Auckland is suffering hugely from decades of building new infrastructure or changing old infrastructure to be dedicated to the efficient movement of just one mode at the expense of all others. Getting good walking, cycling or public transport infrastructure and priority retrofitted to existing roads has proved to be a massive uphill battle and one that shows no sign of being over any time soon. Positively we are starting to see some small progress with the likes of the Beach Rd cycleway or the Fanshawe St bus lane but those victories are small and far between. In many cases we’re told the only way to add walking, cycling or PT infrastructure is for the road to be widened at great cost (which is often so the engineers can preserve the existing level of vehicle priority and dominance).
To me that makes it even more important that when we build new infrastructure we get it right however unfortunately it seems our engineers still leave a lot to be desired. The design released for the Kirkbride Rd grade separation yesterday was a good example and here are a few more – with the focus on cycle infrastructure.
Below is an image tweeted out the other day by our friends at Cycle Action Auckland showing the new AMETI Link road which is due to open any day now. The road runs from Mt Wellington Highway at Van Damm’s Lagoon alongside the rail line and through a tunnel next to the Panmure Train Station and linking back in with the existing road network at Morrin Rd. The intention is that this road will help take a large number of vehicles out of Panmure and allow for the roundabout to be removed.
The road is about 1.5km long and fairly straight with no intersections or driveways. In short it’s going to be like a motorway and I would bet that there will be huge numbers of people speeding along here. This road seems to take the idea of cycling by the motorway a step further and making it cycling on the motorway because that’s how it’s likely to feel for anyone brave enough to try. With such conditions it’s imperative that Auckland Transport provide protected cycle lanes yet as the photo shows that clearly hasn’t happened. This is completely unacceptable.
Now I understand that the road was designed about 4 years ago when our engineers and road planners were even more hostile to cycling infrastructure than they are now (most are still not great). With the project under construction the relevant staff at AT likely think their job is done however I feel AT need to be far more dynamic in how they deal with infrastructure under construction like this.
The next example comes from Westgate on a road that hasn’t even start started construction yet. Just north of the new town centre being constructed AT will build a new road to be known as Northside Dr. Around the road is expected to eventually be a large industrial area.
To get across the motorway the NZTA were even kind enough to build the central columns for the bridge that will be needed to avoid disruption later on (who said they can’t future proof when they want too).
So what about the road design itself?
It appears from the documents that we’ll be getting on road cycle lanes although like above it does seem like they will be protected. Probably the worst part though is the bridge itself. If I’ve read the plan below right there will be cycle lanes on most of road except for one critical area – the bridge over the motorway. This means for a short period any cyclists will be forced into general traffic which due to the nature of the area could mean mixing with large trucks. That’s far less than ideal especially when there’s is/was the opportunity to do it right and have the cycle lanes carry on over the bridge. (click to enlarge the image below)
As mentioned, Auckland has a lot of work to do to retrofit the city for better walking, cycling and PT provision. It’s going to take some time for us to even look at most work that’s needed and the last thing we need is AT’s engineers putting on their 1960’s hats on when it comes to other modes.
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The cycle lanes are just future vehicle lanes in disguise…
Is that not a cycle path or shared path beside the new road, in addition to on-road cycle lanes, thus giving a choice of cycling on or off road? That seems extremely generous to me. Also, the new road takes traffic off the existing roads, making them more cycle-friendly.
Yes there might be a shift in traffic, but that could well be temporary if the now available capacity is replaced with demand induced from elsewhere. Hence it’s a long bow to draw to suggest the existing roads will be more cycle-friendly because of this bridge.
that AMETI road does look like a missed opportunity. In this sort of environment road-level cycle-lanes look like perfect places for road debris to accumulate.
How about we a bunch of AT traffic engineers to the Netherlands and Denmark for a month so they can see how things can be done? I’d be happy to lead the tour with our trusty Lennart.
Win-win: Auckland gets better cycle infrastructure design capacity; AT engineers get a little overseas tour.
Even better Stu, we’d save a pile of money if we had said bunch of AT traffic engineers ride to and from work every day for a month and discover for themselves the shortcomings of the solutions above, and those provided (or not provided) elsewhere.
I’ve been saying this for a long time Stu. Send a group of engineers, planners and suitable councillors to Copenhagen and ride with Mikael, go to Netherlands and ride a David Hembrow tour, meet up with Mark Wagenbuur, Herbert Tiemens etc. The knowledge gained would be invaluable and would stop us wasting valuable funding on rubbish that doesn’t work.
Why send AT staff to The Netherlands and Denmark when they’ll just say “That’s nice, but it won’t work in Auckland”. How about hiring some engineers and planners from NL and Dk to work for AT?
Because we need a culture change within the profession. Our engineers, and councillors, need to see this for themselves. They need to see a train station with storage for thousands of bikes, schools where 80%+ of all students and teachers get there by bike or foot, where vehicles are slowed to enable residential streets to be shared easily with bikes, where a network is not a motorway styled bike path but a real network, where someone on a bike can get to anywhere they need to go, often with priority.
Funny you mention this, I know just the company to accommodate this study tour. Also, we’d take the engineers to Rotterdam, a post-war, car-oriented city with some excellent bicycle infra as well. The relevance of cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen is questionable indeed. Let’s do this thing.
This Geoff, is the solution when they don’t know what they’re doing in regards bike infrastructure – ie, they don’t ride a bike obviously.
Hamilton is doing the same thing, even when doing full redevelopments in the CBD on routes used extensively by cyclists they refuse to put in separate cycleways or even fund cycle infrastructure at a 1/10th usage rate compared to motorized traffic funding
The AMETI road is a really annoying one! Look at all that space, no excuse on when it was designed, it’s really not that hard to fit in a separated cycle lane there! Just a kerb and some paint. It’s supposed to be a multi-model project.
Cycle lane(s) physically separated from the roadway would also discourage speeding on the AMETI road, by making it appear narrower.
The plans for Northside Dr state “Continuous 1.8m wide on road cycle lane along Northside Drive;”
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoliciesprojects/plansstrategies/DistrictRegionalPlans/waitakerecitysdistrictplan/planchanges/Pages/nornorthsidedriveeast.aspx
But the plans show the cyclelanes ending at the bridge, not clear whether cyclists will be guided onto the shared path or into the general traffic lane.
http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/districtplanlodgednor/northsideappdproposedlayoutconstructionplans.pdf
Agree with Josh and Bryan, this is poor design. Given the greenfields nature of the project, separated cycle lanes could easily have been fitted in from the start.
As Bryan alluded to, speeding is going to be an issue on this road. Being straight for some length and with few (no?) side roads, it will likely be a racetrack. A painted line is not going to inspire confidence among cyclists.
In other words, plenty of thought has clearly gone into the overall project, but not the usability aspects. AT need to do better.
Designed for confident cyclists only. Will do little to encourage uptake from interested but fearful newbees.
Shared path has inherent conflict with ped’s and are often meadering
Anyway why duplicate cycling provision with a shared path?
Idiots! the light standards even get higher priority than cyclist being behind concrete barriers. And cars sme with headlights anyway.
What’s the problem with that? After all, the main priority is just to ensure drivers don’t get hurt right? Cyclists are ‘frangible’ aren’t they…?
It’s a problem that we continue to build de-facto motorways which destroy place and which worsen our carbon emissions.
One way those cycle lanes (bad as they are) could have be improved is with rumble strips. These cost just 15,000 per kilometre. Implementation is relatively simple, and just involves closing the road. The road could itself be made safer with a speed limit that reflects safety, and then a permanent road safety camera. The development of new electronic (rather than film) cameras should allow us to put in hundreds of these across Auckland, as their operating costs have reduced by a very large extent.
Westgate: No ‘floating’ bus stops, parking on the inside of bike lanes, bike lanes on the road when they don’t need to be. The list goes on. This is all stuff that the Dutch have been doing for decades. It all looks like arterials. This is not how a town centre should be built. It will be another auto oriented town centre.
I have to ask, and apologises in advance for any offence caused, but seriously: Is traffic engineering the only option for the dimmer end of the engineering student body? Or is it entirely taught by retrograde dinosaurs? Is it a closed club of incurious jobs-worths who have no interest in changes in their field?
Seriously: What is it?
In europe the realisation has set in that “who sows roads, will harvest traffic” and reducing vehicle infrastructure (by reducing amount of lanes for example) while investing in alternatives, can actually reduce congestion and boost nearby businessess. NZ councils and traffic engineers are running an odd 30 years behind europe, and are making the same mistakes, instead of looking at what they are doing now and learning from them.
The AMETI link road looks absolutely horrific. There is absolutely nothing about it that exists at a human scale. It’s a defacto motorway by any other name.
The road is a freight bypass to get trucks out of Panmure town centre and linking two industrial areas and the motorway. The prioritisation of the road was bourne out of Auckland City’s Liveable Arterials Strategy and wasn’t supposed to include onroad cycling at all.
So you are saying that it was a failed design from the beginning? I agree.
In what possible way is that a Liveable Arterial? It lacks any human scale and any human being not in a vehicle will get away from it as fast as possible, let alone thinking it is “liveable”.
There is only one method being used to assess that street and it is the notorious “Level of (motor vehicle) Service” – beloved of all traffic engineers stuck in the 1950s.
What score would that thoroughfare get if we assessed on “Level of Service” to a 10 year old on a bike? Is it possible to score less than zero?
It was designed to make Mt Wellington Highway (north of the road), “liveable” not this road itself.
As mentioned it above, it looks like a de-facto Motorway because it was designed as a replacement for the stymied (and therefore a future start of) the Eastern Motorway.
Please actually read the liveable arterials strategy before commanding some kind of authority of it – it actually sets design paramaters for four loose categories of arterial roads (community, PT, general traffic and freight) of which this falls into freight where the priority is on the movement of motor vehicles and obviously freight.
This should never have had on road bike infrastructure at all. It should have been off road bike paths and a footpath. The room is there. I’m giving it an F.
Now I’m curious, just what was CAA’s role in this, if any? I understood they were involved with at least the busway shared path design, and have blogged generally positively about cycling infrastructure being built into AMETI, as early as 2011. What changed? Or why is this particular design a surprise now?
A motorway, really, I think you can do better than that.
It had one lane of traffic in each direction based on that photo, I think the cycling provision is fine, and there will still be the local roads which from memory are going to have cycle paths installed.
Actually, etjma, that could hardly be further from the truth. There is no way most people would want to ride down those cycle paths. And I’m not aware of any better provision on the existing roads.. or plans for it.
The original design for the 1.5 km link road is on the AT web page and clearly shows segregated cycle paths. If, in reality, these were only ever intended to be present through the tunnel, it’s frankly misleading.
https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/ameti/panmure/#link
Worse, as the same web page says, the intention is to allow upgrading to 4-lanes. From the pics, it looks like to idea is to get there ASAP
Incidentally, worth taking a pic where the new road crosses Morrin Road, 1000s of sq m of tarseal in all directions.
Madness.
Miles away from what ACC has been supporting or advocating for.
ACC..? CAA, duh!
On the AT website it says on road cycle lanes AND shared path.
Is that on the WHOLE section of road 2 options..? Plus the ability to avoid the road and use Highway 6?
CAA opposed this design, and asked for physical separation, particularly in the “tunnel” – maybe not strongly enough? Well, we’re a small volunteer group, and back then we had much more limited access to, and acceptance among, politicians and design managers as well.
From a 2010 feedback of ours:
“In a north-south direction, we consider that the new trench road offers an option to provide a high-quality off-road cycling link alongside the road, likely on the western side.”
From a 2011 feedback of ours:
“Considering the cross sections, and the widths of the cycle lanes at 2.5m, we suggest that it would be easy to change the cycle lanes in the box to off-road cycle paths, by locating the crash barrier between the cyclists and the road. This would be an highly improved outcome for cycling, providing both “the perception and the reality” of greater safety in the box.
We are also worried that with 2.5m wide cycle lanes, they risk being used as a third traffic lane in congested conditions, or as a parking lane, used to drop off passengers wanting to go to the public transport interchange nearby. We strongly support that the cycle lane is separated from the car lane in the two-lane, pre-2020 arrangement, which shows a separator strip (of
landscaping?). Again, we consider that the crash barrier should be located in between the cycling facility and the traffic lane, to protect the cyclists as well, rather than just protecting motorists from an impact against the box walls.”
At the time, we did discuss shared paths as alternatives where we felt on-road painted cycle lanes were inappropriate. CAA has since become less positive about shared paths and painted lanes both, due to their inherent limitations.
From a late 2011 feedback on cycling in the AMETI area generally:
“We consider that no other measure will help cycling growth as much as more off-road paths and protected cycle lanes – i.e. cycle lanes divided from moving traffic by kerbs, bollards, “buffer parking” or similar features.”
Max,
Great that CAA said so in submissions to AT. Still wondering why this issue never surfaced in CAA’s numerous, generally positive, public releases about AMETI. I mean, this is such an obviously bad design, it must have been worth alerting members of the public as well, so we might also submit against it? It just strikes me as odd that the only the end result now features as a shock-horror can-you-believe-it photo, after that golden opportunity to change things has passed, while the issue was known.
NMABTM..
I was aware of CAA’s views on this road long before I joined CAA. So I must have read about them in some public forum or other.
At the time one of the things that impressed me about CAA was the extent to which they were across so many initiatives, and in depth as well. AMETI is big and complex for example, yet they were able to articulate well formed views about pretty much every aspect.
Another was that despite the mono-modal thinking (not to say anti-cycling attitudes) which pervaded projects a few years ago (and still has the upper hand today), CAA managed to walk the line between criticising everything because it wasn’t perfect and providing loud and clear positive feedback when things were made better, however incrementally. In the case of AMETI, there are plenty of positives for cycling. Pakuranga Highway will be a step change.
Now look where we are, both in terms of results e.g. Beach Road., and engagement at all levels with the agencies. Would we have got that if all CAA had ever done was carp from the sidelines?
You seem to suggest a false dichotomy: one future is what we happen to have now, and the other by implication is something worse (i.e. not what we have now). I’d posit there is a third option: we realistically could have had something better than what we have now (yet still imperfect).
No one is suggesting “carp[ing] from the sidelines”. CAA simultaneously argues that it is under-resourced and yet has the ear of AT/NZTA/etc — so clearly there are some levers to work with. Limitations only behoove better priorities, which is broadly what I argue for, though not in this specific discussion as I’m only asking about historical information.