This is a guest post by reader Grant A, the second of a pair about how to fix Broadway. If you missed the beginning of the show, here’s the link to Act 1 from yesterday.
Yesterday, I discussed changing traffic circulation around Broadway in Newmarket. This included implementing a car-free transit mall, full bus lanes and protected cycle lanes. Today, let’s look at some more options, what to do north of Remuera Rd, and the vast amounts of car parking available in Newmarket.
(Today’s header image was created at Dutch Cycling Lifestyle)
Filtered Access through Nuffield St?
The more I worked on this, the more I thought general through traffic should be prevented from going through Nuffield St, if we close through running on Broadway. So just allow buses, bikes, small wheels & pedestrians. There are actually three roads that access Nuffield off Broadway, they are St Marks, Mahuru & Balm. All these roads are pretty wide and Google Maps etc will surely suggest taking these ways instead. This could lead to rat running & undesirable results but maybe just the inconvenience would be enough for most people to switch to Gillies Ave, St Marks – Remuera?
So filtered access may need to be provided through here (for active modes and Rail Replacement Buses). Nuffield St could have the footpaths built out and prettied up as well at the Remuera end as a result.
Other or Additional Options
Option 3 & Combined with 2
In this option, we make a transit mall in the longer section between the two one-way pairs of Mortimer Pass & Morrow St (leave in the slip lane from Remuera Rd into Broadway).
This could be nicer & is quite similar to Option 2 in effect as there are no other vehicle accesses needed between.
Perhaps both options could be combined. This could be really nice, making an even longer transit mall plus the east end of Morrow St could be made a pedestrian-only area or beautiful pocket park. The only issue I see is cars wouldn’t be able to get down the one-way Morrow St apart from via Gillies Ave, Eden & Bourke St under the Wilson parking building. You could make Morrow St two-way instead but it would mean extra expense, traffic lights at the Broadway intersection & light phasing complexity added to the Gillies Ave one.
Option 1
You may have been wondering what happened to my Option 1. It’s basically the status quo, but with bus and cycle lanes added, and with no-right-turn out of Nuffield St as per the other options.
Under this option, I also allowed a general traffic right turn lane from Broadway into Morrow St (see image below). This means there was only room for a northbound bus lane between Morrow and Remuera Rd (there are currently none in this section of road). Leaving in the slip lane also makes the bike lane design complex and/or dangerous. So you can see why I quickly moved on from this option.
Parking Intermission
“But what about parking?” The thought is any loss of parking from Broadway itself is counterbalanced by existing parking on side roads and the multitudes of off-street parking options. There are 13 public car park buildings around the precinct, and pay and display spaces on many of Newmarket’s streets.
The multi-storey Wilson carpark on Eden St has 370 spaces. There are 518 spaces in the Davis Crescent car park. Westfield itself has around 2,700 parking spaces.
And to replace the loss of loading zones and quick parking on Broadway, you could prioritise areas on side roads where some of the current longer-term on-street parking is.
North of Remuera Rd
Back to the street layouts on Broadway, moving further north.
Here’s a suggested midblock layout for Broadway past Remuera Rd. Note you can combine the widths for the light pole, tree pit and footpath (2.3 + 0.4 + 0.6 or 0.5) to give around 3.3 m total on each side. At the corner turning left into Khyber Pass, you can obviously keep the indented bus stop with a general turning lane, or create more pedestrian space.
I note that Broadway is a designated over-dimensional route, so I assume it wouldn’t work to have a central raised median consisting of trees or planting; instead, how about more garden on the sides with a narrower than otherwise painted median? And would two 3m lanes be wide enough, albeit large and high loads may sometimes need to straddle the lanes in order to avoid the traffic lights?
North of Khyber Pass – Shared Path
Past Khyber Pass, Broadway is less broad, narrowing down from about 25.5 m to 20 m between property boundaries. The bus lanes can continue through here, but bike lanes may need some thought: I’d suggest a section of shared path on the west side to save some space past the swimming pool, which could then merge nicely with the pocket park area before the roundabout.
People on bikes could fairly easily make their way across the park to Carlton Gore Rd to join the cycle lanes there.
I’m not sure about the roundabout: you could perhaps narrow it up and make it into a full Dutch-style one with crossings on each leg similar to what’s been done in Glen Innes outside Tamaki College.
And then, carry on with the shared path right up to Ayr St.
I’ve done more Streetmix mock-ups for further afield roads leading to and from here if anyone is interested. Note: you can edit them and it automatically creates your own copy (although be warned, it’s a highly addictive exercise!).
Also, Streetmix doesn’t have shared paths, perhaps because they’re a pretty Kiwi/Aussie thing? So I’ve used bike and scooter stand graphics to represent them.
Encore
Implementing even some of these ideas above is essential in supporting some mode shift to buses, bikes, scooters and walking, not only in this area but beyond. This will reduce the harmful effects of congestion, vastly improve the area’s environment, and reduce our emissions.
On top of that, I’m sure the businesses would also experience greater sales when people enjoy visiting a calmer and quieter street environment, with less fear of getting trapped in the epic traffic jams that started me thinking about this.
It seems to me we have had enough of thinking the old way about providing for “traffic flow” and parking; we need to start thinking differently.
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I’m doing some work on moving over dimension loads from the Port of Auckland to service a variety of energy projects, These tend to be very tall and wide. In some instances with low trailer clearance (200mm) and wide loads (up to 5.2m). Its important for traffic planning to recognize that kerb extensions, raised pedestrian tables and close planting and with kerb edge road furniture are becoming real problems to get these loads through Auckland. We want more wind and solar energy but if you can’t get the transformer or a turbine blade or tower out of the port to the site you haven’t got a project.
Is there a plan for a wind turbine in Newmarket?
It would be a better use case than the on street car parks.
Lowestoft, UK has a rather nice wind turbine called Gulliver in the middle of the waterfront industrial area.
For OD routes, AT takes care to avoid limiting their useable envelope.
Bring back the K Rd windmill!
The conflict is not best resolved by denying Aucklanders the streetscape improvements that other cities have been rolling out for their citizens, though. If trucks taking wide loads require substandard street designs, these trucks are simply not suitable for city streets where people deserve safety.
We have other corridors that are not ‘people’ corridors:
– the rail corridor (and wide loads should definitely be part of the spec for the third and fourth mains) and
– the motorway corridor, which can be put to much more efficient and equitable use once VKT is halved. And halving VKT requires the sorts of improvements to town centres that Grant is discussing here.
Brent Meekan what Heidi meant to say was “I don’t care”.
The war on cars cult don’t car one iota for the economic destruction they cause, nor the practical problems they create. The other corridors Heidi refers to are a myth because the other corridors have either been compromised or will be compromised by the same crap we see in this post.
The aim is to create a city where people can’t move where they want to go. Because socialists believe they are superior to the rest of the population and they should control the behavior of others. They believe people make wrong choices so to fix that they will spend your ratepayer dollars so you can’t make “wrong choices”.
It won’t be long until they start pushing permits for people to be more the 10 minutes away from their house, forcing people to buy at their local supermarket and forcing you to school your kids at your local school.
Rubbish, does this hold true that cyclists can’t really go where they want to go because it is too dangerous, especially for the young or more frail? Newmarket and other places are littered with roads and parking, and why we have a problem to start with.
maybe the socialists can push for a permit that keeps you from posting, that’d be nice
Oh look, a 15-Minute City conspiracist in the wild!
Have you ever said anything that wasn’t complete nonsense?
Yes, flip, why aren’t the motorways used for this at 3 am?
Overbridges, e.g. Penrose.
Load rating of bridges.
These are the established over dimensions routes, with Broadway and Great South Rd being a major one to/from the port.
https://data-atgis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/overdimension-route/explore
Thanks for that, wasn’t working for me the last time I looked, but had some old PDF ones. I wonder if the motorway overhead signage, say, down Grafton Gully is too low too. Why does it stop at the roundabout at Broadway, Parnell Rd & Davis Cres?
In my post, you will see I recognised it as an over-dimensional route, so the centre medians would have to be low or just painted. We can make up for lack of greenery in the middle on the sides.
not much use of the fact that there is a major railway station within the Newmarket precinct which could be used a great deal after the CRL comes into being, but can be encouraged as it is now also, a great way to deal with traffic congestion
Yes, a big beacon like they putting up elsewhere would be good if it could fit along Broadway somehow. The entrance near Teed St is barely visible.
It’s a tiny, miserly, minimum-budget entrance that does Newmarket absolutely no favours. It is flanked by empty shop units. Why not buy one and demolish it to make a bigger, grander entrance to the station square? You could have new lighting, green walls, running water, public art….all kinds of cool things.
This should be a glorious gateway from the square to Broadway. Instead, it feels like a nasty little alley.
The fact that there are thousands of car parks available in parking buildings in the precinct suggests that there is no need for any on-street parking at all.
Thanks, Grant. Great post again.
Newmarket really suffers due to the lack of parking levies. There simply wouldn’t be so much parking (and thus, traffic) had these been brought in when it was clear we needed then 20+ years ago. AT has had 14 years to advocate for these, which the ARC recommended they do.
A levy on developers? Yes, also this “time of use” charging the Mayor talks about would help. With a transit mall & the extreme peaks reduced, it all should run sweet.
Newmarket is an area where generous bike lanes are needed both sides of the street. People do visit all the stores both sides of the street. And once cycling is made safe, the place will be full of people on bikes. We really don’t want people having to use the footpath for convenience, in such a busy location, simply because we’ve only put the bike lanes on one side.
For the section where space is more limited, past the pool, there’s just not enough space for four vehicle lanes. I think with the transit mall changes, the level of traffic evaporation is likely to be significant, so fewer vehicle lanes wouldn’t be a problem.
You could use bus gates to provide bus prioirty, without having to resort to full-length bus lanes.
Shared paths are not appropriate in busy urban areas with high footfall like this.
Yes definitely need bus gates between Nuffield St & Remuera Rd. AT has the camera technology now. You may want to allow good vehicles & be like that Queen St GV lane they have set up.
What would you suggest? Yes shared path by the pool was sad outcome, are you thinking just have 3 lanes of traffic and buses in one direction just use a general lane?
Perhaps you’d try one combined lane heading north and two lanes heading south (bus + general). Traffic light priority could be provided to let the buses heading north in before the vehicles.
Sounds like a good plan.
On another issue, New York today killed off their plan for congestion pricing https://www.nbcnewyork.com/traffic/transit-traffic/congestion-pricing-delay-hochul/5478988/
Correction: New York *State* “indefinitely postponed* New York City’s congestion-charging system which was schdeduled to start in less than four weeks.
New York *City* is absolutely livid.
https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/06/05/congestion-fee-manhattan-hochul-business/
The proposed changes would be a complete cluster^&%$ locking in congestion for kilometres but this quote really gets me
“On top of that, I’m sure the businesses would also experience greater sales when people enjoy visiting a calmer and quieter street environment, with less fear of getting trapped in the epic traffic jams that started me thinking about this.”
I don’t know how many times this myth has to be proven wrong? Business after business after business has gone under following changes like this proposal. It’s happened in central Auckland, Wellington and everywhere else. Yet the myth remains.
Business will vehemently oppose such changes because they have seen business owners suffer as a result of similar changes. We’ve seen business owners forced to sell their own house in some instances. It’s clear the war on cars fraternity don’t care one iota about businesses or their employees to the point they rely on myth’s that in reality are blatant lies.
Those with no skin in the game are pushing for these changes and using their privileged voices to blunt those whose livelihoods are being destroyed.
As a generalisation, the way a street is organised lasts for far longer than any retailer’s presence. They can and do move on frequently; whether that’s due to high interest rates, inflation, international online spending, or any of the other pressures that retailers face. They’re given (certainly in the media) an outsize voice on the street structure – parking, cycle lanes etc. They’re specialists in retail, not the urban environment. I don’t ask my dog about the supermarket shopping, as far as he’s concerned all biscuits appear when he’s been a good boy. Why lock ourselves into streetscapes that suit people who won’t be there in 50 years time?
+1000
So having empty shops everywhere is a good thing?
I hear many streets where the uplift helps them, Fort St in Auckland for example. Many overseas examples, perhaps more studies need to be done here but often we don’t finish the job. I will concede that I think some businesses perhaps don’t do so well with their specific location and there is a bit of a turnover to the right kind if their customer base doesn’t change or they adapt. eg quick stop outside a dairy, pick up a pie and drive off again if they lose that parking spot but perhaps the cycleway doesn’t have a bike rack outside or the business owners were so vocally anti-cycling they scared them off when the cycle path finally opened. There are plenty of cyclists and bus or train users that would buy a pie if given the chance.
Matthew, these people are the disciples of Marx; cars aren’t their real enemy as these are just the means by which people get around and freely conduct their business in a capitalist democracy. What they really want is the destruction of the terrible capitalist businesses so that we will all be corralled into ghastly Soviet apartment blocks and be subjected to their command and control society.
They also fail to understand that Auckland is a 20th century city, built after and around the utility of Henry Ford’s realisation of creating freedom of movement for the masses.
The problem with trying to turn the Auckland and Newmarket business districts into attractive freely accessible ares would require the sort of investment that Singapore has expended. This means Gigabucks when we only have loose change. The problem is akin to turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse. The photo of Newmarket circa 1950 shows what a grotty dump it was then and fundamentally it hasn’t changed.
Singapore has nowhere else to develop new commercial districts. We do and in fact we are one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth, with one of the highest proportions of people in one city.
We need some really good debates about how this country should look at the turn of the next century, outside of political allegiance. When was the last time that you heard a leader of our country talk about a Vision for the future?
There is a verse from the Bible which goes along the line of “where there is no vision, the people shall perish”
Marx certainly had a vision but sadly few of his indoctrinated followers would have actually read his evil works. We have a generation that has not been taught history and exposed to the disasters of socialism since the socialists took over the education sector ;unless there is some real enlightenment in the coming years, this country increasingly looks like becoming an Albania of the South Pacific.
Complaining about “a generation that has not been taught history” (from the comments here that is everyone between the ages of 20 and 70, I assume) just two sentences after quoting one of the most destruction-bringing fiction books of all time is my kind of humor. Go Chris!
Just happened to be listening to the song as per your name (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers live version) and made the connection.
Providing good public transport and active modes actually helps cars get around more freely. I’d love to see what it’s like in Auckland if we halted all the PT services & had roads the early-era and 1950’s road fantasy people would want. You would either have no destinations worth visiting left and covered the whole city in roads or not be able to move with all the congestion. aka Newmarket on a rainy Black Friday sale weekend.
What you encourage, you get more of, more roads begets more roads, be careful what you wish for. Induced demand is such a thing.
-1000
Replying to ChrisB
take your meds Chrisb, your kids will be grateful
“Marx certainly had a vision but sadly few of his indoctrinated followers would have actually read his evil works”
Which probably means they weren’t followers.
All the successful shop front businesses developed before cars, e.g Smith and Caughey. Business started declining when motorways, car dominance, far flung suburbs and malls came in. It’s hitting a peak of bad business now as car ownership is at its highest and they’re planning to spend all the transport budget on moving more people further from town to greenfield areas. Shop owners are clinging on to the vain hope that a few street parks will save them.
Best way to save main street front retail shops will be to return to pre car, freedom for pedestrians, trams and light rail dropping commuters off right in front of the shops.
Seems like common sense to me.
It is not a myth, many other cities have done changes like this and then seen business improve by a few 100%.
There is a need to work out the big picture first – what alternative routes are possible, to by-pass Broadway and how can they be used to re-assign traffic? Broadway is the direct route from Manukau Rd through Parnell to the city – that’s why Newmarket grew up there. The branching railway limits the options for alternative routes.
Next, getting in closer, comes the routes through Newmarket that have been discussed in the post, and the possibilities to achieve the much-better streetscapes and PT solutions, with cycle accessibility.
Then, of course, comes the problem of the huge number of destination car drivers flocking into and out of all those car parks. Not surprising that you need to book a time-slot to get out of Westfield. AT didn’t want all that parking, just had to agree to a traffic plan to suit Westfield. And they’re not the only off-street car parks, as the post makes clear.
Regarding the alternative routes, I think Alpers Ave is very important, 3 lanes one way (2 right turning) should be able to get those going north onto Gillies Ave or the motorway if going to lower Parnell say, come back from from Grafton Gully routes. Coming south, you could use Remuera Road, St Marks back to Manukau Rd. This is why I think my original thinking “Option 2” works as it gives Remuera Rd as an arterial. Those extra crossing lights at Teed St should pretty much be synchronised with the intersection ones so as to not make much difference that they are there or not to drivers. It is a pretty hard nut to crack as I forgo to mention Newmarket School in another comment on Part 1 about the school kids “traffic”, it’s pretty constrained through Gillies Ave there by the looks.
Regarding parking, yes, I forgot to mention in my final edit the self-contained parking in newish New World on Nuffield St, also in behind the old Auckland Power Board building next to it. Also more multi-story Westfield parking next to that & a few other places, one on a roof on the other side of the road. Lots of smaller places than the small ones everywhere. Opposite the street by the train station too & another large + small one other side of the station (not sure of counts on these couldn’t find details on them).
The small Westfield carpark on Nuffield Steet is great if you live on that side of Newmarket and need to get there by car (I do use a bus when I can). You can access coming in via St Mark’s Road and avoid adding to broader Newmarket congestion.
Seems to be the expensive choice to massively Change Broadway.
Surely it would be cheaper to develop more shops on the small side streets and pedestrianize them and leave Broadway as the road thoroughfare?.
That doesn’t give us bus lanes and cycle lanes through the arterials. Perhaps the transit mall aspect could be done as a trial. There’s kind of three things going on that could all be done separately. But I do like the idea of at least some of the side streets pedestrianised there was some probably out of date now lane ways project I remember looking at.
There was also a plan about 10 years ago to build all the way from the train station over the tracks and have it come out over the Newmarket rail triangle is. All pedestrianized and little shops etc. I’d like to see more development over the rail tracks.
The first thing that should be done is the bus stop at the Broadway end of Remuera road shifted to outside Smith & Caughy.
This would be safer as pedestrian just jaywalk across the road when they come out of the station to catch the Rail temporary busses
The next move would be to get rid of the pedestrian crossing half way down mortimer pass and make all three lanes usable from the top
It’s important to provide for pedestrians somewhere along there to cross, with the lights at each end not affecting “traffic flow” too much. Every driver becomes a pedestrian eventually.
*with the lights at each end anyway, I think the crossing is not affecting “traffic flow” too much.
It’s the structure built around the crossing. Three lanes then down to two.
Then back to three
I can tell you don’t go down there Regular.
I am a service person who does work around Auckland..
I cannot service customers on a bike
So drive, no one’s telling you that you shouldn’t. I would expect most service people would still need to drive to their jobs. Some very central city areas maybe more accessible by an e-cargo bike in the future, it happens overseas no problem.
Yes, it has surprised me how central city retailers do not say some of their problems are caused by suburban sprawl, and could be reduced by having more people live in the central city and inner city suburbs. Indeed, many show owners seem to be against any urban intensification.