This photo from Lennart Nout on Twitter today of the morning peak shows that the problem with traffic in Auckland isn’t a lack of roads. During the off peak and during times like school holidays there is more than enough capacity available on the roads. 

This is looking north from Northcote Rd

What we really need to address is how we move people during peak times. In my view investing in alternatives like the Congestion Free Network is the best way to do that.

CFN 2030A

Share this

12 comments

  1. Hey, gametime. Come 2016, what section of Auckland will have the greatest number of traffic lanes next to each other?

    Answer: I believe it will be SH16 and Great North Road just west of Carrington Road*. According to my reading of NZTA/AT plans, the future layout there for a section along it has 16 (!) lanes. 5 for Great North Road, 2 for the eastbound-fromSH20-ramp, 2 for the westbound off-to-SH20-ramp, one for the westbound GNR off-ramp, and 6 for the main SH16 motorway.

    *They will be so close together that you can’t even have an alibi strip of grass in-between, so that counts).

    1. Yup; insane, but hey: Freedom! [just not from congestion though: just you wait]

      Will be pretty bad at the SH16/GNR clusterf**k opposite MOTAT too mega-laneage. Future asphalt mine.

      1. I still don’t understand the need for the St Lukes Rd / GNR works. I can’t work it out. There is still an off-ramp for GNR at Waterview.

        1. Extra traffic from Waterview / Pt Chevalier wanting to go south onto SH20. There’s no on-ramp that way, so they’ll go eastwards and pile on the first interchange that has west-facing ramps.

          Oh, and because. Extra lanes beget extra lanes. Bit like rabbits.

  2. Gametime indeed. Any bets on how long after opening it starts to resemble London’s M25 linear car park?

    1. Is a knowledge economy endogenous to the creation of traffic congestion? Or are there other factors? Few people in Silicon Valley ride PT to work.

      1. But Phil that’s because the place is built on the auto-dependent model not because they work on computers. Man you got it all backwards. Twitter head office however is downtown SF and few drive there.

        First we build the place then it shapes our habits.

      2. Ahh perhaps you should look at the angst being caused in SF by the tech companies putting on hundreds of buses every day to ferry their staff from their homes in SF to the office parks in Silicon Valley

  3. The problem is working mums – who take the school holidays off.

    Refer Charles Lave: “Cars and Demographics”

    BTW, Indianapolis, population similar to Auckland, has approximately 3 times as much highway and arterial road lane miles. Total VMT is about 20% higher than Auckland – but congestion delay at peak is 15 minutes per 1 hour of driving in comparison to Auckland’s 47 minutes.

  4. Have you seen the city? It’s on a flat plain with few geographic constraints; check it out on Google. At grade parking in the CBD, wide Boulevards. No model for Auckland. Not on anyone’s list for high liveability. You think huge highways and high VMT is a good thing? Where does our oil and bitumen come from?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *