Today’s ‘on this day’ post comes from 2012.

The additional southbound lanes over the Victoria Park Viaduct, made possible through the construction of the Victoria Park Tunnel, open to vehicles today. John Roughan’s NZ Herald editorial can barely contain his excitement at this prospect, largely because (he hopes) it will get rid of queue jumpers holding up traffic through St Mary’s Bay. While I must admit a small part of me is hoping for the motorway opening to be yet another congestion catastrophe, this is generally a motorway project that I have supported because it is aimed at eliminating a bottleneck, rather than simply adding capacity and creating a bottleneck elsewhere in the system.

One of the biggest potential benefits from this project was highlighted in the comments section of my previous post on the motorway opening: that connections between the northern motorway and the Port would become more attractive, removing cross-CBD traffic from Customs, Quay and Fanshawe streets. In many ways, this benefit of the project is similar to how the biggest benefits the Waterview Connection proposal will bring is through a reduction in local traffic on roads like Mt Albert, Blockhouse Bay, Sandringham, Dominion and Richardson roads.

While Google Maps suggests that someone travelling between the North Shore and the Port/Parnell area would utilise the motorway system, rather than travelling through the heart of town, congestion on and around the viaduct (back to the harbour bridge for southbound traffic, the incredibly slow ramp signal for northbound traffic before it joins SH1) means that much of the traffic takes the red route instead:When the Victoria Park Tunnel is open to its full complement of three lanes for northbound traffic, and any teething issue for southbound vehicles have been resolved, we should see a reduction in through traffic away from the red route (and hopefully also away from Customs Street). However, as with the Waterview Connection, the Hobsonville deviation and the Manukau Connection, the reduction in vehicles on local roads is only likely to be temporary – thanks to induced demand. If there’s way less traffic on Quay Street and Fanshawe Street, then vehicles using other congested routes will shift back to these freer flowing streets. Motorway traffic may also shift back onto the local roads as some people find them to be faster. Over time, if we don’t make some interventions, we could end up back where we started – but now with a congested wider motorway and congested inner-city streets. Such an outcome would undermine what should be one of the biggest benefits of the Vic Park Tunnel project: the removal of traffic from CBD streets to free up more space for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport.

However, if we’re smart we can avoid such an outcome. And, for once, I’m fairly confident that we’ll be able to actually achieve some real benefits if we move quickly. The City Centre Master Plan proposes to significantly increase pedestrian priority along Quay Street by reducing vehicle capacity – exactly the kind of intervention that’s necessary to dissuade vehicles back onto Quay Street once it’s a bit quieter:It’s also a golden opportunity to get rid of the horrific Hobson Street viaduct:Fortunately, this is also given consideration in the City Centre Master Plan:Completion of the Vic Park Tunnel may also be a golden opportunity to look at reallocating a bit of roadspace to buses along Fanshawe Street so we can actually complete the Northern Busway. At the moment we find ourselves in the stupid situation of having citybound buses take as long to complete the last few hundred metres of their journey as they did to get between Constellation and Akoranga stations – something we spent hundreds of millions on speeding up, to go and undermine our investment simply because we can’t be bothered putting bus lanes along remaining sections of city streets.

The key point is that we have to move quickly in advancing these projects to take advantage of the ‘window of opportunity’ to really lock in the benefits of the Victoria Park Tunnel project. If we stuff around for a few years then we will lose this window, and implementing projects that reallocate roadspace away from vehicles will be that much harder.

Update:

While there has been little progress ‘on the ground’ when it comes to reallocating roadspace on Auckland’s ‘east-west’ city centre streets to fully take advantage of what the Victoria Park Tunnel provided, the “CEWT Study” released by Auckland Transport last year proposed an exciting and much more sensible future for all these streets, with Victoria becoming a walking and cycling focused linear park, Wellesley becoming a bus corridor, Quay become a pedestrian focused boulevard and Customs… well, seemingly doing everything.

Yet during some of the debates about Queen Elizabeth II square it appeared as though there are some strong supporters of retaining a car focus to the city centre, even on Quay Street. Crazy ideas, like undergrounding the road at a truly massive cost, were also bandied around. How about we just let the motorway network do its job at moving people past the city centre?

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23 comments

  1. It seems like many people still struggle to realise the flip side of induced demand. In other words, when you remove road space the traffic really just disappears. Turn Quay St into a two lane road (one each way) and after a week or two the traffic will just disappear.

    1. I think our entire waterfront is just a jewel and would be the envy of the world if we sorted our transport out fully. Quay St and Tamaki Drive should just be PT, Bike, and Walking. The residential give a one way access. This is all hard to picture now without our transport functional. Then long term , 2035 plan look closely at light rail, maybe waterfront Auckland can help fund that and bring forward even if fully doesn’t stack up and linking to Queen St-Dominion rd plans?Wynyard Quarter links?

      1. Likewise Wellington’s waterfront could be a jewel if it wasn’t severed from the city by a horrible main traffic thoroughfare (and if the council stopped flogging bits of it off for office developments). Waterloo quay could (should) be converted to an at-grade heavy rail corridor for the much-needed ‘Wellington CRL’. This would then be covered over to first-floor level and landscaped, thereby creating a raised linear park for walkers and cyclists, and a rail tunnel for PT. A fantastic new station-precinct could be created alongside Frank Kitts Park with a pedestrian plaza linking city to sea above it. Such a station would give easy access to Civic Square, Lambton Quay south, Cable-car, Michael Fowler Centre, Lower Cuba Street etc, as well as bringing rail 1Km closer to the rest of the city even if it went no further!
        All we have to do to achieve this is replace the present government, NZTA, most of Greater Wellington Regional Council, and half of Wellington City Council with people of vision.

        1. All sound like great ideas for Wellington. Let’s improve our transport and amenity all round our cities. Remove cars and trucks from jewel areas. Are we crazy these harbour waterfronts are awesome, make them places so people want to go there all the time.

      2. You’re right but Quay St is blighted by the Ports of Auckland. And even now Queens Wharf, that was 100% accessible to the public except for the ferry terminal is slowly being closed off to accommodate cruise liners, and bizarrely buses and taxis. The ultimate solution in freeing up the waterfront like Sydney for example lies in Auckland Council investing in the Northland Port at Marsden Point, transferring jobs up there and closing the abomination that is the container terminal at Auckland. Imagine the reduction in traffic around the bottom of Auckland if that went.

    2. Agreed Waspman. Also the Marsden.point rail link with urgency.
      That is less approx 200 nautical miles by freighters and clears harbour also probably a lot cleaner and cheaper for shipping industry. Put the ocean liners at freighter port and only have PT, walk and cycle at waterfront and walk only on wharves. Let’s go back to 1900. Plan a fully enclosed sports stadium over the rail lines (direct access crowds via train network and they are in town anyway to utilise rest of day), where ugly,and west half quay st. Eden Park?

  2. How it pisses me off seeing trucks form the north shore going through Quay st instead of using the motorway to go to the port. They should ban heavy vehicles from the waterfront why is it so fucking hard? Auckland must be the only city in the world that allows through heavy vehicles in the city centre.

    1. Pity Quay St wasn’t put on a diet the day the Grafton port link opened. $200m donation to the truck lobby to give them non-stop access from the port to the north and they still want 4 lanes along Quay St. Cue Brewer and the eastern suburbs crowd’s howls of outrage when it does finally get pedestrian/cycle priority.

        1. Just narrow enough to make it now unpleasant to cycle on, but not narrow enough to stop the trucks it seens

    1. It would be classic Kiwi dis-Ingenuity if they build the Basin Reserve Flyover just as they tear down the Hobson St viaduct!

  3. The worst road bottlenecks are the unused passenger sides of cars driven by single occupant commuters. Building, leasing, sharing, owning and driving highway capable single-width vehicles is the least expensive and evasive way to mitigate highway and city traffic congestion. It’a far more efficient parking, too, and single-width and shorter vehicles parked to the curb eliminate bike dooring.

    1. Better still, get the S.O.D’s out of their S.O.V’s and on to B I C Y C L E S. Truly the best way to mitigate highway and city traffic congestion, as a growing number of us already doing.

      1. Yes. Single-width vehicle classes, motorized or not, are far less likely to create congestion than side-by-side seated transport devices. Still, if a peddling device had side by side seating like cars do, it would be just as bad if not worse for congestion than cars with side by side seating.

        1. Take it easy, Trev. Allow logic, reason, and innovation on the blog. Bicycles and motorcycles were once new ideas, too, but certainly have a place in transport blog discussions. The reason they’re good for congestion is because they are narrow. Same goes for ultra-narrow cars.

  4. there’s a bit of a disconnect in thinking here (and it applies equally to the North/Northwestern corridor), among other cost factors RUC incentivises taking the shortest route between two points so Quay/Customs will always be the most attractive route for commercial users in particular, field of dreams doesn’t apply where it’s a less attractive alternative

    not excusing, just explaining

    1. we are always told the driver’s wages are what keeps the world’s economy on the edge of collapse so why don’t they take the quickest route?

  5. sure, but there’s actual time and perceived time, I expect that most people would think that Fanshawe/Quay is going to be faster than the motorway connection

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