On Thursday the Herald reported the latest on Auckland Transport’s plans for Light Rail across the isthmus which came following an update to the Council’s Infrastructure Committee. From the presentation online there doesn’t seem to be much new other than what we’ve already seen and unfortunately the meeting wasn’t one filmed under the council’s new webcasting service so we can’t see exactly what was said.
What the Herald picked up on was that cars may be removed from Queen St.
Cars may be squeezed out of Auckland’s main street as the city’s transport authority looks to modern trams to move growing throngs of commuters.
Auckland Transport chief engineer Steve Hawkins warns there will be insufficient space in much of Queen St for general traffic to co-exist with trams running in each direction every few minutes between the waterfront and Dominion Road.
“For the section between Wellesley St and Customs St, we would essentially have just light-rail vehicles and pedestrians,” he told Auckland Council’s infrastructure committee.
But he said allowing cars to keep using Queen St south of Wellesley St “would be possible” and there would be enough room for a traffic lane each side of tram tracks along routes such as Dominion Rd and Fanshawe St.
Far from being a problem this is probably the ideal outcome and would turn the main people focused part of Queen St a transit mall – like as seen in many cities overseas.
The key reason this is even possible is that there isn’t a single need for a car to even be on that section of Queen St. Take a walk along it and you’ll not find a single driveway opening out to the street until you get south of Mayoral Dr as the buildings that do have carparks all have entrances to them on side streets. In addition none of the side streets north of Wellesley St are dependent on access from Queen St and so blocking them off would not remove access – maybe just affecting how some are accessed.
Making such a change would deliver big benefits to the up to 60,000 pedestrians that ply the street every day. It would enable the removal of both the Wyndham and Shortland St intersections which means less chance of having to stop and wait for a traffic phase. At Victoria St the existing intersection could be significantly improved due to it being simplified. No turning traffic means the lights only need to flip between a North-South transit movement and East-West car movement. Perhaps even more important than these changes to intersections is it would also allow the footpaths to be extended further giving more space to the thousands walking and/or allow for some dedicated cycle lanes.
Such a change would also tie in with our growing network of shared and pedestrian only spaces with the light rail acting as a people fountain giving them even more life.
Of course LRT being electrically powered also means those pedestrians aren’t being subjected to emissions from petrol and diesel powered vehicles – although of course electric buses are certainly a possibility in the future.
The only question really should be why wait?
Because of the factors mentioned above there should be no reason why we couldn’t quickly implement a transit mall even using just buses until such time as the tracks are ready to be installed. Combine that with some temporary place making to make use of the space that’s freed up and we can trial the impacts.
The only major issue that I think would need to be dealt with is that of deliveries and emergency vehicle access – neither of which should be too hard to sort.
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Wouldn’t a bus-only (or maybe even bus+taxi as a stopgap) transit mall approach now also make it easier for the future works on Queen Street as the vehicle use would be halved (or more) and allow partial lane closures for track laying works?
One timing issue might be the need for alternative routing while Albert St is dug up. After that, be great to see at least one dedicated lane each way for buses if not full conversion. However, I would rather not see cars diverting down smaller streets instead. Needs to be planned as a whole.
My thoughts exactly. Will Albert street being dog up, those buses have to go somewhere.
Transit mall. Great idea.
The reason why electric light rail is the answer lies in this from the Herald on Thursday: “A study last year found high pollution readings – notably from diesel bus emissions – which indicated air in Customs St at the bottom of the Queen St valley risked failing World Health Organisation standards”.
I can confirm with much involuntary experience that its toxic being a pedestrian around those buses no matter what “Euro” standards their exhaust emissions are supposed to be!
Good point. I still don’t understand why buses terminate around Britomart. They sit idling, clog up left lanes (could be used as Bus lanes instead), and it’s impossible to do a straight-forward transfer. It’s not like we have too much space there, quite the opposite… While they should all pass Britomart in my opinion, the Southern and Eastern buses should be terminating at Victoria Park, Western buses should be terminating around Vector Arena, and Northern buses at Eden Terrace / Grafton. Leave Britomart area for smooth transit flow! Or is this just too radical thinking?
Don’t think the streets handle it, you’d be overlapping all the routes on the most congested parts of the bus network. Take a look at Symonds St at peak time, then imagine if you ran all the North Shore buses up there two, it would be twice the bedlam.
Maybe if you got a big programme of new bus lanes and extra long bus stops together it might work.
I think Vector would be too far removed from the city.
I’ve always thought a bus terminal should’ve been built where the old one used to stand – above Britomart. It’s a handy location, but also out of the way. What has been done with that area is great, though.
The reason for that is that the NOX (Nitrogen Oxides) levels from Diesel buses is not controlled at all well by EURO emission standards, and is made a lot worse when buses accelerate hard and also when their engines are not properly maintained.
[NOX is a *really* bad lung irritant].
And that sounds like every bus that has ever been operated in the CBD – whether its 20 minutes “new” or 20+ years “new” like the old clunkers NZ Bus love to “keep on keeping on”.
Coupled with those fumes from the old Diesel locos (ADLs/SA sets etc) that still use Britomart – who have their fumes vented into the surrounding vicinity – its no wonder the pollution is so bad down there.
Theres a lot of exciting news at the moment – 15 km of new bus lanes within the next 2 and a half months, mainly around CBD choke points, lots of double deckers within the next 6 months, and if the herald is correct this tram line will be open in 4 years. I think these very visible projects will change the atmosphere in the CBD significantly, creating a perception of change and heavy investment, which is especially important for those who dont use public transport, and therefore havent noticed the less visible changes of the past decade, despite the massive gains they have made for public transport.
This is a great idea which has to go ahead BUT as a driver of a truck the biggest problem we have is there are not enough loading zones around and the time limit on them is only 5mins which is a complete joke. We can’t even get an order from the shop in that time let alone pick it from the truck and deliver it to the customer and then merchandise it. Any parking tickets we get are paid by the driver, not the firm we work for, so if we cant get a parking spot the shop could miss out on a delivery for the week. It is unfortunate that a lot of our customers don’t open till 7.30am and they don’t care if we get a ticket. It is about time the council (AT) accept this and put in more loadings zones with realistic time limits.
Don’t apply a 10 minute grace period before ticketing you, so in effect you have 15 minutes at your P5 loading zone?
If you can’t service one customer in 15 minutes your company needs better mobile IT systems so you can.
If you want to try and service a whole block of customers in that time – thats your look out.
One can imagine they have thought of truck access, perhaps something like the shared spaces where you get effectively unlimited loading access at certain times of day?
“between Wellesley St and Customs St, we would essentially have just light-rail vehicles and pedestrians”
“there would be enough room for a traffic lane each side of tram tracks along routes such as Dominion Rd and Fanshawe St.”
No mention of cyclists in their plans… Queen Streets, signalized intersections, slow speeds and wide selection of shops make it a great area to shop via bike.
It would be a shame if light rail meant people on bikes couldn’t use Dominion Rd or Queen St
Lower Queen (below Wellesly at least) would be a shared space – so no need for bike lanes – the whole street (except where the tram lines run) will be available for pedestrians and cyclists to use (no cars).
Up the Hill and on Dominion Road? AT said the tram lines get laid in a 7.5 m wide slab of concrete, which really allows a car lane each side (and no on street parking). So yeah could be a problem there to fit cyclists and cars into the mix.
Unless you narrow or widen the footpaths to add biking space to the corridor.
Copenhagen Lanes.
Disappearing bollards may be a solution for the deliveries / emergency vehicles question.
I have seen them in a few pedestrianised high streets in the UK. They retract below ground to allow access for deliveries between certain hours (say 3-6 am) and can also be retracted to allow emergency services to access.
Get real. What employee would want to start work at 3am just to sign for a delivery? Obviously they would need to drive to work and then what do they do till the normal opening time?
You don’t think people do that every single day as it is?
II’d assume that if you are going to turn the lower parts of Queen St transit mall you’d pave it somewhat like elliot st etc, so wouldn’t it make sense to lay the foundations at least for the light rail while doing the paving, assuming AT can make a decision on power systems
Don’t just do the foundations – lay the tracks at the same time (similar to High Street mall in CHCH). This way you don’t have to rip up the centre of the mall again in a few years, plus it highlights the fact that trams will be there in future. Also, it allows horse drawn trams over christmas to help draw in more shoppers while we wait for the final build 🙂
Trams meant to be in place in 4 years so why spend money make it a transit mall now?
Their is no money that needs spending: just a few signs. It should have been done years ago.
And I like the idea of buses terminating away from Britomart. It is chaos down there at times.
Cos it doesn’t cost anything to ban cars. Well it doesn’t have to cost much. The suggestion is to at least make the outer lanes of Queen St permanent bus lanes to both speed the city link and take Albert St buses temporarily while Albert is dug up for the CRL early works. Yes this would mean more buses in the Queen valley than is ideal but with the priority of the bus lanes they would by spending less time idling inefficiently and pollutingly.
All depends on how quickly they can start the LRT, I know AT are champing at the bit to get going.
Could you not thru route the buses to eliminate the idling around britomart issue?
Not really, not if you want them be reasonably reliable. The idling at Britomart is basically around timing points to stop bunching and the timetables falling apart.
I made a similar suggestion yonks ago during one of the debates about pedestrianising Queen Street that occur every ten years or so. You do not need to pedestrianise the entire length of Queen Street to have a significant impact on the volume of through traffic – even if only one block (or even a fraction of a block) was absolutely off limits to cars it would kill off the desireability of Queen Street as a place to cruise – a lot of the traffic in the Golden Mile is not going anywhere (it is there to see and be seen) – stand on a corner long enough and you may see the same car recirculating several times. But the idea of any kind of restriction was always shot down by short sighted business owners who managed to persuade a majority on Council that it would undermine their trade. Hopefully attitudes are changing and we can agree to pedestrianise at least one block (shared with PT of course).
How would cycle lanes work? Or would it be shared spaces only, as per Greg’s comments.
this is a very busy pedestrian space so bikes would have to be crawling and careful. A dedicated lane in between the footpaths and the buses/trams might not work, as tram/bus boarders would be stepping out across the cycle lane.
The link bus will be very fast and efficient without cars, preferrby with priorised traffic lights
OK. So ‘squeeze’ cars out of Queen St. Which roads do you propose to widen to take those ‘squeezed vehicles’ and what extra costs will you accept when delivery companies up their charges to all the impacted businesses.
Albert, Hobson, Nelson and Symonds/Anzac Ave? Queen St is largely used as a thoroughfare right now, there are other routes people can take. I presume service vehicles will still be permitted.
The car journeys currently being made in Queen will just evaporate. There is no vehicle destination on Queen. Not one; no vehicle entrance, no parking building, no truck dock. This is the experience from overseas; vast numbers of private vehicle journeys in urban areas are low value lazy trips that once sufficiently frustrated just are no longer taken. Especially when transit is improved at the same time. In fact this has already happened in Queen with the increase in ped priority traffic volumes have dropped, in fact over all traffic volumes are falling in the City Centre. It is time to take the next step to increase this trend. Watch the city boom.
A friend of mine said he likes making deliveries in shared spaces. Although he has to drive slower with people around he can always find a space to park and right outside the place of delivery, so time is saved.
There wouldn’t be any widening of course. Why would you want more traffic in the city centre?
People obviously don’t, because they’re driving to the city in fewer numbers and taking public transport a lot more.
Since 2001 we’ve added 20,000 jobs to the Auckland city centre, over the same period car trips had dropped by 1,500 a day, while public transport trips increased by 23,000 a day.
This is simply responding to what Aucklanders are choosing to do to get to the city, all the growth in the last decade and a bit has been on public transport. This shows us a couple of key things, firstly the city centre doesn’t need more traffic capacity, or even the same amount of traffic capacity, to grow and thrive. We’ve added 20k jobs and who knows how many students and shoppers etc despite having slightly reduced traffic (or perhaps because of).
Secondly it shows us people are making the specific choice not to drive, as there is less traffic than we used to have its not a case of hitting a cap or forcing people out of cars, there is room to go back to historic levels of traffic. I guess people just don’t want to.
So really the traffic is going away already, at a macro level getting cars out of Queen St is no big deal because what little ther is can basically just evaporate. We don’t need to widen other roads because we are massively ‘widening’ e public transport system. LRT in Queen St could move about 10,000 people an hour. Traffic in Queen St woul be lucky to get over 1,000 vehicles an hour.
At a micro level, it’s like Patrick notes above. Nobody needs to drive to queen st because there aren’t any parking buildings or loading zones. You’ve just got deliveries and courier vans, which I’m sure can be accommodated easily without General traffic access..
Found him. The poster immediately above is a ring-in. Used a slightly shorter handle that I have been using on this blog for years. Patrick etc can confirm.
One consideration with putting LRT up Queen Street as the feeder to routes south is what happens if there’s a fire in a building. Pretty much all the buildings a high-rises, which means aerial fire appliances putting out stabilisers and closing at least one whole traffic lane. If hoses have to be run from hydrants in the opposite side if the road it can mean shutting the entire street.
I foresee a need for several track junctions up the street to allow trams to be switched to the “wrong” side to go around a raised aerial, and also additional hydrants being plumbed into the 36″ main so that hoses can be supplied adequately from either side. Plus consultation with the Fire Service about SOPs regarding deploying aerials without encroaching on both tracks if at all possible.
There are several fires a year on Queen St that involve significant Fire response including deployment of aerial appliances, so this is not a rarely-occurring theoretical concern.
If it is a transit mall, then access for delivery vehicle and emergency services will be easier, not more difficult.
You completely missed my point. Utterly and totally missed it.
Presumably when such things happen now the world continues to function? So its not really that much of a big deal is it?
With LRT as proposed using in-ground/inductive power at least there won’t be overhead catenary wires to worry about or that need to be de-energised before the fire service can bring their aerial ladders/firehoses into play.
So the fire service would simply pull up like they do now and yep snake the hoses over the road.
Yes the LRT would stop further up [south] from that part of Queen St, but the same would happen with buses/cars on Queen now. And the LRT could continue to offer a service to points south of the incident.
So that at least a reasonable service could continue in the interim.
And yes the one time in a thousand call outs when its a real fire then it will be quite disruptive as they actually fight a fire, but then thats quite acceptable as its a genuine emergency.
Once the LRT lines are laid down other than Queen Street some form of re-routing could be done, until then, it would be like a big crash on the harbour bridge that blocks all lanes and its not like we have those very often eh?
Buses can route around Queen Street. LRT cannot. There is no proposal that I have seen within a realistic period of time that would provide another route south than Queen Street for LRT, so for as long as there are hoses or aerial appliance outriggers encroaching on LRT tracks those tracks are closed. If there are no switches to allow trams to travel on the wrong side to get around a fire, the entire system shuts down until the fire is out. That can be several hours, and happens several times a year. Fortunately (for transit purposes) bigger fires tend to happen at night, but they can run well into the morning peak.
Queen St is big enough for the fire trucks to park to the sides of the track, it will only be in the event of a real fire will the tracks be blocked, this is very rear as most call-outs are false alarms. This is acceptable.
I think they have fires in Melbourne, they cope with trams, Queen St is well wide enough.
Patrick, how many of Melbourne’s LRT routes have a single corridor that can be closed completely and no way around? Because that’s what Queen St represents.
If there a blockage in Queen St trams run to the stops either side of it then return up the line. All trams are reversible, no turning required, this is a big part of their spatial efficiency. On a linear system that’s how blockages are dealt with until clear.
There is the possibility that the two city legs; Queen and Symonds St, could have a redundancy crossover on Alex Evans St, but I have seen no plans for this, and have no idea if it’s considered likely, and would only work once all routes are in.
Melbourne has the longest LRT system in operation in the world so I’m sure there are more connections there than AKL will ever have.
Seriously though, I feel like I’ve asked 20 times. What stops AT from putting out ~20 cones on a Sunday morning every week? This could be done for cents – I’ll even volunteer to go out at 6am and put them across queen\custom’s myself. I’ll convince my BC to fund some foldable warehouse chairs and take them out myself, every weekend.
There is no cost issue, there is no traffic issue. Are there hidden political issues?
I agree there is no reason for cars on Queen St north of Mayoral. It is well past time to remove them all. But turning it into a bus mall would be a disaster. Can you imagine noisy diesel buses driven by without care?
I don’t think that’s the plan at all; they’ll likely use Albert to link up with Aotea Station.
Yeah terrible, that would be just like what we have now, but without the cars also being noisy and fumey. Better stick with cars and buses then.
And the buses will be moving, not sitting in traffic idling.
I promise you they wont be moving all the time. They will be stopped sitting waiting for the start of their run with their engine idling because the driver doesn’t care about the fuel use. A school I was involved with had that problem every afternoon. The buses would arrive and drivers would leave the engines running for 15 minutes rather than having to start them again. Queen St is an appalling place hence the success of the malls. If you want it to be better then get rid of the cars AND the buses.
Given that no routes terminate on queen st they will be moving
Yes but the moment it becomes a bus only mall you can guess the next step. The ARA tried it on in the mid to late 80’s. Auckland City Council shut the idea down real quick.
“Queen St is an appalling place, malls etc”
Meanwhile in the 21st century…
Gee you are a witty guy. So the thousands who went to Sylvia Park and St Lukes over the long weekend dont belong to the 21st century? What an asshat!
No, but I was listening today to a “World watch” newstory on NatRad about how the experts in the US are predicting 50% of the US shopping malls will close in the next 15 years as the patterns of consumerism in the US change.
Why do you think Westfield is selling out its majority control of all its local malls here in NZ (Downtown being a recent prime example)? Because they can see that those properties will be worth a lot less than they are now, shortly.
Of course, the Singapore Government that bought the control has a longer term view that combining shopping with PT and office space and residential will work here like it has everywhere else.
But it takes a shitload of money to do that and Westfield shareholders like big fat dividends paid regularly not big headaches and no dividends.
Time will tell which is right.
Those mall users, like all those out in auto-dependent suburbia, are actually living like it is still the 20C. Change is not synchronous. Many will still keep living there till they can’t [others will escape]. Like those slow to let go of their horse and cart earlier that century. So it goes.
Maybe you are right Greg and Patrick. But the very last thing any of those mall owners will do is allow diesel buses to run right through the internal pedestrianised shopping part of their mall. The Council on the other hand which has no interest in the success or failure of Queen Street would be more than happy to let that occur.
Mall owners won’t need to allow anything. There’s already a bus stop and a train station right next to Sylvia Park for instance.
Speaking of the success and decline of malls. I was in Sylvia park a while ago. What I see in there is effectively an indoor street. Shops are just fronting that street. People can wander from shop to shop. They can cross the street freely. Places selling food can have some seating just in front of their stall.
Isn’t that how city streets used to work?
Maybe the mall is a kind of artificial city island, a small bubble where you are still free to wander around on the outside of your car. And now more and more cities make some of their streets car-free, eliminating the need for those islands.
Give the mall owners a choice of idling cars and buses or moving buses and his which one they will choose. That’s what we are deciding between four the next four years
Exactly wsomc the mall operator provides a safe pedestrian environment where you dont have to dodge cars like those crappy shared spaces and where you dont have to put up with noisy buses at least until you have finished spending. They provide a reason to walk past the store fronts and look in rather than to get past as fast as you can. They also provide somewhere for you to leave your car so you can cart your purchases home afterwards. Cities from malls could learn a lot if they bothered to try. Instead they sneer at them, try to make the owners run streets through the middle of them for little purpose and try to limit their parking. And yet the main carparks at Sylvia Park and St Lukes were full over the weekend so maybe it is the mall owners who get it right.
Last time I was there part of Sylvia park has an “indoor” motorway going through it, raining air and water pollution and god knows what down on the mall users and all the shop workers there as they walk/shop under it.
Hardly a shining example for anyone to emulate.
As an aside to this, I spent 12 minutes or so sitting eating a Kapiti ice cream on Shortland St. on Saturday. Watching 90% of cars drive out of O’Connell St. and turn into High St. And then 2 minutes later seeing the same cars repeat the exercise. I counted one car do it 5 times!
What a waste.
Yup. That’s what they do, cos they can. So how about we make so they can’t?
Absolutely: that was the point I should have made. Those cars have no need to use O’Connell Street; they could just as easily use Fields Lane to do their unproductive convolutions.
Or even better—they could just drive into one of the parking buildings and be done with it. Auckland is full of empty parking buildings in the weekend.
would making queen st ( or parts of it) pedestrian only make sense? ( Banning cars)
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is : 1/ Queen St north of Mayoral has no vehicle accesses or off street loading spaces so there is necessity for cars or trucks. 2/ It is not an arterial road so there is no real need for through traffic. (It is actually classified a collector but not for any good reason). 3/ It operated as four lanes for years but only because the planners at the time drew up a footpath they though sufficient and had a heap of space left over so marked it as traffic lanes- not because they were required for capacity. 4/ It has very few parking spaces and these are not required and dont actually achieve much for anybody. 5/ It still has one of the highest ped counts in the country so on the basis of providing a facility that meets demand it should have been pedestrianised years ago.
The big risk is someone will try and do another Godawful shared space. In my view the worst of all worlds- no good for pedestrians and hopeless for traffic.