The council’s City Centre Master Plan contains a huge number of great ideas for making the city centre a better place to live work and play but it’s far from the first document looking at the subject. Our friend Darren Davis has recently come across a document from 1971 called Central Area Proposals outlining a number of ideas from the time. Some were good ideas, some odd ideas and some terrible ideas. Of these some were implemented and others not. The ideas also don’t appear to be a cohesive set of projects and so some of the ideas clash with other ideas.
One interesting fact from the document was that mode share to the central city was about over 50% PT, walking or cycling , a similar level that we’ve only just achieved again.
The good
And from the files that didn’t happen, pedestrianising Queen St
The Odd
This idea seems to be about getting people out of Queen St, presumably so there’s more space for cars and parking – although the image is shown with pedestrians at street level too. It certainly wouldn’t go with the idea of closing Queen St to traffic above.
Closing K Rd to traffic but presumably providing more parking.
The Bad
Wellesley St elevated over Queen St which would have destroyed the Civic corner and made a hostile area for pedestrians under the over pass.
Mayoral Dr sold as a tree lined boulevard linking up green spaces in the city. Implementing this wiped out a significant chunk of CBD property
An extension of Mayoral Dr all the way to Quay St on the eastern side of the CBD. With option 1 of this we wouldn’t have had an O’Connell St to make a shared space on and the Britomart area would have been severed by a massive road.
And perhaps the granddaddy of bad ideas an elevated motorway along Quay St – the idea was first proposed in the 1955 master transportation plan but thankfully none of these proposals ever happened.
I’m not sure when this image is from but it gives an idea of what it may have looked like, some more shots here and here
Thankfully we managed to dodge at least some of these bullets which if implemented might have been enough to well in truly kill the city centre.
Thanks for the images Darren
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I’m a little bit sympathetic to the Wellesley overpass idea, with caveats:
Step1: Close Queen Street to traffic
Step2: Bus lines on overpass with proper pullover bays
Step3: Bus stop integration with queen street level
It would still ruin the corner and the Civc’s position, no argument, but the valley shape does allow some interesting ideas. How about we just build an underground rail system instead? 🙂
On the Quay Street expressway, I think anyone who’s been to Seattle will immediately see what an appaling idea that is. They have their own ‘speghetti junction’ too which really limits the downtown area. I find the place generally pretty disappointing.
Phew, our own little Embarcadero Freeway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarcadero_Freeway). And would it have also taken an earthquake to convince us to take it down. Thankfully it was never built.
Old planning documents always tell a cautionary tale – it’s very easy for grand visions to be dreamed up, carefully detailed, and then simply fizzle away. The amalgamated Auckland Council has been good at the “vision” thing, but it needs to discover a sense of urgency about implementing those visions. Auckland is held back by its lack of good public transport and walking and cycling facilities. Projects like the CRL and new rapid transit connections to under-served areas cannot come soon enough. Nor can the full delivery of Auckland’s cycle network.
And, oh yeah – it’s high time that central government got on board with Auckland’s own vision for its transport future.
Fully agree Peter. We know the mode share is wrong and rail, bus,bike and walk nowhere where they should be, we need direct action now. A full bus network is only white symbols away get someone to paint those now on all 4 lane roads and motorways. On Campbell live announce that, advise $10 day passes, $10 family day pass weekends, 25% school kids, ,50% students and get the full 1000 buses reporting to a team at AT who monitor everything. 6 months full arterial remark removing parking and flush medians and cycle having 3m width and 1m separation which later is substantial planter boxes. 60 years of crap planning gone. Then in another 6 months look seriously at walking improvements that tie in with everything.
I’ve spent the week in Melbourne, experiencing trams, trains and cycleways.
The most curious thing I saw was a car honking it’s horn at a cyclist who was at the edge of a cycleway in Chappel Street. I believe the car driver was upset that the cyclist had all of the room of the cycleway and was at the right hand edge. When I looked the left half of the cycleway had been repaved (shoddily) so the even section of was on the right.
I got a couple of takeaways form this, the main one being that just painting some lines doesn’t lead to change, without maintaining facilities appropriately they become unusable or unfit for purpose, similar to the cycleway along the Hutt Road in Wellington, which very rarely got used as the street sweepers would push all of the broken glass and stones onto the cycleway, which when combined with the occasional digging up of the surface, reduced it’s utility.
The other thing i noticed was some fabulous self service terminals that allow you to not only purchase your MyKi (stored value PT) card, but top it up, with either a cash balance or to purchase a pass of varying durations and zones of travel. When are we likely to see these in Auckland?
Nick good point, which is why I think all the cycleways get asphalt peeled off and overlaid with 100mm concrete . That is 75mm above Rd and 25mm below footpath. But phase that in obviously.
And the road cesspits get located to be in this 1m clearance area so clear of all modes.
That elevated Quay St motorway would be our own version of Sydney’s atrocious Cahill Expressway through Circular Quay. Glad that was never built!
Oh wow. They really were all about roads back then. That Mayoral Drive extension to Britomart is insane.
Mayoral Drive, even as it stands, is insane. It’s a traffic engineer’s wet dream: houses and trees ripped out and replaced by broad, unnecessary, hectares of tarmac and tens of controlled intersection, enabling the rapid movement of nothing but motor vehicles. Unfortunately, it’s still the prevailing rationale at AT; it’s still ‘all about roads’. We really haven’t learned a thing from our mistakes.
Yes it’s a terrible curving interruption to the fine Victorian straight lined pattern and so destructive, but now it’s there lets get some benefit from it and get the cars out of Queen and narrow Wellesley and make it Transit only from Lorne St west.
At least we have the opportunity to remove cars from Queen Street and the justification of Mayoral Drive now, meaning it can be done.
Mayoral Drive could be so much better, too. The main reason it sucks so much for pedestrians is the lack of activation along it; it’s nicely tree lined for shade in summer, so adding in some activation with new buildings fronting it in the Bledisloe carpark (which I believe is going at park of Aotea Station’s construction), at both of the northern corners of Mayoral and Vincent/Cook, and at Wakefield, and we’d be in business. Not what was lost, but a lot better than the present situation.
The worst thing about Mayoral Drive, to me (there are plenty of candidates for worst part to choose from), is the acres of tarmac at the intersections, for pedestrians to cross. Somehow the signalized pedestrian crossings at Queen St and Mayoral are the most badly planned in Auckland – maybe even New Zealand. No Barnes Dance here – instead a bewildering sequence of who / what goes when. Really long, really boring, really inconsiderate to people on foot. And no traffic islands in the centre if you want to jaywalk (as I often do). The rest of Queen St is a breeze to walk down – but the junction with Mayoral just rips the continuity apart.
The idea of a six lane road providing, as the plan says, a link between open spaces is pretty ludicrous. All roads do is provide links to other roads, often at the expense of open space. So, in what was deemed “the most important open space in the central area”, what else but build a six lane road through it?
Thanks for this post. While we decry the mistakes that were made, it’s good to allow ourselves a sigh of relief for those that were not made.
But note how we got the destruction that Mayoral Drive required but without the payoff of the traffic out of QueenSt and the connection of the St James/Library/Art Gallery side with the Town Hall/Civic/ side. It hasn’t even been down tuned.
This is the great risk with building bypasses before improving place: stage two often never arrives.
The very first photo is the best, the one showing the city centre before Spaghetti junction. If you look closely you can see the Northern Motorway ending at Cook St, and the Southern ending at Upper Symonds St.
You can see them starting to carve up grafton gully, but it’s otherwise intact with streets and buildings.
Should have stopped there.
Yes and built the western ring route for inter-regional traffic; as the international consultants advised; so stupid funnelling every vehicle through the city centre…. Shows just how anti-city the dominant road building culture was then, a culture that still persists at the highests levels.
The CMJ want so much as the road building culture being deliberately anti city but a desire (that can’t from political motivations) to maximize the use of the Harbour Bridge and therefore maximize the tolls it generated.
Nick I hadn’t originally planned to add that image but your comment is exactly why I did. It shows the city before it was cut up.
Personally, I believe that a six/eight lane surface arterial road linking the Southern and the Northern motorways together would have sufficed. It would have created a much better environment that the current CMJ. Waterview should have been built in the 70’s and due to the “stupid funneling” we have the mess that we have today. However, if Waterview was built in the 70’s, we wouldn’t have a CMJ in town, We would probably have a spaghetti junction where the Great North Road interchange is, as well as another Harbour Bridge linking that junction to the North Shore. Overall, it’ll most likely reduce the number of cars going through the cbd
We effectively have that, Great North and Great South Rd’s were widened and are big enough for six lanes each at a pinch. IMHO we should have stopped the the city motorways at the Harp of Erin, Pt Chevalier and Fanshawe St respectively, and had arterial boulevards on GNR, GSR and Fanshawe.
That would have required building the western ring route instead of the CMJ, but I imagine at the time that might have been a cheaper proposition. Likewise leaving the harbour bridge as a four lane arterial for city access, and letting the WWR do the state highway work.
No doubt at a later date there would have been pressure to link them up, but something link a Harbour bridge to Waterview tunnel might have been ok.
Thank god the Quay Street expressway didn’t happen. I am really surprised that in 1955, they mentioned that there would be negative visual impacts in the downtown area.
I think pedestrianising the lower end of Queen Street should occur in the future, after CRL is built. It could be done slowly. First of, by only permitting buses and delivery vehicles onto Queen Street in the morning and afternoon rush hours. Post CRL, the council could look at making Queen Street bus only, with a view of eventually pedestrianising it.
As for Mayoral Drive, I haven’t been around there, but looking at Google Maps, it isn’t that great imo. However, it does have an important role and it is to reduce traffic on Queen Street. As Patrick said, stage two never happens, whether it is roading projects or public transport projects. The cheapest parts get built first, however, the more expensive (and important) parts have a tendency of not getting built, or being pushed back for a few decades. Although this example is a roading project, the Wellington Urban Motorway was never completed, only the cheap bits were. Now, with only three lanes in the Terrace Tunnel, and only two in the Mt Victoria tunnel, most cross towners in Wellington go through the CBD, which isn’t that great as the waterfront is somewhat severed by a six lane arterial road, with long traffic phases. Another example of this happening in Wellington is that the underground rail extension to Courtney Place never happened as it was relatively expensive.
Richard it isn’t that they just do the cheap bits, it’s more that they do the road capacity increase part, justified as emptying the current route, but then don’t get round to banking that benefit by downscaling or closing the old route.
Ok, more understandable in the 70s when traffic demand was rising year on year like Transit demand is now, but we absolutely no longer have that condition.
Wellington perhaps offers an exception to this in Lampton Quay, especially compared to Queen St, as it now is in effect pretty much what the Americans would call a ‘Transit Mall’ ie almost reserved for peds and bus, not quite, but nearly. What Queen St should be, only I’d prefer Light Rail and peds, like inner Melbourne, but that’s another conversation.
The world certainly looks a lot better since they invented colour in 1974!
Hooray for Calvin and Hobbes references. http://i.imgur.com/0j5C4.gif
I went to Shantytown outside of Greymouth with my 4 yo last week – she is genuinely convinced that the Olden Days were in black and white … I may have inadvertently recalled Calvin & Hobbes in my explanation of the photos …
Looking back at these plans reminds us that planning is as subject to fashion as any other endeavor. This plan has the roads, pedestrian malls, waterfront monstrosities, and large-scale mentality that wreaked havoc from the 50s to the early 70s. What fads are we pushing today simply because everyone is doing it? Are we any better than they were? Is it possible to know? (Please respond in 250 words or less, A4 sheet, font size 11-12, due 8 am Monday.)
Absolutely correct. But today’s fashions are one hell of an improvement over those of the Motordom era, in fact are largely a reaction to its failures.
As with the potential for all our alternative networks-rail,bus,cycle,walking, I think the city centre has huge potential. Viaduct Harbour, Wynyard Quarter done some great things. This post a real good one though. Personally think improvements are done in focussed areas so at least parts get a full on benefit, rather than a 5 out of 10 and widespread. CRL stations will have a great impact .
I guess it goes to show how transport options really affect the entire public realm so much and how this hasn’t been valued in decisions. I guess if we maximised alternative modes from the start , maximising a rapid network and limited car access it would be a different Auckland and all NZ really. Photos back in 1910 from memory that I have seen also interesting, it actually looked quite good Queen St down to one wharf, lots of people on wharf the odd horse and cart and lots of people walking. It looked like the place to be. If we sort our transport out the better public realm everywhere
There are some good bits in there. p78 has a fantastic quote that wouldn’t see today. “In a rational life style, some people could find contentment working moderately and then sitting by the street–and talking, thinking, drawing, painting, scribbling or making love in a suitably discreet way.” – John Kenneth Galbraith http://imgur.com/A1a2ucK