A truck has crashed on the southern motorway southbound and is already causing a lot of congestion on the motorway. If at all possible I’d recommend catching the train home
Crash closes Southern Motorway southbound
All three southbound lanes of Auckland’s Southern Motorway (State Highway 1) at Greenlane have been closed after a concrete truck crashed just south of the Greenlane interchange.
The NZ Transport Agency says congestion is already severe and it may take some time for the queues to clear.
A single lane of traffic is being diverted past the crash scene along the motorway shoulder. The Transport Agency is also advising drivers to leave the motorway at Market Road or Greenlane.
There will be long delays, and traffic on arterial roads is likely to be heavy.
Northbound lanes of the Southern Motorway remain open, but the Transport Agency says drivers heading north should not slow down at the crash scene.
As you can see from the image below congestion is already pretty severe (black) southbound all the way from the bridge and that is only likely to get worse
Perhaps at times like this AT should have a special rate that allows for drivers who have driven their car in to town to leave it there overnight and catch a train home. Who knows it might get people to give the trains a go and realise they’re not too bad.
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What is this, the 5th time this year that the whole width of the motorway has been closed in one direction?
Funny that we can spend 2.5 billion on a road for a 100 year event (eartquake), but can’t do the same for a rail project to deal with a 2 month event.
You know the solution, right? Wider motorways!!!
Actually in this case you are sort of right as this section of motorway that tends to cause all these issues is sub-standard in a number of ways and should really be posted and enforced at 80km/h.
Have to agree this should be 80. I would like to see a variable limit here like they have in the gorge in Wellington so that in traffic it can drop right down.
Yes, we’re spending hundreds of millions, but we haven’t yet put up a few signs for hundreds of thousands. Higher speeds reduce road capacity, causing congestion. They also cause serious accidents
Lets bulldoze Mt Hobson, no wait tunnel it, God the possibilities are endless
Is there a rail project that would actually change the outcome of todays event? Certaily the CRL would not have stopped the truck from rolling or reduced the congestion caused. It would just mean those people who are using the train and are uneffected remain uneffected.
Any project affect the outcome, directly – no those people driving would have still been congested as you say. What it would do is give people more choices and lots of people might not have chosen to drive in to town in the first place. Also that is why I said perhaps in situations like this something be done to allow people to leave their car in town overnight and catch a train if possible.
Im somewhat skeptical as the changes to someones transport plans could be made if there is crash on the motorway at 4pm and there was a rail tunnel in the CBD.
Maybe if there was a large advertising campaign two weeks in advance people could change there plans however that is not likely to happen.
For me, my bus trip home yesterday took 50% longer due to the increased traffic on the road. No number of rail improvements would have changed that unless there was some other daily measure to stop people driving or my bus route had bus lanes and priority at intersections.
@SF, I thought you lived near Onehunga, and worked in Newmaket? If the CRL was in place you could catch one of the frequent trains to Onehunga and then bus back from that end.
Also, if you had driven in for some reason you could park in your office carpark overnight, or an AT or private garage and train/bus home as describedabove, many people could do this, especially those with employer provided parking.
In order to ease congestion the CRL doesn’t need to offer an alternative to everyone, it just needs to offer, or improve an option for some people.
I live in south epsom near onehunga 4km from work and 2.5km from the nearest train station.
As you know most people who work in the CBD dont get free or employer paid parking, leaving your car there overnight is a good way to get it broken into and spending an extra 15mins getting home on a different route is preferably to stuffing up your travel plans that you have already made for good reason on both that day and the day after the event.
And as above, if taking a train and a backwards bus was such an fast and easy idea people would be doing it already.
As Mat says, yes, indirectly. An improved rail service would allow many more people to make alternate arrangements to avoid this incident.
It was all but like this on Friday evening, as it is frequently, and there was no accident. But wait for it, we need more lanes and more motorways and more lanes and more motorways and ……..
Already clearing. Red all the way through what was black, which is roughly par for the course.
Tamaki drive still heavily congested. Really the problem is that people should stay in the city for a drink after job like in Europe.
Seeing my wife is my priority after work, not nightly boozing.
funny that, I thought you were more interested to see the legs of the girls as in a previous post…
Yup – was pretty horrible – having caught the express bus just after 4 and ending up in Gt South Rd Chaos to avoid the motorway for a long ride home……..
What made it 100 x worse was we were on a bus that is SUPPOSED to have air conditioning …..normally we don’t have air conditioning but we do get windows throughout our buses…….since this bus was SUPPOSED to have air conditioning it had NO OPENABLE windows…………it had a hatch on the roof that opened maybe a 1/3 finger height (it was an emergency exit but to emergency exit it was break glass) …now that got a little breeze up when and only when the bus could move …..
on top of that the doors could only be open if the bus was fully stopped rather than idling (though the driver did try to do that when he could)
it was terribly unpleasant everyone on board was hot
I found (at 37 weeks pregnant) I was sweating horribly and felt like I was close to fainting on several occasions……….
luckily at Otahuhu we got back on the motorway and the bus could move which allowed some air via the tiny gap and cooled things down a bit
stuff the special fares ……….just make sure the public transport is not that unpleasant to use ……
in this case (assuming no meltdowns or air conditioning failure there) the train would have won …
(though with electric trains I wonder if the train power fails then so would the air conditioning too – and that’s not openable windows either – so it could happen there too)
but it also brings up the point that in this case for me it wasn’t just comfort but it was actually a health issue ……
overheating is not good for anyone but very not good for unborn babies ..you are told repeatedly to avoid things like hot baths, spas and saunas during pregnancy – so technically I really should not have been on that bus either !
………and imagine if it happened in the full heat of summer ………..I am NOT feeling the love for NZbus and their maintenance program today at all sadly
That sounds horrible!
and that is why I drive most of the time or get the train.
well a week or so ago I used the train and it took 3 hrs to get home including a long walk in an area I was not familiar with due to signal failures,
so I have to say they were not on my happy list that week either ……..but at least their was air conditioning still working for that trip (while stuck on the train of course not the walking part 🙂 ) ………
Sometimes annoying stuff happens and things get held up but the little details (like air conditioning etc working) can make a big big difference !
The train network electrification will have feeds from two separate substations off separate high-voltage feeders, and priority reconnection, so complete loss of power to the trains should never be a prolonged event. This will be even more true as Vector complete work programmes to ensure path separation and redundancy across Auckland.
Sorry, the air conditioning on the buses only works in winter…
Ha 🙂 Actually normally we get the old buses without it at all ….so lately with the odd blue bus replace the waka pacifics
its been a bit of a novelty to have air conditioning. However I am now seeing the joys of our old buses with their opening windows ……that’ll teach me won’t it …
Funny though – from an admin perspective the air conditioning working probably seems like a small thing to AT or NZbus people …and compared to say working brakes or lack of spontaneous combustion etc it is but really actually its not so little when you use the buses /trains etc …..a lot of little things or practical usage things probably swings people to choose not to use PT (or use it too) sometimes ………..devil being somewhat in the small practical details often from a user perspective