Our Waterfront has started to dramatically improve in recent years with the likes of the development at Wynyard and the area has become an attraction in its own right. Like many people I generally access the Wynyard by walking there from the CBD however every time I do I’m struck by how amazingly pedestrian unfriendly this intersection is. It’s one of my least favourites in Auckland and I even find it far more annoying than the fact we have cars parked on prime waterfront land just to the west of this place.
Perhaps I’m just incredibly unlucky with the phasing of the lights as one of the key reasons I unlike it so much is because I can’t think of a time when while walking that I’ve ever had anything remotely resembling pedestrian acknowledgement let alone priority. Pedestrian phases on the Northern side are incredibly long and pedestrians are made to feel like they are much less important than cars accessing or leaving Princess Wharf. Tourists clearly seem to think the same, they can often be seen wondering why they are being held up for so long at this one intersection – which unless you Te Wero Bridge is open is the only real obstacle between the Ferry Terminal and Wynyard Quarter.
Speaking of Princess Wharf, why does it need an entrance that is effectively four lanes wide.
I can understand that upgrading Quay St isn’t something that can necessarily happen straight away but until that time Auckland Transport really need to get down here and sort this intersection out, even if it’s just in the short-medium term. Quay St is one of our primary tourist routes.
What do you think needs to happen to this intersection (yes I’m sure many of you will mention the Lower Hobson St viaduct). Is there something that can be done in the short term before any upgrade of Quay St occurs?
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Barnes Dance that includes the slip lanes heading west. Like in Queen St, happens every major light phase. Remove the parking from the viaduct and have the entrance to the left as a stop sign so it doesn’t need it’s own cycle.
The last gasp of the 1980’s. You are right it never needed two lanes out of Princess wharf. The side could have been one lane in one lane out with a limited green time and just accept queues occur within their site sometimes. Also there was never a need for two lanes into Lower Hobson from the north or west (just shown on the right in your photo). That could have been narrower. Finally I have always like Barnsedance where there is reasonable pedestrian flows because people just seem to understand it. The double Barnsedance at main Queen St intersections has eliminated most of the delay to pedestrians that occurred when there was one one ped phase per cycle and I think gone some way to reducing the numbers crossing near the signals (I used to do that to avoid waiting but now there is no significant advantage.) Two ped phases per cycle here would work well.
Ha! Timely post. I know this area very, very well from work and as a volunteer with Voyager museum on the left hand side of the picture.
The entrance/exit from the wharf is very dicey pedestrianwise – even worse when there are delivery trucks parked on the eastern side (just behind where the silver Beemer – Crown car? – is parked in your shot), which for some reason encourages cars to slingshot as fast as possible up to the lights.
Jaywalking and crossing against red lights is rampant through the area, which I think really speaks to how broken the pedestrian provision is here as it is everywhere on Quay Street.
Two quick fixes I would be majorly keen on (and which I’ll leave to the experts to judge the viability thereof):
– Barnes Dance phasing at this intersection to get the usual giant volumes of pedestrians across in all directions
– At the entrance to Princes Wharf, some red road surfacing and two lines of speed bumps, one roughly where the red car is and one at the start of the pedestrian crossing – just to deflate drivers’ sense of entitlement at roaring through the intersection. Effectively a temporary raised table.
Longer term I would like to see a proper raised table at the Princes Wharf entrance, or at minimum a pedestrian refuge taking up the middle so peds don’t have to brave it all in one go (even if it means raising the red fence remnant slightly).
Those steps would at least show some commitment to humanising the area before the long-promised (I am not holding my breath) great sort-out of the Quay Street debacle.
The entry across Princess Wharf could have a speed table pedestrian crossing set 10m backwards from the limit lines – some detour, but at least no wait. I tend to go that way anyway…
I’d back that, were it not for the fact that the roadway down the wharf dips sharply and turns there, so a) it’s a prime place to get cut up by cars that are gaining speed to reach the lights and b) it’s poorly lit due to the buildings surrounding it, so harder for everyone involved to spot hazards.
Speed table cuts speeds (so no “gaining speed” there), and lighting is easy to fix. Remove a few of the car parks right at the start of Princes Wharf, and visibility will be good too.
yeh that would work really well, especially if narrowed to one lane each way. Crossing there is very frustrating, have to wait ages for the green man, even though only couple of cars go past. However dangerous to cross illegally with cars shooting through here at high speed from Hobson St.
What is a ‘barnes dance’?
Green man for pedestrians in all directions at once, so people can cross on foot diagonally wherever they want to go without waiting for multiple signals. Yes, it does mean motor vehicles in all directions have to stop, but most of the civilised world is slowly realising that is not the end of the world (here in NZ, we are just slightly behind the ball).
First, put a pedestrian crossing on the slip lane leading onto Hobson St, and later remove the slip lane altogether. At the same time, create a bike lane that runs continuously west- currently you need to get into the far right lane to enter the viaduct area- across 3 lanes of very fast traffic.
That slip lane has 3 (!) lanes of traffic, so very, very unsafe for a zebra crossing. Could start with reducing one lane, use that lane to build a refuge island in the middle, and then have TWO zebra crossings (both over one lane only) though. Yep, that would work. Might even improve (gasp!) situation for cars as well, as won’t have to stop for traffic light – only have to stop while peds are crossing a very short distance.
I had actually realised it was that bad- when I ride down there I’m just trying not to die so was not focused on the details!
*hadn’t*
I have shown my proposed layout on my Twitter account here:
https://twitter.com/MaxRobitzsch/status/440669293923950592/photo/1
Only one lane onto a 3 lane bridge?
Having said that, change the 2 straight through lanes to 1 and you eliminate the need for lights for that turn completely (unless you want to keep them for the pedestrians)..
“Only one lane onto a 3 lane bridge?”
Why not? It shouldn’t be there in the first place – rebalancing in favour of pedestrians is the whole point here. If we continually approach it from a “But you can’t take anything away from cars while you improve things for [insert other mode here]” then we will never get anywhere. One lane is fine. Of course AT’s modellers are likely to disagree, because if what you model is capacity and cars, you get cars wanting capacity.
Would agree 99% of the time, but issue is probably the buses, notably with Customs out of use for CRL construction in a year or 2 (fingers crossed). Might have to keep lights here for now to deal with that, though on the proviso one is made into a bus lane, guess the middle one.
The silly thing here is the lack of a barnes dance holds everyone up more than necessary – both walking and in cars.
The pedestrian phase crossing Princes Wharf ties in with the vehicle phase exiting the Viaduct. Often peds trigger the phase with only a couple of, or no, vehicles exiting the Viaduct, which holds up all the other phases, including those same pedestrians who, having crossed the Princes Wharf entrance, are now waiting to cross Quay St.
Then the same thing happens all over again for the Princes Wharf exit phase combined with peds crossing Quay St on the eastern side – the pedestrian phase holds up all other phases.
I’m confident having a Barnes Dance would speed up everything – saving time as phases for vehicles exiting Princes Wharf and the Viaduct would run for shorter times (not having to wait for an associated pedestrian crossing to complete) and trigger less often (only when cars exiting).
This would in turn help with on-time running of North Shore buses that go through these lights citybound.
Great idea’s for that intersection. The whole Lower Hobson / Fanshaw / Quay street area needs to have less cars. Off topic any idea’s how the Strand could be improved for pedestrians? It’s very dangerous to walk from the bus stop at Quay to Saint Georges Bay road. I see people struggling daily.
https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?saddr=Quay+St&daddr=Saint+Georges+Bay+Rd&hl=en&sll=-36.850106,174.780137&sspn=0.005409,0.006968&geocode=FYC_zf0dgPVqCg%3BFc-1zf0dYPZqCg&t=h&gl=nz&dirflg=w&mra=dme&mrsp=1&sz=18&z=17
and crossing at Ngaoho street across the strand to the Parnell side.
The lane next to the blue car on the right does not serve any purpose at all. Princes Wharf only has one straight ahead lane. Traffic lane could be immediately removed to reduce ped crossing distances.
My thoughts exactly as that left land from Princes only goes left not left and straight.
So making the traffic island 1 lane wider there would help as a quick fix.
For a cheap solution stick some concrete planters on that lane to make it clear to left hand lane exiters from Princes that they can’t go straight too.
yeh the island is too small for the pedestrian volume at times, narrowing this would be big help, and affect no one.
Yes good article. Hate this intersection. Terrible intersection for pedestrians that in some ways should be a “showcase” of a pedestrian friendly environment. At the moment it’s a fail and should have some quick fixes.
You are all missing the point!!! Two of those 4 ‘roads’ are effectively just carpark entrances. Princes Wharf and the Viaduct are not really ‘roads’ so shouldn’t be treated as such.
Princess Wharf and the Viaduct should be a ‘shared Zone’ such that pedestrians effectively take priority at those intersections which cars having to crawl though giving way.
Downtown carpark doesn’t have its own lights and requires cars to giveway to pedestrians on the footpath so why is this different.
Sadly, that tends to work reasonably only when the driveway is not also leading into a signalised intersection. Because if your driveways is NOT signalised, then you might head out at a point when you think you are safe (you can’t see the signals for the other moevements) but aren’t. Plus, in THIS context, it might even be worse for pedestrians, because those driveway-drivers would be concentrating hard on finding out when they can go in/out, and have less brain space left for also looking at peds – reducing things competing for attention is a prime safety driver (the other two being reducing speed, so you have more time to process/results are less bad, or third, separating traffic fully).
you are correct. I did actually have a comment in about re-phasing the lights but accidentally deleted it when I changed the order of my paragraphs.
Teh point is, in their current road format, they are given far to much priority.
It’s still a driveway. The lights there for cars accessing the road way. I believe the road code still legally classifies this as a pedestrian right of way (SHARED ZONE/DRIVEWAY). So further up this “DRIVEWAY”, ie deeper into the wharf are pedestrians still expected to yield to motorists or at what point would you draw the line in the sand to say cars own this CARPARK! 100 metres from these light, 10 metres, 1 nanometre????
No – if it has traffic lights*, then pedestrians do NOT legally have right of way, even if for all other purposes it is a driveway. Which, really, is not surprising. A signal may be the wrong choice for a location, but as long as it is there, we should ideally not confuse the responsibilities, and the law is pretty clear anyway…
*In fact, as someone recently clarified to me,based on documents he showed me from AT, as long as a driveway has kerbs curving in (i.e. footpath does not continue at grade), car drivers have right of way! Even if it’s not a road. I was not aware of that, and it was a bit shocking…
Hopefully something we can address in ATCOP? Not the rule as such but the design of driveways.
Driveway designs have been better for a good while now, need not specifically ATCOP to fix. But probably 90% of our driveways – certainly in the inner suburbs still stem from BEFORE our current engineering standards, plus even though we have had better standards for a while, they often haven’t been enforced when driveways were designed and built. I know, because I have been guilty of having been involved in a few myself.
Max: “as long as a driveway has kerbs curving in (i.e. footpath does not continue at grade), car drivers have right of way! Even if it’s not a road.”
What about this NEW exit from the Stoddard Rd shops / Roskill bus depot?
Curved kerb and pram ramp on one side, uninterrupted footpath on the other.
Photo here: https://twitter.com/aw_nz/status/437020043939823616
That is a gray area, and don’t by necessity expect an NZ traffic court or a policeman attending a crash to rule in favour of the pedestrian…
Max, if the pedestrians do not have right of way if it has traffic lights even if for all other purposes it is a driveway – how many meters into the driveway does it change to pedestrian right of way (SHARED ZONE/DRIVEWAY). Please provide references – if possible.
Brendan: the existence of the traffic lights means that crossing within 20 metres of the lights is illegal, if that’s what you mean. But driveways themselves are not necessarily shared zones, and if a driveway happens not to be a shared zone, pedestrians don’t have right of way. In general, a driveway that has footpaths beside it probably isn’t going to be a shared zone.
There’s a give way rule for entering and exiting driveways, but it only applies to pedestrians on a footpath – so if the footpath isn’t continuous across the mouth of the driveway, there’s no pedestrian right of way. See this response I got from AT which sums things up: https://fyi.org.nz/request/1397/response/5296/attach/2/CAS%20170762%20W6R6T1%20Final.pdf
This is pretty recent: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=F31283F46AE7B673!12019&authkey=!AMClgtSkhxQj39M&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.jpg
It is the entrance / exit for a car park at the new Silverdale town centre. 13m wide. Virtually no pedestrians surprise, surprise.
I believe the Land Transport User Rule 2004 – is a rule laid down in council – council being the cabinet or government of the day at that time. It is in fact a simplification of various Acts of Parliament, namely the Land Transport Act 1998, Land Transport Management Acts 2003 and 2013. No where in either the Rule or the Act can I find any reference to this definition of a “raised kerb” being the delimitation of pedestrian and vehicle zones. Could this be someones subjective definition cause I can’t find any actual reference to any point of law.
Would be nice to have the clause/sub clause/paragraph from the various Acts. Would also be good to have the same for this 20 metres from a traffic signal “fact”. Even that incredible over simplification of the Act, the Road Code, doesn’t seem to reference either of these 2 factoids!
Please?
Patrick M:
> It is in fact a simplification of various Acts of Parliament,
Sort of the opposite, really. It’s a complication of those Acts! The Land Transport Act 1998 allows the Minister to make rules relating to use of roads. The powers are defined, but regulations are typically expected to fill in technical details that Parliament is happy to leave up to officials. (Even if you and I might see things like give way rules as being political rather than technical).
> Would be nice to have the clause/sub clause/paragraph from the various Acts.
Local governments have the power under section 319(1)(f) of the Local Government Act 1974 to determine which parts of the roadway are footpath and which are roadway/carriageway.
> Would also be good to have the same for this 20 metres from a traffic signal “fact”.
Road User Rule 2004, section 11.3.
Musing out loud here: The major traffic movements are from Quay Street on to Lower Hobson and vice versa, with minor traffic into and out of the viaduct and Princes Wharf. What would happen if you stopped cars entering the Viaduct or Princes Wharf directly from Quay Street, but made them enter from Lower Hobson instead? (They would use the U-turn under the flyover). You could reduce the traffic lights to 2 major and 2 minor phases: A major phase for traffic going Quay Street-Hobson, a Barnes Dance for pedestrians, and then vehicle-triggered phases for cars exiting the Viaduct or Princes Wharf. You speed up time for the major traffic and pedestrian movements, and waste less time catering for the smaller traffic volumes in and out of the wharf/viaduct.
In terms of physical infrastructure, I’d like to see “throat” narrowed for Princes Wharf, and some of the corners “squared off”. Cars don’t need to turn fast into the viaduct/wharf and it shortens the crossing for pedestrians. Improved amenity for cyclists would be nice too, but I can’t picture what it would like at the moment.
I was thinking along the same lines, to the extent that you can even get rid of the lights. The whole place could basically be a corner, not an intersection, with what would effectively be driveways going to Princess Wharf and the Viaduct. By allowing left turns only, you would get rid of the straight through lane from Quay into the Viaduct, giving you one extra lane to play with space-wise. This could then become a slip lane to allow vehicles to turn from Princess Wharf and re-join traffic on Quay Street.
You would then have raised table ped. crossing at both Viaduct and Princess, giving permanent pedestrian priority (in actuality, whenever I get to this part of town my thoughts are more focused on “why the hell do we park cars here” [viaduct] than “this intersection sucks” – ultimately we need to get rid of the carparks on Te Whero).
Basically merging the entrances to Princess and Viaduct into one driveway would work. One entrance lane from Lower Hobson into both, and one exit/slip lane going out into Quay.
Problems arise with vehicles exiting the Viaduct crossing the path of vehicles entering Princess Wharf, and with the fact that vehicles leaving either place would need to take a very large detour in order to get onto Fanshaw Street; westbound.
So the idea needs work, but is a pretty good concept. Short term easy fix is a Barnes Dance.
The NACTO guide has some good advice on intersection design.
http://nacto.org/usdg/intersections/complex-intersections/
First replace the car park on Te Wero Island. That is flat out crazy. Allow temporary loading zone for boat servicing, but no parking for people spending a day on the harbour; there’s a parking building 50 metres away! Activate the the square for humans, continue the love from Wynyard towards the city…. this would reduce vehicle movements from one side of the intersection making Chris O’s plan above more viable.
I think some phasing changes would help a lot here. This could give pedestrians more priority, traffic less, and not cost a cent.
If you cross to the island, the piece crossing the triple slip lane is not phased at all to link with where you just crossed. Leads to overcrowding on the island at busy times.
I’m also sure if changes were made to the right turn from Quay into Princes to give this less priority, extra phasing could be added for pedestrians over Princes Wharf.
Another useful change could be to reduce the phasing given to the Te Wero and Princes Wharf exits. Ie for each normal phase only one of these links gets a green.
I think remove the straight/right turn from Quay into Princess and enable the U-turn under Lower Hobson (under the viaduct – currently sign says there that U turn is prohibited, so bin that and you’re done).
These drivers can then access Princess/Te-Wero area from Lower Hobson as a left turn or straight ahead into Princess movement.
This cuts the conflicting movements across the intersection. meaning only 3 of the 4 directions need traffic lights.
Making Princess exit and Te-Wero exits demand controlled will then reduce the actual movements to a pair of Quay/Lower Hobson turns which can have a a green signal for 80% of the time.
This makes the Lower Hobson onto Quay and Quay on to Hobson turns almost continuously available on a green light.
And for the balance of the time – a Barnes Dance is now practical there.
As Patrick says moving parking off Te-Wero will further reduce demand on that intersection, meaning the only time that Quay/Lower Hobson traffic won’t flow is when either Princes traffic is waiting to exit.
Or Peds are waiting to cross and the Barnes Dance is active.
From memory, the crossing is phased for one direction (toward the city) so you cross the bulk of the lanes, then immediately the crossing goes to cross the slip lane.
Where is Princess Wharf?
I can find only Princes Wharf.
Come on – there are 4 cars, 1 scooter, and 15 peds in the entire photo. Looks like it was taken at 7am on a sunday morning!
I have never had a problem crossing the road in front of Princes Wharf – very few cars actually enter and when they do they are all traveling slowly as they are entering or leaving a pedestrianized area. I cant even remember bothering to look at the lights – why bother when there is so little traffic. The same applies to the left side of the intersection where KZ1 is. Maybe on a Saturday night when there is a lot of taxi traffic you might have to dodge a few cars but come on – everyone just wanders over the road here because there is so little traffic.
The southern E-W crossing of Hobson has a footbridge if you were too scared to cross the road or couldn’t be arsed to wait for the lights – Id suggest it was quicker to wait but you cant moan when you have options.
That only leaves the Eastern side of Quay where you do need to wait at the lights – So one side of four can delay pedestrians at an intersection in the heart of New Zealands largest CBD – OMG – just go back to sewing your hemp pyjamas.
If there is so little traffic then pedestrians can easily have priority. Or does your insistence that the private car rules supreme extend to ones that are not even there?
“you cant moan when you have options” – I will have to remember that line the next time there is a proposal to slightly lessen motor vehicle access to an area and all the motorists start whining (which they do incessantly).
For example, it is an absolute no brainer that the Fort Street/Jean Batten Place shared space should have the exits to Shortland Street and Queen Street sealed off with bollards. This would still leave access via Fort Street down Commerce Street or Gore Street for the people parking in the small parking garage there or for service vehicles. They can exit the same way or down Fort Lane.
Right now it is used as a rat run, especially by courier and taxi drivers. Someone is going to get seriously hurt with the flood of pedestrians from Jean Batten to High Street and the cars screaming down the Shortland Street slope at excessive speeds. I have almost been hit a few times by taxis turning into Jean Batten from Shortland beacuse there are cars bearing down on them turning from Queen into Shortland. It is a disaster waiting to happen.
However, if that was to happen you can just imagine the “war on cars” whingeing from motorists as a tiny part of their “right” to 100% of street space is removed. But remember: “you cant moan when you have options”.
We should also be cutting off access in the whole Britomart area and removing all the parking. Again, there is no reason to go through there except for rat running and there is plenty of parking provided in that area.
I guess phil won’t be moaning when I have options to walk, cycle, bus or drive over the harbour bridge once the SkyPath is built. 🙂
Phil, you sound like someone who has never walked around the Auckland CBD in their life. How the fuelsaver points adding up?
“Id suggest it was quicker to wait but you cant moan when you have options”
Using the ped overbridge is a major detour and extra effort – and we aren’t allowed to “moan”? Nie to hear that when motorists asked to use a 30 km/h road instead of a 50 km/h road moan like they are being deprived of a basic liberty.
Couldn’t agrgee more ree removing parking on Te Wero island. What a waste of prime waterfront land!
“The march of globalisation and the advance of technology are helping to add jobs near Sydney’s CBD at a much faster rate than the rest of the metropolitan area, undermining efforts to spread employment growth evenly.”
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/city-shines-but-burbs-need-boost-20140304-345bl.html
For “‘burbs need boost” read “‘burbs need subsidy to compete with popular CBD”.
Why is a rabidly neoliberal Australian government (and its MAMIL PM) allowing the NSW state government to use public funds to discourage free market based businesses moving to the CBD? Could it be that there isn’t really a free market but actually a market slanted in favour of sprawl and suburbanisation?
Tricky thing this “free” market if it doesnt produce the results you want.
Capacity on Quay is required until CRL works are completed. A Barnes dance will increase pedestrian and vehicle delay. People never seem to understand this. Barnes dances very often increase pedestrian delays. And almost always for vehicles(ie buses) because you are stopping ALL vehicles for a long period of time. Having said that I think all these suggestions have been discussed a long time ago and dismissed for various reasons. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we did see some of these suggestions happening in the mid term.
This actually doesn’t look too bad at all. In some parts of the US there are 8 lane surface grade roads. A pedestrian will wait 5 minutes for the light to change after all the turning lanes are through, and then only actually get 10 seconds to cross which is impossible.