Along with the new MIT campus there’s been another recent upgrade to Manukau in the form of a road and parking diet delivered to Davies Ave. I understand the local board pushed this plan along and was also intended to help encourage more people to Hayman Park. This is what the road used to look like from above.

Davies Ave before

And here are some photos of what it looks like now which were sent to me by Auckland Transport and taken by Doug Cole Photography

Davies Ave Now 1

Davies Ave Now 2

Davies Ave Now 3

Davies Ave Now 4

It looks like a big improvement however it didn’t come cheap as it cost $2.3 million. We do need a lot more of these types of interventions so quicker and cheaper temporary upgrades – like what was done in New York – are going to become quite important. I hope AT plan to do something to connect this to other pedestrian and cycle improvements in the area, otherwise it kind of seems like a shared path to nowhere.

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25 comments

  1. 2 x footapths / shared paths and no actual cycle lanes. At least paint a 2 way cycle lane on the really wide shared path. Better for all users.

  2. Nice start AT. Now, tell us how and when you will link this road revamp work to other pedestrian and cycling improvements in the surrounding area.

    1. As Rob said, a good start. One street of many in this asphalt overload has some human scale restored. It could have been better with a bike lane, but at least we have some progress. Keep at it AT, and next time remember cyclists too 🙂

  3. This is starting to look like a 21st century town centre. Now it just needs some apartment buildings and a better solution for getting bikes in and out of the train station.

  4. It looks absolutely stunning. Beautiful. However you’d need to be a brave man to sit in Hayman Park as the sun goes down (or, half the time when the sun IS up), so hopefully the Police across the road are playing their part with more frequent foot patrols. Otherwise it’ll all be wasted.

  5. While not entirely appropriate to post here, Alain Bertaud is shortly presenting on the two elements he sees as important: mobility and affordability

    http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/mobile-and-affordable.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OffsettingBehaviour+(Offsetting+Behaviour)

    I disagree with any relaxation on urban limits; I hate the idea of more of our green space getting turned into houses, so I differ from him and his ilk in some regards. However, I agree with his basic premise. The question is:
    1. If we have 0 greenfields growth,
    2. We want cheaper, better houses, and
    3. We want better mobility

    How do we do it?
    The answer is simple: verticality. It’s something we talk about. We should (in my view) aspire to three types of housing: single unit quarter acre paradises; 3-4 storey terraced housing; 10-15 storey apartment blocks. And we should try our very best to put as many of the latter up in New Lynn, Henderson, Grey Lynn, Takapuna, any major town centre. At the same time, we should impose a new rule… no more subdivision for single unit houses on any property smaller than 1000m2, and no loss of greenspace for new growth e.g. Unitec. The city needs lungs.

    That will then be measurable via my modified city quality metric:
    Average House Price * Average Commute (mins) / Average Salary
    We want the first two low; we want the last high.

  6. Are those eucalyptus trees? Very refreshing seeing those in an urban environment. They make the park look bigger.

    1. Yes they are gums; not my favourite, recently been thinned which is very good. Help make the park a bit safer and with definition.

      There is a master plan for upgrading the park itself but no implementation programme that I know of.

      1. “Yes they are gums; not my favourite, recently been thinned which is very good.”

        Ah yes…receding gums. Need to watch that.

  7. OMG. I just noticed what look like tactile treatments at the car park entrances. These should have absolute pedestrian priority. No need for these.

  8. The side streets are still part of the road. Thus pedestrians must give way when crossing the road.
    The only free parking is the 2-4hr parking at Westfield. Everything else is leased parking.

  9. Great! checked it out the other day from a ahem drive by. Have to work out how long the walk from new station to and from new job is going to take so will have a closer look soon. I don’t agree that 2.3M seems expensive or your premise that landscape / streetscape / pedestrian / cycle links / facilities should be both cheap and temporary. Expensive relative to what? a new road? Street furniture for one needs to absolutely bullet proof here, add good street and pedestrian lighting, earthworks, others services revocations & drainage, add good design and good engineered surfaces, good grade plants, rock walls and planters and a skilled contractor and yes it going to add up. Go for too much cheap and temporary and the results would be just that budget, unsafe, broken and temporary.

  10. How much was the initial budget allocated for this boulevard? What was the initial “time of construction completion” allocated for the project. When was this boulevard completed? Was the project cost overrun and delayed according to time scheduled for it to be completed? These questions if answered would help clarify the doubts I have for the final cost of this project, $2.3m. According to AT, this boulevard when completed would provide both cyclists and pedestrians access, it appears that cyclists pathway is left out, why?

    1. Budget over run I am not sure but a LGOIMA would be able to find that out.
      For the rest the Davis Avenue Boulevard was meant to be open in January but initially put back to April, then May, then June and finally when it did just after that. then its final opening date after that. The reason for the delay was something went wrong while digging up the ground (water main?) causing the eventual delay.

      As I noted earlier, might be wise to file a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request to find out

    2. Cycle paths always just get lumped into wider footpaths as a ‘shared path’, bad for people on bikes and bad for people walking.

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