill from Nelson St just to get to Queen, when previously they arrived (and departed) on ALbert.
So yes, if you are a traffic engineer who cannot possibly compromise on the volume and speed of vehicles in a city when building linear parks then one ways are the only choice. If you are concerned with having abundant vehicle access, safe pedestrian environment, efficient easy to use public transport, a pleasant lively urban atmosphere and accessibility for cyclists. One way arterials is a shit idea IMHO, we should be doing the opposite.
This is what I would rather see that one way arterials everywhere:
Make Queen St pedestrian only from Wakefield St to Customs St, except for one lane each way for the City Link buses. That will improve things for pedestrians, but also massively improve things for the bus. You’d easily halve the transit time without traffic and the various signal phases to let traffic on and off Queen. That means exactly the same number of buses and drivers can run twice as frequently, and likewise double route capacity. Furthermore there are less signal delays at the cross streets.
Keep Symonds and Albert as two way roads with bus lanes and general lanes. Let people drive, cycle, walk and catch the bus in both directions.
Make Kitchener St two way, one lane each way. This means that people can use it to get to the High St, Chancery, Shorthand St area from the main motorway access on Wellesley, but also go back the way they came. Again a case of accessibility rather than simple throughput. Drive in and out by the most direct route, rather than making wide loops around the CBD. It would also slow drivers down on a key pedestrian route across to the gallery, park and university.
Turn the core bit of Wellesley into a pedestrian mall/plaza with buses through it, like Queen but in the opposite axis. Traffic can simply use the ring road we built in the 70s (Mayoral Dr) for the very purpose of avoiding driving through the centre of the Aotea precinct. Mayoral is a fine traffic distributor.
Linear Park on Victoria St occupying just over half the width, retain one traffic lane in each direction plus the equivalent of a third lane that shifts between left and right turn bays, loading zones, taxi stands etc as needed. This provides good bidirectional access from College Hill/VIctoria Park right across to Bowen Ave and Alten Rd access to the motorway system.
Hobson and Nelson converted to two lanes each way, with hard median in places and kerbside cycle lanes, widened footpath, plus parking and loading where convenient. Each connects to and from one motorway. These become normal city streets that can foster retail activity, pedestrian life and quality building development, rather than highspeed unidirecitonal motorway ramps.
Customs St could be a similar thing two lanes for traffic each way, but with much nicer footpaths, steet trees etc. This could be one of the worlds greatest city streets given the building form nearby, however that would probably require taking the buses offline so as not to require stopping bays, buslanes and bus shelters in the corridor (not sure where they are supposed to go just yet!). Quay St could be a single low speed lane each way with the appearance of a shared space for local access and the CIty Link bus, but mostly pedestrianised.
“My question is why would you ever want one way streets?”
When afterwards, instead of two lanes you have one?
That’s by far the only good reason for one way streets. Two ways = two lanes minimum. A one way street can be just a single lane, a la High Street. In areas with low traffic, that’s all you need, anyway. I think it’s a particularly good approach for suburban residential streets, where having some nice traffic calming landscaping (or even a bit more parking) is going to be way more valuable than saving 20 seconds on the drive to the main road.
I agree with that, no problem with our one way lanes and shared spaces. But somehow methinks Ari isn’t suggesting taking Hobson St or Albert St down to one lane one way!
I would take a ‘two lanes each way’ road over a ‘three lanes one way’, all else being equal.
Yes, lets just totally ignore that 2-way systems are more dangerous than 1-way systems for PEDESTRIANS and CYCLISTS and that vehicles can travel just as fast in a 2-way system. Lets ignore the fact that we could maintain existing volumes(not increase)and free up large chunks of road space for use by pedestrians and cyclists instead of leaving it just for vehicles in a 2 way system. Yes, lets just continue to ignore things we don’t agree with.
I cant say I really agree that 2 way roads are more dangerous for me as a cyclist. Do you have any evidence for any of those claims?
Growing up in Chch, there were lots of one way roads and I cant say I ever regarded them as being safer. They tended to be treated as defacto motorways by drivers.
Less scathing-ness makes for better argument. Some facts would also be good. Why the heck would two-way necessarily be any more dangerous than one-way? Show us your facts, or at least give some reasons?
In fact, pedestrian crossings on 2-lane 1-way roads aren’t allowed to be zebras (because the first driver could stop, and then the second driver barrel past on the second lane), but on 2-lane (1 each direction) they are allowed to be zebras. Nice little example how 2-ways are safer than 1-ways in a specific situation.
Can you give any examples of “good” one ways? I guess narrow single lane one ways would be good, but only because they slow the traffic.
Proof please Ari, can you provide some evidence that one way systems are safer for pedestrians and cyclists? And is that a safety rate, or absolute? If so, do you just have less pedestrian injury on Hobson St simply because no pedestrian in their right mind goes there? So your examples of US cities that took out one ways and got and increase in pedestrian injury numbers, is that just a case of there actually being pedestrians after the change. I’m not sure that making a road corridor so horrific for walking that nobody walk near it is quite the solution for pedestrian safety.
Here is a test, if we convert Queen St to one way (even just three lanes) will pedestrian injury rates decline? If we took the two lanes each way of Symonds St through the university precinct and made it three lanes one way down the hill instead, would there be a reduction in pedestrian injury there?
Yes vehicles *can* travel just as fast on a two way system, but do they? Vehicles could be driven at 100km/h on a shared space if you really wanted to, doesn’t mean that happens in practice. Certainly all the simulator research I worked on showed a pretty clear correlation between the width of the road in the direction of travel and the speed driven.
There we go again, build in some wider footpaths for pedestrians and cyclists bot only if you can maintain traffic volume. Couldn’t possibly do anything that might compromise traffic volume to get a better outcome. I want to reduce traffic volume, and increase accessibility. We’re not in the business of moving huge volumes of vehicluar traffic through our City Centre.
Here’s a delightful one-way road. Right past a school entrance. Look how wide it is.
http://goo.gl/maps/GXMvV
Morrow and Mortimer Pass are 2 other one ways in Newmarket that are terrible. Morrow is especially bad with the high pedestrian volume mixed with cars from both directions in Broadway turning into the street. Tying up my bike there yesterday watched for a couple of minutes, and there are continuously hairy situations happening here.
The Gillies Ave ends of these streets are also very difficult for pedestrians to cross with cars having 3 lanes to turn into, so can go very fast.
The Gillies Ave end of Mortimer is one lane, however it has the width of three lanes. Crossing there is horrible because of said width, wide turning radii and the lack of any refuge. Meanwhile, the opposite side of Gillies has been declared off-limits for pedestrians and the promised connection as part of the viaduct replacement is now dead and buried it seems, so there’s no escaping from it. The ‘delightful’ Owens truly is delightful in comparison.
By the way, Morrow at the Gillies end is controlled by lights. The Broadway end seems a mess and quite dangerous at first sight but the statistics tell another story. I’ve never seen any car take the corner at high speed and most near-misses I’ve witnessed there involved mindless pedestrians and drivers going down the wrong throat (which catches people crossing between the refuge and the southern end of Morrow unawares). Might be an idea to have a clearly marked turning bay for right-turning traffic, set back a little, to help curb the wrong-throating.
I think most of those ‘mindless’ pedestrians are actually assuming the street is a normal one (or perhaps left in left out), with a pedestrian island half way between what would normally opposing lanes. In that case the car flying across broadway where they can find a gap is going the wrong way compared to what normally happens.
I’d rather they closed off that side and made all traffic enter by the normal left hand in lane.
Agree Nick It would even be kind of ok as a 2 way with left turns only.
That’s not mindless behaviour, being completely oblivious to your surroundings is, I‘ve seen plenty of people stepping out onto the road without watching either way.
The Dutch use one way’s to good effect but from what I’ve seen these are mostly limited to residential areas or where cycling provision is required and the lane is not wide enough for a 2 way for cars and room for bikes. Every street has it’s own uniqueness and requirements. All appear to be low speed (30 km/h) streets.
A timely post from Jarrett Walker’s blog:
http://www.humantransit.org/2013/10/frequent-network-maps-wmatas-and-one-way-pairs.html
There you go. They, one-ways, have their place but it’s not to move lots of cars.