After around ten years of delays and frustration, Auckland Transport are finally going to make Great North Rd greater.
In an update sent out yesterday, they said:
We are pleased to advise that we have appointed JFC Ltd to deliver the work and they’ll be starting work early January.
The entire project is expected to take less than 12 months, and to complete the work as quickly as possible we’ll stage the work along the route, working in two locations at a time (see staging map below). The first work areas are:
- between Northland Street and Elgin Street
- between Maidstone Street and Ponsonby Road
We are timing work at the busy Ponsonby Road end of the route during January-February when traffic volumes are lowest.
The government is making a lot of noises about the need to speed up the delivery of infrastructure around New Zealand, with a big focus on trying to deliver big projects. While there is absolutely room for improvement in the delivery pace of these, big projects also deserve big scrutiny. The government would do well to lend some focus to the much larger number of small projects that suffer from unnecessary delays – like as to why it takes nearly 10 years to deliver 1.6km of improvements, even or especially when the community supports it.
The long road to improving Gt North Rd
The first murmurings of this project were way back in 2014 with a series of planned improvements to intersections. Things really kicked off in 2015 when John Key announced the funded projects from his government’s Urban Cycleway Fund (UCF).
The UCF was one of National’s 2014 election promises, and would see $100 million of crown funding invested in cycling projects to be delivered by mid-2018. Combined with equal shares from the National Land Transport Fund and local government, this equated to nearly $300 million towards getting bike networks under way in cities around New Zealand. Gt North Rd was one of the projects included in the UCF.
In late 2016, AT consulted on designs for the corridor, which drew almost unanimous support: “Feedback showed overwhelming support for the proposed improvements on Great North Road with approximately 86% of responses being positive.” AT noted: “We have some further investigatory work to complete, but expect to begin construction in late 2017“.
Progress continued to be made, and in 2017 they conducted another round of consultation.
But then, after a small amount of noisy opposition, AT got scared and the great cycleway freeze hit. AT paused most cycleway projects to review them – wasting years during a time with a government that was very supportive of exactly these kinds of projects.
During this time, AT incorporated the Gt North Rd project into its citywide Connected Communities multimodal corridor programme (which eventually quietly failed and folded last year, in what should have been a massive public debacle). The project design was tweaked as part of this, and in March 2021 – four and a half years after it was first taken to the public – the project was consulted on once again.
In July 2022, AT announced the project was finally happening:
Auckland Transport (AT) is delivering 1.6km of bus, safety, walking and cycling improvements along Great North Road, between Ponsonby Road and Crummer Road which will help move more Aucklanders along one of Auckland’s most iconic roads.
The changes will include safer crossings and intersections, a protected cycleway, extended bus lanes, longer loading zones for large vehicles (including car transporters), and more trees and landscaping.
Construction will take place from late 2022 till late 2023. Before major construction begins preparatory work is planned from August which will involve some minor work getting underway on the street.
Then the local body election happened, and managers delay merchants within Auckland Transport seized on grumblings from the mayor and local councillor as an opportunity to do what they do best, delay things further. It took a huge effort from advocates, community groups, and many locals, including schools, the residents’ association and the business association, to persuade the AT board to agree to proceed with the project.
The change in government late last year has seen a lot of changes in transport priorities, and I understand that a number of people both inside and outside of AT who oppose the project have tried to use this to try and relitigate the project once again.
With yesterday’s announcement, it seems the constant relitigation of this project is finally over. This is great – but it really shouldn’t take a decade to plan and deliver a much-wanted project that can be built in less than a year.
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I see this
“the entire project is expected to take less than 12 months, and to complete the work as quickly as possible”
I do hope this is accurate as I keep seeing so many projects around Auckland went lot longer than planned. I feel sorry for the people who live in Pt Chev area and had to put up with the Point Chevalier Road construction for nearly a year.
“I feel sorry for the people who live in Pt Chev area” – shouldn’t you feel sorry for the areas that aren’t getting millions spent on them?
I may be wrong, but isn’t this one of the “very special” “historical” areas of Auckland that must be preserved at all costs? If so, why spend money on this area that can’t grow while neglecting the areas that can?
Yes. You are wrong. Check the Auckland Unitary Plan maps. You can’t blame every single ill of this city on Special Character Areas.
No Jimbojones, Pt Chev has a decent amount of THAB zoning and the rest is either mixed house urban or suburban.
No, Pt Chev doesn’t have a scrap of single house zone in it. There are several blocks of THAB around the town centre & mixed use areas and the rest is all mixed urban or suburban, both of which allow up to three units by right.
The huge amounts of money, time and disruption are due to having to entirely rebuild the road sub-base and utilities, which has nothing to do with the surface improvements. I recall hearing or reading about a case where they dropped a huge plumb rod in to see how deep a hole they opened was and it disappeared completely.
Yes, it was something like “active modes and bus lane improvements, 30%, rehabilitation of failing (or not-up-to-standards) road & stormwater 70% of the cost”.
Once you get to that level of work needed – because there wasn’t any major maintenance / upgrades for many many decades and maybe cut corners on the original work way back when – it’s not really surprising that the work takes time.
Wellington has that issue with their water system. We have it with a lot of our roads.
I was at the AT Board Meeting when they approved this. I witnessed the Principal of Grey Lynn School making a plea on behalf of the young children in his school, and obviously something actually found some emotion to tug at in that cold dark room where the AT Board has their public meetings.
This is excellent news that it has a timeline.
Our young people deserve to feel safe, as do we, and our older people, and these improvements will make that stretch of road, as wide as a highway, into a reasonable urbanised space, pleasant to walk, bike and loiter upon.
May Auckland continue to provide positive news while Wellington is stuck in bad news mode.
bah humbug
I’m not sure this road needs much attention. Apart from one pot hole that needs fixing, the road is mostly in good condition. AT are just finding more ways to waste money as per usual. There are so many roads that actually need attention.
It’s not in good condition for anyone other than drivers.
Oh. Yes. I reviewed so many iterations of this design over the years for Bike Auckland. Will be great to see things finally kick off – was very worried it would get killed off somehow once more with the new govt / GPS…
The lack of protected cycle infrastructure through the Grey Lynn shops is really going to nerf this project’s full potential by not linking up nicely to the inner west cycleways. It needs to be addressed ASAP.
Leaving a gap in the middle works for the motorway builders. These projects each end of the gap make the centre bit happening much more likely. Yes, it’s frustrating and takes too long, but I’m confident on eventual progress.
Should be great once done. All these and smaller projects area taking way too long.
1.6 km only should have been done 10 years ago. Nice to see cars still have some parking in that last photo outside what I think is Bunnings with its huge off street underground car park.
How long till the outrage articles in Herald about the car yards and their car trucks unloading..?
glad it’s getting done but jeez we suck at doing stuff
“How long till the outrage articles in Herald about the car yards and their car trucks unloading..?”
The new design provides them with dedicated unloading zones, from memory. But yeah, I would not be surprised despite that.
There will be an outrage article just about the fact a cycleway is being built regardless of impacts. Particularly given this is in the inner suburbs.
That old map of cycle routes planned seems to show a route going up the southern motorway as a link to public transport. Interesting.
I don’t know which map you are looking at? None of the above seems to show that? But yes. Barbara Cuthbert and myself for Bike Auckland back in the better days (~2015-2016?) managed to convince NZTA that a cycle route from Newmarket to Ellerslie / Greenlane would be useful along SH1 Southern motorway to duplicate the success of the Northwestern Cycleway.
NZTA even drew up some concept studies. Then they decided that since Connected Communities was covering Great South Road, NZTA abandoned that project and handed it to AT, with the understanding that in some sections of Great South Road, AT might look at putting cycle improvements into the SH1 corridor instead of on GSR.
Of course Connected Communities eventually did it’s great banishing act.
Vanishing act. Though it also banished improvements for many years.
That old Urban Cycleway Fund (UCF) map showing faint yellow/orange.
We need both long term – the highway version connected to trains and the connected to shops etc great south road one.
That yellow/orange seems just existing motorways?
The lack of a clear North/South and East/West route across the isthmus is such a crippling issue for cycling in the city, and there seems to be absolutely no ambition or urgency to get anything built in the short, or even medium, term.
The fact that the official solution is to all day to waste using the Dominon Rd safe routes is damning.
“Then the local body election happened and managers delay merchants within Auckland Transport seized on grumblings from the mayor and local councilor’
Which managers?
Are they still working in the same roles at AT, or have they already been restructured, or appointed to new roles within AT?
At least one road “improvement” project is actually going to improve the road.
(looks disparagingly at The Strand “Optimisation” project…)