While I was working on this morning’s post about the Dominion Rd Interchange I came across a lot of photos of it from during construction from Whites Photography. Here is a bit of a pictorial history of its construction.
19 November 1963 – before the destruction started.
4 February 1965 – The clearing of houses has taken place and work has started on the interchange. While construction took place I believe traffic was diverted down View Rd and Esplanade Rd for some reason the buses were never shifted back
6 September 1965 – The retaining wall on Bright St/Atken Tce is waiting to hold up fill for the road.
21 November 1965 – You can see part of the interchange complete and used for New North Rd traffic.
26 July 1966 – You can see the large sweeping ramp starting to take shape.
11 October 1967 – The interchange really stands out like a giant scar compared to the finer grained city that surrounds it.
5 February 1968 – The interchange is looking largely complete with work still progressing on Ian McKinnon Dr
24 May 1968 – Looking south down Dominion Rd
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Good thing they didn’t forget walking & cycling. Oh, wait – they did (despite the narrow underpasses). Still can’t walk conveniently from Dom Road left into NNR even today. Pull it down. Change to to a Dutch roundabout.
“21 November 1965 – You can see part of the interchange complete and used for New North Rd traffic.”
This illustrates clearly how we could remove the interchange, simply do this staging in reverse. Temporarily route NNR through this second underpass while filling in the main one and constructing a normal four way intersection in it’s place, then shift traffic to the new intersection while filling and dismantling the other underpass and flyover and slip lanes.
The only good part of this was the futureproofing the rail underpass for double-track and AC eletrification – if I recall correctly, no work had to be done on the underpass for either of these rail upgrades.
The rest though … ugh.
Hey! I can see my house in the third photo! 😀
But seriously, I am forever directing confused pedestrians back to Dominion Road from New North Road after they get lost coming down Symonds Street.
Yes, I can see my house in lots of those photos. Seriously, the pedestrian connections around here are dreadful. Dingy tunnels, noisy underpasses, bad crossing options, no continuous pedestrian paths, you name it – we have it – all in close proximity. This is an area around good transport nodes – I never take a car into the CBD, and ripe for intensification. I understand there are plans for an apartment block on the land by the Fairfax building, but we could take a lot more.
The opportunity cost of smashing roads through suburbs, displaced people & communities bulldozed, such a shame. Removing the interchange and creating space for people would be fantastic. Also any roads that could be covered over to create a cut and cover scenario would be beneficial as could provide space for a public amenity above.
And we have a proposal to get one of these monstrosities all of our own for the Shore -goody!
Seriously, as someone who uses this intersection every single day (sometimes twice), from a motoring perspective there is very little wrong with this interchange. Okay there could be better access for pedestrians but the wholesale demolishing of the site is not going to do anything for the flow of traffic at all. Try travelling down Dominion road towards the city at 8:30 any day of the week and see where the pinchpoints are & where the traffic begins to flow correctly – it begins to flow properly at exactly this interchange… The call to change seems to be coming from folks who either don’t use this area, or have no idea of what the costs of change would be. Think for a moment what the effect would be of stopping the flow of traffic both from Dominion road & New North Road would cause, sitting for 3 minutes while the opposing traffic goes through to the other side -ugh! The traffic planning in this city is already done by people who don’t have a clue – witness the lack of any cycle traffic on the new upper queen street cycle paths at god-knows what cost to install & cock-up the existing traffic.
It isn’t broken – don’t try & fix it! Especially don’t use my rates increase to fund it…
Seriously, only sometimes twice a day? I always use it twice a day and would love this to happen. On New North Rd this is a real bottle neck as it reduces to only one lane, especially in the evenings. There are traffic lights in every direction from the interchange, so at the moment it just seems to get people to the next queue faster up on Dominion Rd . Being a rate payer I like the demolition plan even more as it will save the city money and free up space for more housing.
I suppose the semantics of a return trip are neither here nor there, but I can’t think how changing the interchange to an intersection on it’s own would magicly transform the single-lane + buslane/carpark lane that is New North road into anything more than this, especially in the peak hours. I’d be really happy to see a solution free up space & save money but can’t see anyone doing it for less money than would be returned for the work involved plus the massive inconvenience it would cause. How long do you think it would take to transform into something approaching useable? Months if not years.. The council have always made a pig’s ear out of every single opportunity (IT project anyone?) and I can’t see this hare-brained idea being any different. They’d be better off selling waterfront sections in Onehunga from the newly reclaimed land I’m sure…