One of the most important projects Auckland Transport has on its books right now is Connected Communities, formerly known as the Integrated Corridor Priority Programme. This is something we’ve talked about before but here’s a recap of what the Regional Public Transport Plan says about it:

Auckland has constrained arterial corridors and there will be trade-offs to be made around competing uses including general traffic lanes, cycle lanes, parking and median strips. AT will design and deliver whole-of-route bus priority on the FTN where:

  • current and planned services experience inconsistent travel times due to congestion
  • where travel-time savings and patronage levels justify the cost of delivery
  • where capacity exists, or new services are planned that can leverage priority infrastructure to deliver patronage growth
  • if reallocation of road space is required, where expected patronage gains are sufficient to ensure that bus priority implementation will increase overall people throughput along the corridor.

The integrated corridor programme will be critical to deliver the next wave of patronage growth for Auckland’s bus network and instrumental in providing the next major improvement in customer experience. It will also be a major mechanism by which placemaking initiatives can be instituted – leveraging the changed environment generated by the corridor programme into urban design elements that will reflect local identity and character.

The maps below show the corridors they’re working on.

The project is incredibly important to get right but we are deeply concerned about the delivery of it. It was first mentioned as being underway in a board report in October 2018 and not much has really happened since then – as per an update they gave us and a number of other groups in mid-March. They still have no concepts for how they’ll deliver what’s mentioned above, no frameworks for how they’ll make decisions on what to prioritise and don’t appear to have even basic information about things like inconsistent bus travel times, such as Wellington did here. While the project team did say they had some goals/outcomes they want to achieve, they wouldn’t say what they are.

Further concerns stem from the fact they’ve split up the corridors and dished each of them out to more than half a dozen different consultants to do business cases on, raising the risk we get many different approaches and interpretations of what’s needed or even what’s possible. So instead of coming up with one or two common designs that can be used across all corridors with only minor modifications, we could end up with 11 different designs. My prediction back in August that we might be five years before we seen even mild improvements is looking optimistic.

The challenge

It’s the idea of trying to come up with a common design that gets rolled out as widely as possible that I’ve been thinking of, with a particular focus on the central isthmus streets of New North, Sandringham, Mt Eden and Manukau Roads – although possibly useful elsewhere.

As mentioned earlier, there are competing priorities for these corridors so it’s useful to start by thinking through the lens of the strategic priorities of draft Government Policy Statement. In short, we need to:

  • provide better transport options
  • improve safety for everyone using these corridors
  • do both of the above while also reducing emissions

So what does this look like.

Improved walking and cycling infrastructure

We need better and safer pedestrian infrastructure. This includes things like raised tables on side roads, more and safer options for crossing roads – particularly around bus stops, and we need to declutter our footpaths from things like poles, signage and even bus stop shelters.

If nothing else, the impacts of Covid-19 showed a desire from the public to cycle more – not to mention the increasing attraction of other micro-mobility devices. We need to safe cycleways/micro-mobilityways on our main streets so that people can safely cycle to work, school, local shops or to visit friends.

Better public transport

The corridors on the central isthmus are already some of the most used in Auckland but that doesn’t mean they can’t be better – and we can tell this because many people still choose to drive. To get better buses the biggest opportunities are to improve the speed and reliability of them. To do we need a combination of better spaced bus stops and better bus priority – ATs own aspiration for all frequent routes is that they have ‘whole of route bus priority’.

We also need to electrify them and make them more attractive to use. One of the ways to make them more attractive, other than what’s mentioned above and improved frequencies, would be to make bus stops more attractive and having a higher profile.

Reducing emissions

To put it simply, if we’re to make a meaningful impact on reducing emissions we need fewer people driving. Implementing the improvements mentioned above will help encourage some people to change how they travel but it won’t be enough we will need to look to ways to actively discourage some travel.

Now, discouraging travel is not the same thing as saying we don’t need cars at all and we absolutely will still need access to properties so space for vehicles will still be needed. What we can do though is to discourage longer distance trips from using these corridors. Afterall the, one of the justifications for building motorways like the Waterview Tunnel was they would “also free up local roads by transferring traffic onto the state highway network“. We shouldn’t have to accept congested and unsafe local roads simply because people want to keep using local roads for these longer distance trips. If the motorway is too congested and the local roads are less convenient to drive, that will encourage even more people to consider either not travelling or using another mode.

On top of all of this we also need more street trees.

Fitting it all in

The challenge in designing streets capable of achieving the improvements needed for better walking, cycling and public transport are about space. Those central isthmus streets were generally built one chain wide, that’s 20.1m. Within that we get streets that look like the image below, which is Sandringham Rd.

We’re clearly missing safe cycle infrastructure, good quality PT stops and of course we’re missing street trees.

In the graphic below I’ve mainly just used the defaults in Streetmix but it’s clear that if we were to take more traditional traffic engineering approach, everything simply doesn’t fit and to deliver these outcomes about another 7m of width. Essentially on every single one of these corridors we’d need to be buy up and demolishing all the houses on one side of the road. That’s what w’re doing for the Eastern Busway and has taken a decade to get going. We don’t have the money to do that on every corridor and I don’t think we’d wouldn’t want to or need to. Ideally we need a solution that will fit within the existing corridor and without having to move existing kerb lines.

Something’s got to give and is essentially the issue the Connected Communities project needs to solve.

A potential solution

If we could reduce traffic by a significant enough level, we could probably get away with not needing bus lanes at all as traffic would flow freely without holding buses up – thereby freeing up heaps of space. As that seems unlikely, one of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is something that AT seem to have had a real attraction to lately, dynamic lanes. AT have been focused on using the idea to get more car lanes on a road but I’ve been wondering if we could the idea for bus lanes.

Under this scenario, the roads would be reduced to three vehicle lanes, one lane in each direction and in the middle, a peak direction bus lane. On the surface it may look like we’re sacrificing an existing bus lane but in reality, they only operate in the peak direction during peak hours. Outside of that they are used for on-street carparking – which would disappear completely in this idea. Like they do now, counterpeak buses would use the general traffic lane.

I discounted the idea of having the cars in the middle lanes to try and avoid large gantries and other infrastructure to tell them which lanes to be in so the biggest challenge comes with how to deal with bus stops. How does a bus travelling in the middle ‘peak’ lane pick up or drop off passengers? Here’s my idea.

We upgrade the humble bus stops to create more formal bus stations. This serves to both improve the quality of them but also to make them more prominent. We would also ideally space these slightly further apart than current bus stops which would help speed up buses.

At the stations we then reduce the road to one lane each way. Buses using the dynamic lane would have priority in accessing the station area and any vehicles in the general traffic lane would need to give way to them and then wait while they load/unload passengers. After the station buses could then move back into the dynamic lane.

By making it so cars are no faster than the buses, it also helps to discourage driving and encourage the use of other modes thereby helping to reduce emissions.

Below is a model I created to get the concept across visually. I’m not a road engineer so fully admit some of the features/dimensions will not be 100% correct but the road is 20.1m wide, just like those isthmus corridors and things seem to fit. The green parts between the bike/vehicle lanes are raised buffers/kerbs.

One concern I’m sure some people, and especially locals, will have with it is that it will likely mean that outside of a few set locations, such as immediately after a station where the bus ‘is in the lead’, it’s likely no right turns would be able to be permitted. This may be frustrating for locals but would be a positive for safety as people turning right across traffic are often looking for oncoming cars and don’t see pedestrians or people on bikes.

I was also inspired a bit by this idea from Indianapolis. They’ve built something similar using a dynamic median bus lane and in places it has median islands. One of the things I quite like about it is I think it makes the station even more prominent by allowing for one higher quality platform. The downside is it does require buses with doors on the opposite side of the bus to what they normally would.

So I also whipped up this version with a median island platform idea. One potential advantage this could have is it might allow for u-turns after the station, thereby eliminating the need to accommodate right hand turns and further improving safety. It might also help improve acceptance from locals. Work would need to be done to investigate if this was feasible.

What this would deliver us is essentially a BRT lite solution without the huge infrastructure costs of a full busway. It would also provide vastly improved walking and cycling infrastructure and from what I can tell, could be possibly to do without the big cost of having to move kerbs and services.

An idea to throw in the mix at least.

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53 comments

  1. “it’s likely no right turns would be able to be permitted. This may be frustrating for locals but would be a positive for safety”

    It would also be a positive for traffic flow, as removing right turns on and off roads is one good way to speed them up.

  2. Look, I like buses as much as anyone, but if you think that Auckland is going to tolerate buses blocking an entire side of the road while they’re stopped, you’re insane. And on the main arterial routes? That’s a non-starter.

    1. I disagree. I think we’re all sick of being held up by lines of cars. Most of us would more than tolerate buses holding up the cars because if it meant they were faster, we’d leave our cars at home and take the bus.

    2. Does it actually hold anyone up though? I know you’re stopped for a bit but once the bus starts moving again there is clear space ahead of it so the bus will most likely catch up. i.e. the average speed is the same.
      What i get most annoyed by is when a bus in heavy traffic picks up passengers and gets overtaken by cars, who have then jumped the queue and are holding the bus up

  3. I like the concept of a central peak flow bus lane, but as you have pointed it the bus stations do present a bit of a problem.
    An alternative to an expensive change in bus design would be to effectively have the buses cross over the the wrong side of the road thereby having their doors against the curb at the station.
    Basically the station platform would sit in the middle of the road and an approaching bus simply moves to the right of the platform island. After passengers have boarded or alighted the bus would then move left back to the normal side of the road.
    This would most likely mean that buses would be forced to stop at each station but given the gain they would make having a dedicated busway the need to stop would not greatly affect the overall gains.
    Another alternative is for the stations areas would need to be longer two platforms, one for each direction but rather than side by side laid out one after the other so no addition road width would be required, just a longer length

  4. Applying unconventional bus stops to only a limited number of roads in central Auckland is a recipe for road user confusion. Also if your solution relies on mixing buses with general traffic at a lot of pinch points, is it really that much better than the status quo?

    You can fit everything (2x footpaths, 2x cycle lanes, 2x bus lanes, 2x traffic lanes) into a 20.1m wide corridor so long as you’re willing to sacrifice the central median and space for street trees/furniture. I think it’s easier to start from that premise and then think how you can shoehorn street trees/furniture into the design. Options include
    – Only running a 1 way general traffic lane through town centres.
    – For general traffic flow make the speed limit 20km/h, ban heavy vehicles and make both directions share a 5m wide lane.
    – Acquiring the front 2m of some properties to plant trees on (might not be that unpopular for residential sites).

    Many of these corridors carried trams in the past. And in the future some might be upgraded to carry trams again. This is presumably why Dominion Rd isn’t on the list. Any road layout needs to, as a minimum, not lock out future upgrades.

    1. Even without the median and without the street trees, the space required (using the dimensions in the Streetmix section) would be 22.8m. That’s still 2.7m – a lane width – too wide.

      – The bus and traffic lane widths could possibly be reduced.
      – But street trees are critical for walkability, especially as the climate changes, so they shouldn’t be removed, and being able to put the poles and signs there is important for keeping the footpath, cyclelane and traffic lanes clear.
      – Both the footpath and the cyclelane width are minimum dimensions that would be better augmented.

      Your suggestion of reducing by one lane (or where possible, property purchase) might be needed along critical lengths anyway.

      1. The lane widths shown in the Streetmix cross section are much too wide. Bus lanes and general traffic lanes only need to be 3.0m. The buffer between cycle lanes and bus lanes only needs to be 0.2m. Make the cycle lanes 1.5m (afterall these are protected cycle lanes, not just paint) and you’ve already saved 3.0m of width.

        I agree with you that street trees and furniture have to fit in somewhere. But unlike lanes that space doesn’t have to be continuous and connected. This is the sort of thing that needs to be modified depending on what already exists (especially if there are existing trees).

        1. 1.5m is too narrow to allow bikes to overtake easily (handlebars on many modern mtbs are 0.8m wide). And 0.2m is waaay too narrow to feel safe being passed by a bus, even if protected. It may be safe, but it doesn’t feel safe, and feeling safe is what is going to get more people on bikes.

        2. Yes, narrower traffic lanes are safer, and easily possible.

          https://www.google.com/maps/@51.8429722,5.8455189,3a,75y,278.65h,75.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srpD1RkTBCV_aGUd1ROvSYg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

          https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3501873,-2.1213763,3a,75y,214.53h,98.11t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZCbgDrYSWl-2LewJbC2Z2g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

          But cycle lanes 1.8 m are very much a temporary solution; not really fit for a low carbon future. You can’t overtake a Cycling without Age trishaw on your cargo bike. People travelling long distances want more speed than having to slow to the 6 km/hr that respectful overtaking of an elder or a baby requires with lanes of only 1.8m.

          And anything less than 0.6m as a buffer isn’t safe.

        3. I think that no buffer can be safe if traffic speeds are low enough. i.e if the traffic speeds are 30 km/h, it can be safe to have a stepped track at 2 m that still allows parking. Although, then the mountable kerb is still 0.2 m of separation.

          We can definitely have traffic lanes or bus lanes at 2.7 m and cycle lanes at 2 m width, but we can’t have them all right next to each other. That London Road example only works because there is a solid median to provide buffer space. On Sandringham Road you could have 2 m cycle lanes, 2.8 m traffic lanes, and a 2.8 m bus lane, so long as you had say a 0.5 m buffer between them. But then you are up to 14.4 m already, so there still isn’t room for street trees.

        4. Heidi what about a 3m dual direction cycle lane on one side only? Would need to eliminate almost all side streets to make it safe though.

        5. It’s less useful, Jimbo, because people use bikes to get to the properties and businesses along the street. With safe crossing opportunities at limited locations, people with bikes/scooters etc will then need to move along the footpath or the traffic lane to get to where they need to go. So it doesn’t provide the separation required.

          OK for specific locations where required. Not good for a template design for all the arterials.

  5. A hub and spoke corridor architecture is of marginal usefulness for cycling as a commuting option, unless you happen to be a hipster from Pt Chev who works in the Viaduct. Even with these improvements, there is no dedicated east west cycling link across the isthmus. You can’t get from even old tramway residential suburbs like Mt. Albert or Avondale to the job powerhouses of Penrose/Ellerslie/Mt. Wellington without sharing dangerous arterial roads – and the point of the very expensive Skypath is much diminished if a commuter from Birkenhead can’t cycle to his or her job in Penrose/Mt. Wellington.

    It is frustrating that something like e-cycling in your suit as a viable commuter option – rather than using a high end racing bike to race to work in lycra as a lifestyle/recreational choice – is still basically regarded as a fringe activity in Auckland, especially as the lockdown showed people would embrace cycling as an option if decent infrastructure existed.

      1. +1

        I’d cycle to work via Great South Rd – Greenlane Rd – Balmoral Rd – Dominion Rd if there were cycle lanes but there’s really no active mode infrastructure. Part of Greenlane Rd doesn’t even have a footpath on both sides.

        1. Greenlane and Mt Albert road are shockers. I once bravely cycled that short bit of 4 lane road between the Royal Oak roundabout and Hillsborough road and was almost hit several times. At one stage I was knocking on the side of a car that was trying to change lanes into me!

        2. I live in Mt. Albert and cycle to Ellerslie, but I have to take back roads that adds 9km to my daily round trip. It is really annoying when I consider how easy it would be with a bit of imagination and effort to add a separated cycle lane to Greenlane.

  6. I agree in principle, we should all be supporting better infrastructure spending. The biggest city in the country should get proportional spending.
    We should investigate all ways of improving reading, one way to take 5-10% load of the network would be to move the Port and build its own road.
    This concept explains an option that has not been considered.
    https://www.movingaucklandport.com/
    For less than the cost of moving the port north we could keep it here, if it went north the port related traffic would go up and all through the middle of Auckland.

    1. “For less than the cost of moving the port north we could keep it here, if it went north the port related traffic would go up and all through the middle of Auckland.”

      Not if all of the containers and imported cars, were moved by train, from the North, to an inland container port in South Auckland. Those containers would then bypass Auckland CBD

      1. That would just send all those freight trains through the middle of Auckland, including Mt Eden and Newmarket at the core of the network, hardly a saving.

        I’ve never had a satisfactory answer to this concept anyway: If railing all the freight from Northport to south Auckland is such a good idea, why don’t we start by railing all the freight from Auckland port to south Auckland? That’s the same outcome, except the return rail trip is 300km shorter and we don’t have to build a new container terminal and rail line at Marsden Point first.

    2. Oh and LOL to the link above. Apparently the best solution is a 22km underwater tunnel to a new port built on an artificial island hidden behind Rangitoto. $20b easy!

  7. Interesting idea that could have merit. Certainly worth investigating.

    As for widening the road, there are 2 more things: 1) Most properties have a front lawn so it is possible to only purchase that (or purchase the whole property and resell the rest). 2) Buying up the land does create one large block of land that could be redeveloped into medium/high density developments. Council could probably make a profit by reselling the remaining land as a bigger land parcel to a developer.

  8. I think the key to unlocking the undeniable challenges in the Connected Communities programme is acknowledging that parallel change is also needed to the streets of the local communities bounded by these arterials. Otherwise I fear it will stall.

    Essentially these need the kind of treatment that has been so successful in suburban places around the world recently like in Walthamstow, London. The rat-runs need to be taken out so neighbourhood areas are free from through-traffic and streets made freer and safer for local residents, whether driving, walking, or wheeling.

    Urban designer George Weeks discusses this here: https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2019/07/26/mini-hollands-in-nieuw-zeeland-a-global-template/

    Otherwise drivers slowed by the re-balancing of the arterials will increasingly try their luck through neighbourhood backstreets, which won’t work for them, nor especially for the local communities.

    Additionally Matt is entirely correct to point out for longer haul driving Auckland now has the high-level network in place with the completion of the Waterview tunnel. This system will continue to be refined, but is essentially now there. It is time to take the local place quality dividend that this massive, decades long investment can and should enable (but that we’ve been poor at taking).

    With both local streets adjusted with cheap interventions into Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and arterials rebalanced to prioritise more spatially efficient and lower carbon modes, Auckland could actually have a shot at keeping some of the sweet quality of life of the lockdown, while getting back to work and study effectively. Not to mention start moving in the necessary direction on climate change and other emissions.

    1. Yes, Patrick, you’ve got it. ConComm will create ratrunning unless it is paired with Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.

      Similarly, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods will be boosted immensely if paired with ConComm done well – which means improving all three of walking, cycling and buses.

      Getting TO the arterial safely and pleasantly on foot or bike or scooter is a big improvement, but if you can then move ALONG the arterial safely and pleasantly, the scale of modeshift we’ll see will shift the dial on emissions and allow us to meet our climate targets. It’ll also be a major public health boost and contribute heavily to reducing injury.

  9. Most of those streets have never needed to be four lanes as they don’t come close to the midblock capacity of two lanes. Most locations would be fine with two lanes mid-block shared by cars and buses. But you do need a bus lane at intersections. So a narrow cross-section midblock, the existing number of lanes at major intersections and a bit of widening at intersections so you could get a bike lane through the entire length would be fine.

  10. Love this idea Matt. I definitely prefer your indianapolis layout though. I also think that where the road is wide enough for four lanes, we should be building it with two bus lanes and they should be centre running. Then your platform would just block one of the bus lanes at each station.

  11. A lot of these corridors go through town centres – where that is the case ‘place’ has to come first, not movement. The town centres need wider footpaths for outdoor dining, trees and furniture for amenity, and the street should be as narrow and easy to walk across as possible. There is no point talking about increasing walking or reducing carbon if we stuff the town centres and there is nowhere to walk too. It is possible in the 20m carriageway, but the priorities need to be right.

    1. Bus gates prior to the town centre, then a slow speed single lane each way through the Main Street. Simplify any intersections on the corridor within the town centre (reduce the number of movements) or remove some intersections altogether within the Town centre itself.

  12. Renaming the programme is not progress. This is just like level crossing grade separation, lots of work required and no bite size incremental progress each year.

    Great North Rd Waterview has been a target for 20 years+, and at one stage was all going to be fixed as part of what became the Waterview tunnel project. The cycleway stops half way up and the section of bus lane added as part of the waterview tunnels stands alone, is short and infrequently used due to lane changing required. There are currently 4 traffic lanes.

    Its a major arterial connecting out to Avondale and New Lynn. Its blocked with traffic every rush hour. Do we really need another study to tell bus lanes and a cycleway are needed?
    Where’s the schedule for getting it built?

    1. Enter through the back like an old London double decker. This would get round the problem of having to have doors on both side of the bus and would only need one platform in the middle of the road with passengers queuing at opposite ends of the platform for different directions. Still would probably be easier if the buses where trams with doors at either side.

  13. How about a hybrid scheme?. Widen those arterial roads through the residential areas, by taking some road frontage road space, to give one each, in each direction of footpath, planting strip, cycle lane, general traffic lane and transit lane, (bus or light rail). The planting strip could be omitted, and general traffic lanes narrowed opposite staggered transit stops to create the extra room.
    Through the various village commercial areas cut and cover the transit lanes and site the larger required transit stops underground. Cycle lanes and reduced width, and speed, general traffic lanes and footpaths to remain on the surface.
    Expensive, but a lot cheaper the burying transit for the full length, as proposed by the pension scheme.

    1. Do you know how expensive that would be? Designations to widen roads takes many many years and adds huge cost to any project (look at Eastern Busway for example). Plus do we really need to widen? I’d argue that we don’t.

      Difficult decisions will have to be made – general traffic will have to be compromised … turning lanes, flush medians, slip lanes, parking etc will be removed.
      Are bus lanes needed entire lengths of roads? Or would bus lanes on approaches to intersections with B advance signals work for reliability?

      Really excited to see what emerges out of AT from this project.

      1. I think that miffy has said there is at least an existing road widening designation for Dominion Road. With rapid transit, and a cycleway established down this corridor it would be at least one key corridor fixed.

        1. We have many 20.1m corridors and are trying to find templates that work for the general conditions, not just where a road widening designation already exists.

          More fundamentally, Don, sprawl is a huge cost to the city because of the amount of land transport ends up taking up per capita. Road corridors cost money to maintain. We need to reduce that maintenance load for the future. Widening road corridors adds to the burden on future generations through the cost of doing so – which we should be avoiding so we can spend money on something that will help them instead – and the cost of maintaining that extra width.

          “Just a bit more space” is the car dependent society’s solution. We have to break free of that, and learn to live within our means. That means modeshift and a compact urban form.

        2. There is a partial road widening designation for part of Dominion Road, it doesn’t cover all the difficult bits like the historic shop fronts in the town centres.

          Anyway, the designation alone doesn’t make it cheap or easy. You still have to buy the land being taken, rebuild the street, the gutters and kerbs, the drainage pits, relocate the services and poles, rebuild all the driveways and front fences and gates. You’d end up spending the whole regional budget just doing one street.

          And it’s not that hard to get a widening designation, you just have to prove the need and prove that you are going to use it… which is actually where it would come unstuck, trying to prove that the city is actually going to spend half a billion dollars per street to widen it in the foreseeable future.

  14. The pictured BRT – asimilar concept to Curitiba, Brasil, but with a lot less shelter.

  15. This is a great idea, but one point in your post caught my eye:

    ‘If we could reduce traffic by a significant enough level, we could probably get away with not needing bus lanes at all as traffic would flow freely without holding buses up – thereby freeing up heaps of space.’

    Of course the key to achieving that is road pricing. That is why making road pricing an immediate priority is so important. It will unlock so many opportunities, such as allowing for cycling infra on arterials.

    1. This is an important point, because we can have a better network if we reduce traffic. And the more we can reduce traffic, and the fewer lanes that it requires, the more space we have for active travel, green infrastructure, and nice places.

      Road pricing, yes, but that’s not all. I made a chart of levers that can be used to reduce traffic in my post Reducing Traffic:

      https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2020/03/02/reducing-traffic/

  16. They are working on road pricing. Must be close now.

    file:///C:/Users/Anelise/Downloads/ARTA20-20AKL20Road20Pricing-Passenger20Transport20Analysis-June2008%20(1).pdf

  17. I think the first solution suggested has merit, but the two-lanes-into-one merge required every bus stop would be very disruptive.
    Widening the whole road is too expensive, but you could widen the road *only at bus stops* to allow 3 lanes all the time, and preserve two lanes at all times in the peak direction. In that system you’d keep the buses in the left most lane. Cars can still turn right, and passengers can board and alight as per normal.

  18. Just thinking outside the box and was therefore wondering and kind of” What If”, so jumped on google maps to look at Dominion Rd and Sandringham Rd and found that the two more or less run parallel and are about 600 metres apart.
    So, What If the two roads where to be turned in to one way roads, in opposite direction, surely this would allow a dual bus way, and later the light rail, two run down both roads. They both had trams back in the day.
    There would then be more than enough road left for active transport along with inactive transport (cars etc), and presumably leaving space for on street parking.

    1. One way roads (for the general traffic) with two way buses, as you’ve suggested, is something to consider. If AT would take on board the Low Traffic Neighbourhood approach for the whole city, and plan the arterials around that, there will be some areas where one way roads for the general traffic is the solution.

      The key is assigning the necessary space to active travel and then providing the bus priority required in the remaining space in the most appropriate way for that particular corridor.

  19. The outline of the routes seem to have been developed pre-CRL. I would like to see far more transfer options to the trains. There are many parts of the Isthmus where transferring to the train will bring you as fast to the city centre and additionally to other parts of the city too. With trains running higher frequency and stopping inside the CBD and don’t stuck in traffic transfers will be a far better option post-CRL.

    Therefore shouldn’t the lines be perpendicular to the trains? Why not develop public transport corridors on Mount Albert Rd and Balmoral Rd. With the high ways pretty much next to them there is no need for these to be arterial and they shouldn’t. This is what Paris did successfully when introducing the trams and pushing car traffic out of the city on the Périphérique.

    1. Having a network that transfers people from connecting services and pathways into the faster transit lines is absolutely critical. And the transfers need to be safe and easy, too. Also, we need the cross towns in and of themselves, not just as connecting to the rail network.

      However, the rail network is not geographically comprehensive. Auckland needs more transit lines (whether rail, light rail, busway or buses with priority).

  20. Maybe every road should not have to support every mode of traffic.
    If we put Light Rail down Dominion road and remove buses, have a cycle lane and remove cars (or allow only very local car traffic where there is enough room) then Sandringham road can have bus and car traffic and no cycle lanes. Funnel cyclists thru local streets to Dominion road.

    1. Not every road needs to support every mode of traffic. You could have buses on one road, trucks on another, for example. People can get goods to properties from hubs with small evans or cargo bikes or hand trucks. People can get from bus stops to properties by foot or scooter or share bike. And general traffic access to properties doesn’t need to be two-way, nor all-hours.

      But every road with any properties on it needs to support safe all-ages walking and cycling. Walking and micromobility networks are the glue that connect up the other modes to all the properties.

    2. “Funnelling cyclists through local streets to an arterial” doesn’t work. You need to look at what you’re trying to achieve. Biking involves both local travel (lots of it) as well as longer distance travel. Local travel means people on bikes will want to go to both Dominion Rd and Sandringham Rd. And Balmoral Rd, and all the other arterials.

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