Last year Auckland Transport started consultation on improvements to the iconic Franklin Rd that is in some serious need of improvement – in part due to the damage caused by the roots of the trees that give it its character.
Back in October AT presented two different options for the street and one aspect that was common among them was to push the kerb out past the trees to better protect their roots however that caused its own issues. The two options are below
Like many others we felt there were a number of issues with both of these designs and that AT could do much better.
AT have now released the results of the feedback they received which falls under 12 key issues.
Cycling – There was significant support for cycling facilities – 18% of responses raised cycling as an issue, 6% of those questioned the need for cycling facilities.
Pedestrians – Catering for pedestrians was a significant issue, with the safety of pedestrians a key focus.
Speed – Reducing the posted speed limit was suggested by a number of people with either 30kph or 40kph suggested. The speed limit on Ponsonby Road has been lowered to 40kph and is perceived to be working well.
Parking – Retention of parking between the trees was supported by the majority of people.
Carriageway configuration – Carriageway configuration includes the cross-section, or how the road looks from one side to the other. Key themes were:
- Retaining parking between the trees.
- Ensuring safety.
- Suggestions for alternative configurations.
Options presented in November 2014 were considered to create safety issues.
Detailed design/services – Comments relating to the detailed design of the final option included:
- Improvements to the road surface to reduce noise.
- Undergrounding the power.
- Ensuring raising the pavement (if this is the design) does not increase runoff into adjacent properties.
Flush median – There was significant support to maintain the flush median, primarily for safety reasons.
Trees – The London Plane trees are recognised as being iconic and important to protect and retain. Experience from overseas was also provided to demonstrate the resilience of the trees
Footpath/berm – Most people preferred low growing native plants. Other suggestions included:
- community garden,
- fruit trees,
- flowers
Intersections – Safety at intersections was raised, in particular the Wellington Street intersection.
Ensuring safe traffic flow through Franklin Road is critical. At peak times bottlenecks are experienced:
- turning right from Wellington Street onto Franklin Road,
- turning from Scotland Street onto College Hill,
- the Victoria Park New World where the reduction of road width (due to entry / exit barriers) prevents cars moving to the left for turning into side streets or Victoria Street West.
Franklin Road residents suggested a roundabout or traffic lights for the Wellington Street and Franklin Road intersection. It was decided that traffic lights could increase street noise for local residents and impede traffic flow, so options for a roundabout needs further exploration.
Streetscape – The visual appearance, symmetry and iconic views of the wide street are valued by many. Both original options were considered to narrow the view corridor and diminish the “beautiful and wide boulevard that has become so iconic in Auckland”.
There’s also a desire to consider street furniture such as rubbish bins and seating.
New World entry – While not a road intersection, the entry to New World was raised as a safety issue.
Following the feedback and further technical assessments AT have come up with two revised options that they are progressing. The biggest change is that AT are looking at keeping parking between the trees – although presumably on a more controlled basis than currently exists so as to achieve the aim of protecting the roots. Both options also now contain a flush median.
In the first option there are painted cycle lanes on each side leaving the footpaths for people.
In the second option parking on the downhill side is pushed further out and the cycle lane is raised above the road. For uphill, riders share the foothpath with pedestrians.
The key issue with both options remains that any on road cycle facility would exist outside of parking which will always lead to concerns. In other locations I’d probably be more critical of AT for this but given trees can’t be moved – and removing any more parking than currently planned would start a local revolt – it’s probably the best we can hope for. It’s worth noting that these plans result in the removal about 40% of the current parking on the street. As such AT will include Franklin Rd in the Freemans Bay residents parking scheme which will be rolled out later this year.
Overall it seems AT have improved the design however a combination of the two still seems like the best outcome. By retaining the recessed parking on both sides like in option 1 and probably narrowing the median a little then they could have that downhill Copenhagen lane replicated uphill.
AT have also given an update about the intersection Wellington St. They say that traffic lights wouldn’t work as they would be too obscured by the trees until drivers were too close to the intersection. Instead they say they think they can fit in a roundabout which is shown in the image below. They do say there’s much more work to do to improve it for walkers and cyclists but that they think it’s possible.
Overall it seems like there are a few good improvements but that there are also a few more to go.
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Hopefully the roundabout will be painted only and not a raised item.
What about getting rid of the cycle lane and painting angle parking which would suit the residents better?
I like you’re thinking – you may be onto a solution to Auckland’s traffic problems:
If we cut down the trees and level the houses on the north side we can put in another 6 lanes, and if we do the same on the south side we can build a parking lot up that side and finally the area will pick up and make it worth it to travel to. Once we’ve proven that works, we can do the same with with Ponsonby Road, Dominion, Mount Eden, Queen Street… The density of roads in the CBD means it can just be flattened to accommodate the road widening.
Eventually there will be nowhere worth going, so traffic will drop! It’s brilliant!
Once everyone has stopped driving anywhere and everything has been razed, we’ll be free to start over – I propose a dense street grid, Light Rail and separated cycles lanes, activated podiums, high density and strict design standards.
It’s crazy, but I think you’re onto something.
Not even funny. Still looking each day for the thousands of cyclists supposedly out there wanting all these expensive lanes. Cant see them. Auckland is not Amsterdam. Auckland is hilly. The next generation dont even know how to cycle. Their parents drive them all to school. So how will that change?
Ricardo. The reason you don’t see those cyclists on the road yet is because they still perceive it is too unsafe to cycle in Auckland. With protected lanes, people will feel safer getting on their bikes to go places and the culture will slowly change. This is going to be slow progress in our auto dominated culture, but surely that does not make it not worth doing? As you say, a lot of kids aren’t currently cycling – but if we have protected lanes – well, wouldn’t that be something?
Your next point about Auckland being hilly is laughable. Seattle and San Francisco are both very hilly, and both have thriving cycle cultures and relatively high mode share. This proves it is possible, but your point is ridiculous because a good chunk of the population spends its time in gyms climbing all kinds of hills on machines several times a week. I’m pretty sure they’d all power up a road like Franklin Rd no sweat. Well, a little sweat. But to me, the choice is simple. I cycle Auckland most days and I’m not even super fit. No excuses.
May I also point out – the ‘expensive lanes’ you speak of, consist of a bit of paint on the road. Hardly expensive. Even building protected kerb level barriers doesn’t come in too expensive. I’m fairly sure the most expensive lanes we all pay for are the wide motorway ones we drive on.
The next generation doesn’t know how to drive, either. Better stop building roads, stat!
More seriously, I wish people would stop repeating this canard about Auckland’s hills as if they were impassable mountain ranges. 1) If hills are death to a cycling culture, how do you explain San Francisco? 2) Yes, we have more hills than Amsterdam or Copenhagen. We also have better weather. 3) Even if our hills were all the size of the Himalayas, funnily enough, there are plenty of flat bits in between.
The’re not that expensive when incorporating into a road that is being re-done as this one. Just better design of our traditional construction. Also we are not going to see massive numbers straight away, as we need a network of safe cycle lanes before this happens, unfortunately we don’t have anywhere near the excessive new road budget to spend to get this network immediately, therefore a piecemeal approach is required.
I am sitting at work on Franklin Road, with the LED lights from bike being charged by USB ports on the computer.
Very pleasant bicycle ride in this morning, even if I did miss the 7.45 Devonport ferry by about 30 seconds.
When getting coffee in the morning, riding up/down Franklin road or going for lunch time walks, always strikes me just how many people are walking and cycling compared with cars. The cars obviously take a lot more space and highly visible, but quite a stream of people. I suspect a lot of cyclists prefer Franklin to College Hill road when cycling into the CBD, as College Hill road is very wide and fast, hence more dangerous for cyclists.
Overall, I like the new design. The cycle lane on the way down will be heavily used, but I do worry a bit about each intersection; at the moment, I have hands on brakes all the way down as you get people pulling out of side streets. Also see bunches of young kids going to Freemans Bay school; there are pedestrian crossings, but around Wellington street intersection, cars come uphill/downhill very fast, and people jump out of Wellington street/England st. Having a 40km/h limit might help.
The roundabout might slow uphill/downhill traffic, but more people will rat-run down Collingwood and around Wellington, so I can see potential negative consequences of a roundabout.
One way to think about it: how much cars drove from the North Shore to the city before the harbour bridge was built?
I don’t know, but probably not a lot, as you’d have to drive 50 km around the harbour.
So back then you could argue that it was not worth it to build a bridge, as nobody is driving between the Shore and the city!
You can also look up what the reaction was when they were building the Northern Busway, and if there are actually people on the buses on that busway today. (answer: back then it was described as a white elephant. Today there’s a lot of buses on it, and they’re full)
That’s how things work. We will only figure out if bicycle infrastructure is useful, after we have finished building a proper network. And that’s still many years away.
It is very simple isn’t it? What we feed grows. We exclusively fed the infrastructure for cars for 60 years and everyone drove.
If we feed cycling it will grow. We might never be Amsterdam at 40% cycling mode share (though if hills are the only issue, why do Christchurch, Hamilton and Palmerston North not have a 40% mode share like Amsterdam? Could it be a lack of infrastructure?) but we could be the equivalent of hilly Swiss cities that have a 10+% mode share, like Basel or Bern or the 6% of Zurich.
That would be a massive achievement and would make a big difference to the transport picture in Auckland. Especially if combined with a 30% mode share for PT.
Well done, you must have won your bet to see how many unsubstantiated and inaccurate statements you could get in post.
Do you actually bother doing any reading or research on these matters before posting? Doesn’t seem like it.
This town in Norway is hilly too, but every problem has a solution 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j1PgmMbug8&feature=youtu.be
Not saying Auckland needs these, but they would help on some hills!
Very good David, only of course Ricardo is right, it’s not funny because it’s too accurate. As so many cities, especially in the US, did exactly that: completely destroyed their hearts in order to speed drivers there only to discover that once they’d achieved that there was quite literally no city left, just roads and parking. Ricardo is just having a little trouble leaving this model behind, be gentle.
No need to patronize me. I’m just pointing out the ’emporer’s new clothes’ angle in all of this. Only the hardy will ride cycles in all weathers in Auckland. The Playstation generation never will. They can’t even get off their bums long enough to catch a bus. Just stating the obvious. There is a whole new generation out there who even struggle to walk. That’s a reality.
Rubbish. There are a lot of active kids out there. I was at an awards ceremony today celebrating 150+ Orewa Surf Lifesaving juniors who have been active all summer. Stop using media bites to paint every kid as a lazy so and so.
And only the (fool)hardy pedestrian will walk in all weathers?
Your point being?
We shouldn’t bother providing footpaths or cycle facilities here or anywhere else ‘cos they’re not going to be used 100% of the time?
And the roads will be?
Seems a specious argument to me.
Ricardo, this “new generation out there who even struggle to walk” will surely be no better off if we keep spending on roads and not investing in infrastructure to encourage them to walk/cycle. We’re trying to turn the tide here! Not accept the status quo, as you seem to be doing. It’s such a defeatist attitude you have, disguised as being ‘realistic’.
Build it and they will come.
ps. I’m not at all “hardy” and I cycle all weather here. Just about to buy a cool new rain cape, in fact. Cycling is just another way to get around and you don’t have to be a lycra clad fitness nut to do it in Auckland. You should try it sometime!
“Flush median – There was significant support to maintain the flush median, primarily for safety reasons.” – is there any science/research behind that? As it stands having it or not makes no difference to the cyclig
Anyway, I look at the pictures and can’t see how it can really be much better than the two proposed options. With the trees and retaining the parking it makes it difficult to really change the basics of the street. If it were possible it makes the most sense to have both lanes outside the trees, but I worry about visibility due to trees – having bikes on the same side will have greater visibility.
Three questions:
is it purely paint for the cycle lane or is there a surface difference? The image makes it look like a different surface.
Is there any consideration for a ‘soft’ separation – a speed bump of sorts that cars can drive over (slowly) but will ‘hit’ when they stray out of their lane?
How are intersections handled? Raised pedestrian/cycle tables, surely?
At one if the local consultations, I was advised that AT studies showed that local residents used about 55% if the parking, and commuters used the other 45%.
When the parking scheme eliminates commuters, there will be excess capacity so no need for angle parking.
This so so much more constructive that David’s comment it’s actually made me smile. Fancy that- actually answering the question concisely instead of ridicule and sarcasm.
Interesting, and at the same time we have a Councll obsessed with increased urban densification, so there will be more resident vehicles needing parking over time.
In many other cities citizens don’t even need cars, the public transport is so efficient. Increasing density and improving public transport go hand in hand. Combined with car share services, which are being looked into here, this will be the ideal scenario for future generations of Aucklanders living in higher density areas who only need cars for occasional trips.
Just a thought on the Copenhagen lane / on-road cycle lane option.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the downhill side closer to the road, as cyclists would be moving closer to car speed, whereas on the uphill side we tend to move slower, a bit more zig-zaggy in motion and therefore would be better protected by being further away from large, moving metal objects?
I can just see someone boosting down the hill in the left-hand Copenhagen lane, getting knocked off their bike at 50km/h by some resident pulling into their driveway whose vision was blocked by trees and/or parked cars and/or rubbish bins.
(Excuse double post until admin deletes other one(s)- I dont know how to computer today)
“Flush median – There was significant support to maintain the flush median, primarily for safety reasons.” – is there any science/research behind that? As it stands having it or not makes no difference to the cycling either way.
Anyway, I look at the pictures and can’t see how it can really be much better than the two proposed options. With the trees and retaining the parking it makes it difficult to really change the basics of the street. If it were possible it makes the most sense to have both lanes outside the trees, but I worry about visibility due to trees – having bikes on the same side will have greater visibility.
Three questions:
is it purely paint for the cycle lane or is there a surface difference? The image makes it look like a different surface.
Is there any consideration for a ‘soft’ separation – a speed bump of sorts that cars can drive over (slowly) but will ‘hit’ when they stray out of their lane?
How are intersections handled? Raised pedestrian/cycle tables, surely?
Flush medians achieve several things:
1. Give vehicles somewhere to sit in the middle of the road when making right hand turns without impeding following traffic.
2. Separates on-coming traffic so it should be less likely to stray into each others’ path.
3. Separates on-coming traffic so drivers feel more secure and drive faster.
4. Gives pedestrians a false sense of security while stranded in the middle of the road.
5. Takes space that otherwise could be put to other uses; wider footpaths, cyclelanes, tree zones, parking.
The ‘significant support’ will be from homeowners wanting to turn into their driveways and AT’s traffic engineers who seem to be unable to cope with the thought of a street without them.
I’m trying to work on my pragmatism, but if we lost the median and most of the parking on one side then there would be space for fully separated bidirectional lanes on one side, two lanes of traffic and parking on one side. We’d end up with ‘wasted’ space between the trees on one side that would have to be used up by cafes or community gardens but I feel like it would survive. I’d even put up with occasional cycle lane chicanes to squeeze in a few extra parks.
Why is it that we need medians in the city where traffic is limited to 50kph and on average is considerably slower than that but it’s ok to have no separation on the open road where routine speeds are more than twice as much? I get the turning argument, but if the alternative is much more efficient use of road space and better catering for alternative modes, then I think we have to consider replacing medians with double yellow lines. There are good examples of this on some narrow Wellington roads. Sure they’re probably out of necessity, but they work fine.
Flush medians also let drivers safely overtake cyclists. If you have a separate cycle lane then this isn’t an issue, but that does of course take more road space.
Yes raised medians are more restricting. At least with cycle lanes and a median the lane is reduced to a reasonable width encouraging drivers to keep control of their vehicles and retain a more predictable line, and of course the people on bikes have somewhere to be.
I’m enjoying my few metres of painted lane on Richmond Rd. Of course in makes no sense that it stops and starts where it does, as there is no parking and the same available road width for considerable stretches at both ends of it….
they run out of paint?
Perhaps, on a short piece of road like this, the idea of overtaking is wrong? What’s wrong with a little patience?
Flush medians on this street doesn’t make sense to me, the space can be used more efficiently. If we lower the speed to 40km/hr, and remove the flush median I believe the street could actually make things safer, cars turning into driveways will slow the rest of the traffic trying to use Franklin road as a rat run.
And yes that roundabout?? What the…I thought we were past designing streets just for cars 🙁
Flush median – “primarily for safety reasons” is there any evidence.
On the link below I tried find safety reasons based on lane width in urban street. For cars there the risk of death is close to zero.
http://hamiltonurbanblog.co.nz/?s=LANE+WIDTH
“In a reduced-speed urban environment … the risk of lane-departure crashes is less. The design objective is often how to best distribute limited cross-sectional width to maximize safety for a wide variety of roadway users”
“Relationship of Lane width to Safety for Urban and Suburban Arterials, There was no change in fatal and injury crashes”
Not being a traffic engineer, may be I’m looking in wrong places, If anyone has safety evidence for putting in flash median in a urban area could you post a link.
There was a report by Roger Dunn (an Auckland uni professor) that looked at flush median safety. It found ironically, that narrower flush medians are safer (at least from a car perspective). Presumably because they are less likely to encourage speeding on the road itself or when passing someone waiting to turn right?
However, as I point out in my separate comment, I have some reluctant sympathy for keeping a reasonable flush median if we cannot in some other way prevent drivers from using the cycle lanes for the same overtaking – which is going to be hard, seeing that they cycle lanes need to be traversable unless we chuck out all the parking. I’d hate for every right-turning car & impatient driver combo to immediately become a dangerous, moving cycle pinch point. As best practice says: design the road to be safe, don’t expect drivers to be safe (as a response to “we should enforce things so drivers don’t go into the cycle lanes” – which is true, but also misses the point).
Hello Max
Just to being picky, “safer for car” did the report separate risk for Auto insurer from risk of actual ACC claim.
NZTA Research Report 312: “Safety implications of flush medians in Auckland City: further analysis” – http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/research/reports/312/
which refers to NZTA Research Report 233: “Safety implications of flush medians in Auckland City” – http://nzta.govt.nz/resources/research/reports/233/
The jury did seem inconclusive about the overall benefits of flush medians; there were a lot of site-specific factors that meant not all sites studied had improved results. Like Max, I have some sympathy for their benefits (and we can install refuge islands there on a regular basis to help peds too); just need to make sure that the design is well thought out in terms of visibility, widths, etc.
Agree. Context of location, traffic volumes, residential or industrial etc is all important. Me? I hate them. Have nearly been run down, while waiting to cross on a flush median, by a driver overtaking another car.
Why not ditch the flush median and have a cycle lane downhill, on the inside of the parking? Creates friction for traffic speeds as well.
roads without flush medians are also much better for motorbikes and scooters as we can pass on the right of cars without crossing the centre line. Flush medians are just an abomination. Don’t know of any other country where they are used this way.
Thanks Max and GlenK for the references to reports on flush medians, very help.
Roundabouts are only ever good for car traffic. They’re rubbish for pedestrians. Looking at the above image, if you’re walking from Wellington into England, you have to go some 20 m up/down Franklin to get to the crossing point. This tends to make a bunch of folk ignore the official crossing points and cross straight through, which can be dangerous.
Roundabouts almost always encourage faster driving at the intersection. Making it a 4-way intersection (to reduce speeds on Franklin at the intersection) would be a safer solution is my guess?
Yes roundabouts are about flow. horrible for us other users. Why are they talking about traffic lights here anyway; I go through there a lot and there doesn’t seem to be a problem. Are there a lot of accidents on record?
I believe they are concerned about delays in traffic turning right from Wellington St (at evening peak mainly). Of course if you improve this you are just going to get more cars taking this route to the motorway as the ramp meters at Wellington St onramp are slow. So a terrible idea on so many levels.
What would be good is peak time clearway at the top of Wellington St so 020 isn’t held up so 2 people can park their cars there.
What would be better is getting the 020 completely out of there. Give it a rational route; 020x
Completely agree.
Off topic now, but if the 020 were to be removed it would create a big black hole of PT for an area with quite a lot of apartments and terraced housing. Howe Street being as steep as it is can be a bit of a barrier.
No, not a lot of apartments, in fact no apartments, unless you mean the Star Flats, until the top of Howe St which is so close to K Rd that those people can be reasonably expected to walk to K to use buses [and a rerouted 020 could use K Rd rather than Hopetoun]. AGGS girls can walk up to K too. There are quite a few terrace houses on this route however and this is an issue, and some low density elderly homes.. But I think it is a really good aim to get the Otto and indeed every bus off Franklin. Any route using Franklin falls apart each December when the hoards come to gawk at lights. The trees are better off without buses pruning them, and, in general it is better to separate cycling and bus routes into couplets, eg Carlton Gore and Kyhber Pass.
Or have a stop at Hopetoun and Howe before the overbridge.
Yes I meant the apartments in the Freemans Park area which include the star blocks as well as terraced housing on Wellington and side streets. Of course the apartments at the top of Howe Street would never bother with the 020. Ironically it’s quicker and flatter to walk from there into down if only it was such an abysmal awful and car dominated way into the city.
To clarify – the uphill path is not shared, but would be a footpath next to a cycle path. CAA has been pushing for a bit of a vertical separation between the two, but that doesn’t seem to be shown (may still be possible, if that is the option they go for).
The Copenhagen lane with a mountable kerb is something I suggested to AT to review after seeing something similar in Perth, and seeing a mountable kerb cycle lane design in the NACTO bikeway design guidelines.
Re the flush median – one reason why I personally am sceptical about removing it is that without it, we will often see drivers stop to turn right and have to wait for a while, with cars behind them. Not a problem? Not really – until you realise what the rear drivers will do is simply swerve around the waiting car by going into the cycle lane…
Re the roundabout – I understand that AT are considering that because side street traffic can have some severe issues getting out there. That applies to cyclists too, from my experience. As long as it is a single-lane roundabout, I think this could work – using a roundabout can help reduce the through road / downhill speeds that cars make through here, and that worked pretty well for peds and cyclists at Campbell Road / Onehunga Mall. As long as none of the approaches ever gets two-laned!
The “overtaking drivers going into the cycle lane” applies even if it is a raised Copenhagen lane, because due to those car parks, the lane would have to have mountable kerbs (even if their cross-sections doesn’t show it).
Max if they are going to set ped and bike crossings back from the desire line at the roundabout hadn’t they better have the status of zebras?
What are they here, raised beds but without priority?
If there is no advantage in using them many will simply take the direct route.
With some tweaks that last design looks like a good compromise, and this is a road I use often as a driver, on my bike, and walking.
The trees mean it is a very appealing route for Active modes, especially in summer and heading up hill.
Hi Patrick – I think they should make them zebras yes. On that route, they might even meet that dreaded warrant minimum!
At the moment, they seem to be the kind of raised table where pedestrians have to give way to cars that we were joking about on Twitter yesterday.
I think both cross sections for the cycle lanes could work well, even the first one, if it got some Copenhagen action. Should be possible now that car parks are back to being solidly between the trees…
The main issue I see is around those pedestrian crossings. I’ve walked that everyday heading towards the Northern Express. It really needs to be zebras!
“If there is no advantage in using them many will simply take the direct route”
Exactly, this happens all over town. The very new pram crossing in Pollen St near Crummer is about 3m down the road. No one but someone with an actual pram is going to use it. Do the engineers who plan these ever actual walk the site before doing the plans?
Same with proposed raised beds for Ponsonby Rd side roads. These engineers clearly do not identify at all with people out of cars. That is the only possible conclusion to draw from these designs. If the Ped route is not on the desire line they are wasting their time. Do they never walk? Offsetting a raised bed down a slope is just plain stupid; they are concerned for the driver behind the turning vehicle, they want that turning vehicle off the main road so as not to slow the flow on Ponsonby Rd. Whereas they should be more concerned with calming that traffic and keeping drivers aware of the ever growing numbers of pedestrians there.
Culture trumping policy again.
Fully agree about single lane roundabouts from a cycling perspective.. though to be fair this is maybe a “confident cycling” perspective?
There are a number of advantages, like not generally having to stop, which is a pain with clips / cleats.. also (I’m not sure of the research on this point) the risk of side-on impacts seems to be reduced..side-on impacts is something many cyclists worry about at most cross-roads (traffic lights or not), and rightly so. My experience from cycling in the UK in urban areas with many single lane roundabouts was entirely trouble free.
This one is going to be a pain in the arse going downhill if you stick to the path, you go from having the priority as traffic to having to use that uncertain sort-of Zebra and mixing with pedestrians. I’ll probably move onto the road at that point…
I go down Rosedale Rd everyday now on a bike and never use the cycle bypasses set back at the roundabouts purely because they aren’t zebra crossings and I need to look over my shoulder while cycling and low speed which is awkward and much slower.
After the bypass the cycle way remerges with traffic into a cycle lane with zero protection, so anyone cutting the exit corner of the roundabout will come up behind you illegally and possibly knock you down.
All and all the roundabout bypasses are 80% there but the other 20% provide all the priority and safety. The existing 80% just helps motorists not have to deal with people on bikes.
One of the key problems in our roundabout design is that by the time we have added double circulatory lanes, multiple approach lanes, large radii for trucks etc… we usually have no space left over for more than skinny, contorted shared paths at the edge (forget even the idea of bike paths separated from footpaths around such a roundabout).
At one if the local consultations, the Arborist agreed it would be good to have at least a 2m radius around the trees where cars do not drive.
Will the second option have 2m of pavers between the tree and the uphill vehicle lane? If not, it doesn’t seem like a good solution of the trees. If it does, you might as well put a bike lane in that 2m of waste space.
Will there be bollards to prevent cars parking like this? https://twitter.com/brendan_on_twit/status/572512058002018304
Well, isn’t that nice. Meanwhile, out here in the sticks, I cant even get the potholes filled, again. The corrugations make it impossible to stay on my side of the road. The ruts tramline the car every which way but the way I want to go, the stream that feeds into the Kaipara is full of lime and rock dust silt and I have to scrub the dust crust of the lemons with a pot scourer.
The roads of Auckland are paved with gold.
My gold.
“The roads of Auckland are paved with gold.
My gold.”
That’s simply not true. The roads of the sparsely populated former Rodney District are the reason that it joined the super city with the highest level of per capita debt and lowest level of assets. The rest of Auckland is paying for you.
Like hell you are. According to the local board, of the $62 million in rates collected only $21 million is allocated for use in the Rodney area via the local board. The roads are not the reason we joined the thuper city. We didn’t want to join.
Our rates have jumped from $1600 to $2200 a year yet the roads have never been worse. Maintenance has all but disappeared. It beggers belief that anyone could do a worse job than Rodney District Council but there it is.
The local board does not pay for the roads, AT do.
You are welcome to leave, please do your best to make it happen. The rest of Auckland would be better off for it.
Are you saying that your rates or taxes are subsidising Auckland? That’s simply not true, in fact the opposite is true x1000.
Need to head back to school and do some simple accounting me thinks 🙂 Unfortunately your argument fails as the opposite is actually true, we are subsiding your route, so my gold is paying for you to have a road.
Feel free to enlighten me on where the other $40 odd mil is going then.
Tony, if my local Board got 100% of the rates we pay it would have hundreds of millions, you do understand that the Council is way way more than the local board don’t you? That proportion of rates returned to your local board must be by far the highest in the city, and that’s a function of sparse population. Me and my many more and very close neighbours each pay at least 3x what you do and our local board receives a similar sum to yours, or perhaps less (will check). With many more people to serve. The rest goes to running the whole city. Including rural roads, etc, etc. half of all rates go to AT, for example.
In general your rates are split into the following categories, 33% goes towards transport, which includes road maintenance, public transport, footpaths, and road education. Then 28% goes towards arts, local events, Maintenance of parks and reserves (Rodney has a lot of these), pools and recreational centers. 11% (your local board allocation) goes towards libraries, staff, community centres, emergency management etc. 9% goes towards built and natural environment which includes heritage protection, animal management, bio-security, urban design, marine safety(big proportion in Rodney). 7% goes towards stormwater and flood protection. 7% goes towards tourism, business planning and major events. 4% goes to governance and less than 1% towards rubbish collection and recycling.
(This is percentage of all rates collected from the Auckland Council Website)
With only 3.9%(rounded up) of Auckland’s population you can quickly see that Rodney is hitting above it’s weight in what it receives compared to what it pays. Especially when that 3.9% occupies 50% of Auckland’s Land sqm. That’s a lot of infrastructure to maintain for such a low density.
This is ignoring the huge road investment in your area by NZTA, and the maintenance of this roading network which is payed through both the fuel tax and general taxation.
And as Patrick above mentioned, your local board allocation isn’t based on percentage of rates from that area, you are likely receiving the same or more as us in central Auckland even though we are paying a huge amount more in rates.
Even before the SuperCity, NZTA subsidy and highway 100% payments ensured that the more rural regions got more per-capita transport funding than cities. So please, stop your complaining. Auckland is a city. People live here, most of them within the first 10-20km from the city centre, and we want our tax and rate money mostly spent here too.
I also bet the average road in your area is much younger in terms of maintenance than Franklin Road!
Flush medians- While potentially providing extra safety for motor vehicles, with the anticipated speeds on Franklin Road, are these actually required? Flush medians offer virtually no protection for pedestrians and are a very poor option in the urban, residential, environment. Perhaps some actual raised median strips, combining pedestrian refuge crossings are a more suitable idea for Franklin Road? These would offer a much nicer pedestrian environment and keep the road safety element while improving safety by restricting RH turns out of driveways and U-turns. In essence, some inconvenience but much improved safety for all modes.
Wellington St – England St Intersection – What are the levels of traffic flows in and out of these streets? Where have the vehicles come from or a heading to? Perhaps a roundabout is not actually required? There are other ways out of Wellington St so maybe a central, raised, median restricting the turns across moving traffic, would suffice and also create a safer environment?
I love the idea of the uphill Copenhagen/Dutch style cycle track. As per Netherlands, people will still walk on it or ride the wrong way from time to time but is better and more ordered than existing facilities. Keeping a 3m wide footpath is also, in my opinion, more than adequate.
Downhill cycle lane – We really need to investigate the heights and distances that Auckland Council’s street sweeping machines can actually get over. Rather than just a painted buffer, some rubber/plastic (or whatever) buffers that provide a physical delineation but also a crossable delineation, are a must in developing affordable cycle lanes in Auckland. These could be installed on both sides of the cycle lane providing not just a buffer from moving traffic but also a physical buffer detailing the ‘door zone’. ‘Riley Kerb’s’ may offer a ready-made, short term solution.
http://www.rtl.co.nz/p/827/Riley-Kerb-Cycle-Delineator.aspx
Other roundabout ideas – Place the entire intersection on a raised table and incorporate ‘priority’ for cyclists by way of legal to ride on zebra crossings. https://goo.gl/maps/t9BW7
Hi Bryce,
With the roundabout, I think it might be fine as it is if the speed limit was dropped to 30kph within 50m of it.
The uphill cycle lane in option 2 could be quite nice actually. Maybe a raised line (kind of like a narrow speed bump) could safely seperate cyclists and peds.
One idea that I have got (not on Franklin road) is that we could convert berms into cyclelanes throughout Auckland. Cheap, easy and doesn’t reduce carparking! Thoughts?
Changing berms over to cycle paths? Yes, that is a very good use of berms on arterial type roads. This has been suggested before.
We need to place a greater emphasis on controlling access to many roads in Auckland as well. Far too many residential streets are used as rat runs, usually coinciding with school times as well, which lead to added risk for other road users.
Bryce, Option 2 downhill already has vertical separation. I think Option 1 both ways could still be doable to have vertical separation too.
And I am not too keen on sticking physical dividers everywhere – this could be one of our first vertically separated lanes (seeing that the whole road will be totally revamped), so I’d rather prefer us not to use anything “stick on” in whatever form, even the more solid and beefy ones. They would have to be interrupted everywhere anyway, seeing that AT is not going to remove parking. So a Copenhagen cycle lane (which a car can drive up onto to cross to the car parks, at slow speed anyway), seems sensible?
More than happy with Copenhagen lanes. Oh, have just seen the bottom cross section (was on my phone earlier). Yes please. That looks great although it would be great to see a raised median as I’m not a fan of flush medians having nearly been run down by a car on such a thing.
Is the Copenhagen lane uphill?
Also will there be phydical separation between the on road lane and the road where there is no parking?
I guess in those sections you could change the mountable kerb to a solid vertical kerb, like a full-blooded Copenhagen Lane.
As someone who occasionally drives a manual (diesel) van up that hill, a median and preference for roundabouts over lights is greatly appreciated, and having some room to give cyclists a clear berth up the hill would be great.
However, as someone who also occasionally cycles that hill, why on earth is the cycle lane downhill and peeling off to a ped crossing at the intersection? I’ve got no problems moving with traffic downhill and would coast through the intersection like any other road user would – it’s UP the hill where I’m struggling to maintain any meaningful speed and would appreciate the extra space.
I’m sure there’s a reason but I sure don’t see it…..
AH, just saw that it’s a shared footpath headed up the hill so we can sweat and grunt into pedestrians glued to their phones… Mystery solved – I’d prefer dedicated uphill though.
Is the downhill lane really necessary? If there’s a median then isn’t there plenty of room for road users to behave like responsible adults and share the space if a cyclist is crawling down the hill?
No it’s not shared, but adjacent. People will walk on it but that’s no biggy.
What about when I ride down this hill when my son is 8 years old. I’d rather he be safe.
It will be perfectly good based on the option 2 design. The only question, as mentioned elsewhere, is the side road crossing points.
Having thought about it some more, I now would like to see the downhill cycle lane placed on the inside of the car parking. In order to do this, the flush median would have to go. No biggie in my opinion.
That would have the added advantage of not having to worry about cars using the cycle lane to overtake turning cars in the absence of a median strip, as well as giving good protection to the amazing trees which in reality have been treated pretty poorly. At least they weren’t chopped like on Jervois Rd to fit in extra lanes thankfully.
Not a fan of roundabouts having had a serious SMIDSY incident on one!
if the only option then i think downhill approach speed needs to be reduced.
A second Zebra crossing may reduce approach speeds and improve safety for pedestrians.
And hopefully AT can avoid using a traversalable center island, they’re not great at slowing traffic!
That kinda depends on how solid they are! If on a bus route (which this is only marginally!) then they are often pretty tame. But traversable centre islands can be rather serious, if all they are intended for is the occasional rare truck:
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/roundabouts/presentations/safety_aspects/images/s15.jpg
i don’t think that 18% can be classed as significant support with regards cycling, that terminology is something the Herald would come up with,
It is three times the level of people opposed to cycle facilities, and tons more than currently feel safe to cycle here.
Is it just me or is option 2 kind of shit?
With the steepness of Franklin is a downhill cycle lane needed? .Cyclists can go 30/40 k down there easily. It’s the Uphill cycle lane that is needed, impatient cars and all that.
And LOL to the 40 k limit working well on Pons Rd. I guess AT never actually go there.
But not everyone WANTS to go 40 km/h downhill – and more importantly, even fewer want to do it while cars are passing them closely. Having some sort of protection has been shown, over and over again in surveys and practical implementation to be something that is key to getting more people to feel safe and ride bikes…
You could, but then you are very likely to get side swiped by a car out of the side street. Going slower down this stretch gives you more reaction time with the amount of entrances onto the road. Being in a cycle lane also hopefully improves visibility to unaware drivers as well.
I ride up this hill 3-5 times a week on my single speed. I’d never use the raised tables near the round about, too hard for me to regain momentum. Isn’t Franklin Rd an oversize vehicle route, wont the islands before the round about interfere with this?
At one if the local consultations, the Arborist agreed it would be good to have at least a 2m radius around the trees where cars do not drive to protect their roots. Will the Option 2have 2m of pavers between the tree and the uphill vehicle lane to prevent cars driving on their roots? If not, it doesn’t seem like a good solution of the trees. If it does, you might as well put a bike lane in that 2m of waste space. Option 1 is the way to go.
Will there be bollards to prevent cars parking like this? https://twitter.com/brendan_on_twit/status/572512058002018304
“The key issue with both options remains that any on road cycle facility would exist outside of parking which will always lead to concerns.”
Assuming that it’s wide enough (and it looks like they have done that) then cycle lanes outside parking shouldn’t be a big concern. Compared with having NO cycle lane at all (i.e. the current situation), painted cycle lanes have a demonstrated safety benefit – the ones installed in Chch during the 2000s saw a 23% reduction in cycle crash rates (http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/9176). I would hazard a guess that the proposed Copenhagen cycle lane option would perform even better, and would certainly also be more attractive to the average punter.
I agree Glenn, a painted bike lane does two really good things:
1. says to drivers that I’m allowed to be there, and have this little bit of road in particular
2. narrows the driving lane so drivers tend to focus more and slow a little
bring ’em on.
Completely off topic – anyone notice the new bus lane on Dominion road between Richardson and Denbigh?
Related: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2015/mar/20/business-case-for-cycling-persuasive-politicians-british-cycling