With many of Auckland’s political and bureaucratic leaders bowing down to vocal minorities and consistently failing to reallocate space to people in our city, recent news overseas has prompted me to point out something important.
It is extremely popular to make car-dominated cities nicer, by freeing up space for people.
From Paris, with love
Yesterday, Parisians voted to pedestrianise 500 (more) streets in their city, replacing 10,000 car parks, roads, and grey asphalt with walking, cycling, and the green of vegetation. Most significantly, this passed with 66% approval.
In the years since 2020’s sudden Covid disruption, Paris, unlike Auckland, has accelerated its existing plans to shift away from driving as the default mode, and toward sustainability, clean air, and a more people-friendly city.
It was a paradigm shift built off previous decades of work, gifting residents and visitors a city which thrums with the sound of people, and not vehicles.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s been initiated and maintained by the courage of the city’s leadership, notably its Mayor Anne Hidalgo. Like any change on a grand scale, of course it takes time and effort to transform a busy urban environment, but when done with vision and purpose, it quickly leads to a better city for all.
Across the ditch, a six-time Mayor keeps on keeping on
Closer to home, the City of Sydney has seen similar change over the last few decades. Lord Mayor of Sydney since 2004, Clover Moore, has consistently been re-elected on a platform of changing streets from prioritising cars, to people.
This hasn’t been an easy journey, faced with hostile state governments, and some public resistance or outright opposition to things like making it easier to cycle. But persistence has paid off, with more cycling than ever, and transformational projects like Sydney Light Rail have changed not only the city but hearts and minds, widening the horizon of possibility and imagination.
The city that never sleeps is constantly awake to potential
Backed by the Mayor at the time, Michael Bloomberg, in the 2010s transport czar Janette Sadik-Khan championed a high profile and successful transformation of New York City’s streets, including transforming Times Square from a busy, noisy, dirty traffic sewer into a bright and welcoming zone for people.
In particular, the expansion of bike lanes along with the arrival of bike-share saw a dramatic rise in cycling, with support growing even further after changes bedded in.
“There’s no question having a strong leader does help in establishing that vision, and supporting change when the status quo blowback begins,” she said. “But in New York we fundamentally rewrote the operating code of the streets, not with mega-projects and billions of dollars, but by adapting the space that was already there.
“That’s a really important lesson in many, many cities: you don’t have to have the most visionary mayor, you don’t have to have a billion-dollar budget, you don’t have to have years and years of modelling. Just by adapting the space that’s there you can make a huge difference.
More recently, implementation of congestion charging in a major swathe of Manhattan has been extremely effective at reducing traffic, while also making public transport and cycling better… and reducing the amount of honking, for a much more stress-free metropolis overall.
Things are looking up, down South!
These waves of change are washing on our shores as well. As Jessica de Heij noted last year, Dunedin’s George Street has been upgraded to be more pedestrian-friendly, and, Invercargill’s city centre is a more people-focused place.
Despite virulent vocal opposition from some in Dunedin, the previous Mayor Aaron Hawkins pushed ahead with plans to transform George Street. Now that the work is completed, some of the most vocal opponents have changed their tune, now vocally supporting the streetscape changes. Surprise!
(How many of those so confidently and loudly opposing Wellington’s Golden mile upgrade, will extol its virtues once done?)
Auckland’s good at this too… so why do our leaders drag their feet?
Tāmaki Makaurau is full of great public places that drew headlines in the making, but have been wild successes once finished and full of people. Time after time, the spaces we change in Auckland demonstrate that Aucklanders love places for people, and they love alternatives to getting around by car.
Despite the still disconnected bike network, cycling continues to grow across the city, by leaps and bounds wherever improvements happen. And pedestrianising public places helps businesses boom.
So why aren’t we doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on this proven recipe for success?
How many times do we have to consult on pedestrianising Queen Street or High Street, before it actually happens? How many post-construction successes do we need to see?
How many ‘open street’ events do we need to hold, to prove this works well enough to run on a routine basis, every weekend and/or all summer long?
How many studies do we need, showing yet again that bike lanes, pedestrianisation, and reducing traffic leads to more money for businesses, less congestion, healthier environments, happier citizens, and a better city for people?
How many other cities do we need to see change, to believe we can do it ourselves?
Next time you travel around the City Centre, or any of Auckland’s town centres in this city-of-villages – ask yourself ,which parts are busiest with people?
On your journey to and from work, school, shopping, leisure – ask yourself which streets you’d most like to live on?
Odds are, in both cases you’ll land on our pedestrianised squares and residential streets with little through-traffic. It’s a no-brainer.
Then ask yourself – what’s stopping us from sharing the love and changing more places to match the vibe?
From where I sit, it mostly looks like a lack of confident and brave leadership. Something to ponder, with local elections coming up.
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There are local body elections this year so how about voting out the nay sayer Councillors and electing some who share this vision.
Good thinking constable. I think it’s time – watch this space!
I’m not overly optimistic. Aucklanders seem to like voting for luggards that can’t even cope with barriers to protect bike lanes and majors who are tighter than a sparrows ass.
Thats all well and good when you have an existing underground metro system and 12.5 million people in the greater Paris area to pay for it . That’s 2.5 x the population of New Zealand in their catchment. We simply cannot afford what they have. Our city was built to suit cars and roads.
How negative. Change is needed if car dependency is to end. Not everyone (or perhaps anyone) xan afford to carry on paying for those mistakes. Tuatara are smart enough to outlive dinosaurs. Which are you and your Councillors? Discuss!
“But in New York we fundamentally rewrote the operating code of the streets, not with mega-projects and billions of dollars, but by adapting the space that was already there.
“That’s a really important lesson in many, many cities: you don’t have to have the most visionary mayor, you don’t have to have a billion-dollar budget, you don’t have to have years and years of modelling. Just by adapting the space that’s there you can make a huge difference.”
Easy fix just install some barriers so cars cant travel down the particular road ,problem solved .Dont need to spend more as people will walk where ever there are no cars and the same with cycling .Only a days work required and 20k for concrete barriers .After the initial bleating people will adapt and love it .
No it really wasn’t, it was built by trains and trams and bicycles. It was re-built for cars and roads. We can rebuild it again for better balance. And the great news is that involves much less shock and destruction than it took to ram motorways through the existing urban fabric.
Also of course we can learn from the successes of other cities even though Akl is not exactly the same, or exactly as big, or speak french, or have the sun in the south, or whatever.
All cities are specific, all cities also have the same general patterns, problems, and opportunities, as facts of geometry, physics, and gravity are universal and even human desires are pretty universal.
Is anyone proposing to copy Paris exactly? No. But to learn from other cities, adapt and apply what’s relevant, yes.
After all that’s how we got the abrupt change into a motorway city; by copying LA – it’s well documented.
You are correct Paris’ dense and very local city Metro system, plus the longer distance and more recent (suburb-city-suburb) RER train network, is key to enabling the conversion of so many streets away from vehicle dominance. But like you say 12.5m people, so everything has to be so much bigger.
The Akl city centre is already well served by transit in 3 forms, especially buses, and buses need those surface streets. If anything our relative lack of underground transit means we have to have fewer, not more, streets for private vehicles (I don’t think our car-loving, train hating political groups have ever understood that)
Of course next year Auckland will have its transformational major underground line, perhaps more RER-like than Metro-like, in a Paris comparison. Absolutely this means more surface space can be liberated for higher value use.
After all making the city easy to get is important, yes, but more important is making worth coming to!
“Our city was built to suit cars and roads”
No it wasn’t.
a) Auckland was founded on 18 September 1840 and was officially declared New Zealand’s capital in 1841
b) Benz Patent-Motorwagen; 1885
Auckland, even WW2 era was built around people walking, cycling, trams, ferries, railway and relatively few private motorcars. It was only when Auckland (and other cities) pivoted to cars & motorways in the 1950s onwards that congestion became an issue. Other cities; notably the Paris or Sydney example, did the same and had the same issues, but implemented change.
We had an effective public transport system even when smaller; if we can’t afford to do stuff like cheap cycle lane or grass over a road like in Paris, then we certainly can’t afford more motorways like Mills Road or East – West link.
The issue is conservative ideology, not evidence or cost.
Wait until you find out how expensive road building and maintenance is
Someone has to bite the bullet. If we are going to have increase population, you need better infrastructure. You can’t do those changes after the population has increased, as has been done in the past.
Anyone who says money is the problem, knows that money creates the problem.
We are born pedestrian, we can hardly move at birth, but we pass through our evolutionary timelines and at some point need to push a pedal.
Bikes have pedals, cars have pedals, but cars are now on their own evolutionary timelines too, and are almost as big as a bus now.
As a resident of the city centre, I do not require anything more than a public transport card to move around, and with my two young kids, know every pedestrian friendly area around, because they are obviously the most precious persons in my life.
Auckland Transport has been moved by people pleading for them to think about the children. Some of our councillors think about them too.
But until we stop poisoning ourselves with car exhaust fumes, and realise that the big cities of the world are big because they have learned from experience, then hopefully we can acknowledge their mistakes, and their victories, and choose the good stuff.
Basically, living in an apartment and walking everywhere is as close as you will arrive to any heavenly plain.
bah humbug
Hi Simon, with the CRL we are just starting our Metro heritage whereas Paris started their Metro in 1900 when the population of Ville de Paris was just over 2.5M. So in fact, at the get go, we are ahead of the curve. We are leveraging over 100years of learnings from other cities to do what they have, but sooner. What Connor is arguing for here is that we also leverage the learnings of other cities in how we repurposing space to make that space more productive. In a motornormative society like ours it is really hard to get your head around the idea that four people on bikes in the same space that was previously occupied by one person in a car is actually a better use of that space. I’ve struggled with that concept and it wasn’t until I got on my bike and tested it out that my light bulbs came on. Try it and see. [insert mage of aged constable on a bicycle]
Yesterday’s collisions on Symonds Street between a speeding driver and pedestrians show how it only takes one idiot to ruin a lot of people’s day, or lives.
That street is one of the better designed in the city, with ample footpaths, controlled crossings, protected parking, bus lanes and mature trees (one of which heroically stepped in to stop the offender).
The presumed right of private motoring to access all areas is over.
Yes people enjoy open spaces once they are put in place, but every win is a battle against popular public opinion.
Sentiment is still broadly supportive of more roads, no transport lanes, higher speeds. more free / cheap parking and against cycleways, enforcement, reduced parking etc. Led by a cheerleading media who just want to stir up a tide of resentment rather than fully investigating the issues.
There’s a myth that our car centric society enables us to drive without stress and park right outside our destination every time and that anything that detracts from this fantasy is unreasonable.
The reality is all these abhorred changes make our lives easier not harder. Try arguing with someone that buses and priority lanes make things better for motorists. They just don’t get it. They only learn from experience and they’re unwilling to try. Not helped by AT ignoring opportunities to promote PT like the Sail GP regatta.
I caught two buses on Saturday to go to an event at Aotea Door to seated 25 minutes. Afterwards I could wander down queen Street and have a drink or three then catch another bus to a restaurant and then home. It was hassle free pleasant in the autumnal weather, quick, safe cost effective. When I tell people this they look at me as if I am mad.
Our politicians reflect these prejudices and are formed by them and react to them in order to stay in power. It is a failure of political courage
“why aren’t we doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on this proven recipe for success?”
You know why. We ALL know why, and as long as we keep PRETENDING we don’t know why, we can’t build a mass urbanist movement.
I’m intrigued and slightly worried I don’t know why
That New York Times Square photo ‘after’ looked a little bit like an AI generated render.
Looking at Google Street View, I am even more confused.
I selected a photo showing a street/square full of people:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/crs9NgsCShFtnXsb7
(in the intersection with CBS on one side and Gap on the other). Nice, right?
Then Google street view with I think the same ~location:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/kmNyeVTWy55x8Sok6
And it is a traffic sewer.
I thought this was before and after, but looking at the dates, the photo is from 2023, and Street view from August 2024.
Is it just using retractable bollards, or have they gone backwards?
If you go back to 2009 on Street View, you can see that there was an additional road going in the other direction where there is now a plaza outside of GAP in your first picture. So while there is still (potentially a lot of) traffic, they got rid of half of the lanes.
Seems like the loudest voices in NZ are often cycle advocacy groups… I’m all for better public transport and pedestrianised streets, but shared spaces just put pedestrians at greater risk if injuries, especially areas with steep gradients like Queen street.. Can’t agree with those saying public transport has improved, in the past you could catch one bus from outer suburbs (eg Howick) to the CBD, these days you need to catch 2 busses then transfer to a train.. in NZ cyclist behavior towards pedestrians is the biggest issue, such as what happened on the Northwestern shared path and the school walking bus deemed too dangerous due to cyclists that don’t care about vulnerable pedestrians safety
Doug, this a space allocation problem. ‘Road’ space should be allocated on the basis of the speed of the traveller rather than the means of conveyance. Three different different spaces are suggested for urban areas. A. For less than 7km/h. Mainly walkers & slow cycling. 7 to 35km/h for faster cyclists and scooters. Up to 50 km/h for real fast cyclists and cars etc.
Stay in your lane & it minimises risk to others.
I agree, but in reality this is not what is being suggested or implemented.. my comments are criticism of shared spaces
“…in NZ cyclist behavior towards pedestrians is the biggest issue.”
You can’t have typed this with a straight face, surely.
just like eLoon and trump convincing magats that they’re Working Class Heroes and not sociopath billionaires, the roading lobbies here have done a great job pushing the notion that it’s any urbanist/transit advocate speaking up who’s part of The Big Evil Establishment trying to oppress the “poor suffering car drivers”
The reason why pedesteianisation works in these cities ( NY, London. Paris, Syndney)…in the heart of it… is because of their well established public transport system… MRTS to be precise. Mass rapid transit system provides reliable connectivity, removal of cars and allows people to travel to and from nodal points.
Auckland does not have that kind of infrastructure to support people comimg in and out of CBD and using the spaces in large numbers and buses cannot support that either. Therefore cars, traffic and bottlenecking everywhere.
We cannot expect people to get out of cars but not provide an effective means of mass rapid movement. Its simply not going to happen and penalising people is not the answer.
CRL …may be the start.
Public transit and micromobility alternatives are not, and nor are they are being promoted as such, as any complete congestion solution.
Private transport provision will still be needed.
But providing for more of the growth in transport demand by more public transport, and micromobility provision will reduce the insane landuse conversion to unproductive car parking, and lane kilometres of roading.
As well as reducing roadway clutter by cars not going any where fast, either by design, parking, or unintentionally, because of congestion.
And also reduce the growth in accident injuries, pollution and green house emissions.
There are undoubted downsides to many established business and lifestyle norms by a change in transport option priorities.
But the downsides in just continueing to meet the growth in transport demand by just providing more and more lane kilometres of general roading, and the associated increasing parking provision, all in an increasingly high intensive land use, are very very much greater.
Such a path is simply unsustainable, so the earlier changes are implemented the earlier the benifits can be realised.
Agreed, shared spaces are often deployed to reduce cost or inconvenience to motoring, rather than because they are the right solution for the job.
The Northwestern, to be fair, is a commuter route with a limited number of access points, reflecting the motorway it is built alongside. It was built narrow and cheap, and pedestrian traffic is concentrated at the eastern end where the walking bus had problems, and around Carrington Road/Waterview.
Few people are going to walk a significant length of it for a commute, but they can and do ride, usually between 25 and 35km/h.
Is it fair to poke cyclists when the school decided to use *the only* separated fast commuter cycling right of way to promote active travel?
Is it not telling that that was their best option, perhaps because of the speed of motor traffic and enthusiastic on-street parking on nearby streets?
The elephant is always driving around the room.
This out a few hours ago from City Nerd’s recent Auckland visit. I’m sure it will be shared on the weekly roundup but it’s relevant here anyway.
https://youtu.be/bqerH0hF2mA?si=vlZ3L725b6W-ow5M