Today the Auckland Transport board meet again as a whole for the first time in two months. AT note:
Members of the public are welcome to join the meeting via Teams. Please note, due to technical difficulties, the video feed will be unavailable. However, attendees will still be able to view the meeting presentations, and the audio will still be accessible, allowing attendees to listen to the proceedings. A solution is being evaluated with the aim of restoring video service for the 18 December 2024 meeting.
As usual, I’ve taken a look through many of the papers and have highlighted below some of the things that caught my attention.
Closed Agenda
The closed agenda has previously been the location for many of the most interesting papers to the board. Positively, many of these have been pushed to the public sessions in recent times but there are still a few interesting items
Standing Items & Extraordinary Finance Items
- Analysis on public transport passenger costs
- Approval of adjusted operating and capital budget due to National Land Transport Plan funding implications
Board Committees Update
- Fare Structure
The fare structure paper is probably the most interesting here. Are AT looking to make changes to the how our fares work – there are certainly some improvements I would love to see – or is this just related to the annual fare review?
Potential implications of the new speed rule for Auckland
Early last month the Minister for Transport Speed announced a new rule requiring blanket speed limits to be set and that changes that have occurred over the last few years be undone. As the title suggests, a paper to the AT board gives an indication on what the implications of this are.
It notes that “AT’s Safe Speeds Programme has set safe and appropriate speed limits on more than 3000 roads since 2020“.
They say the exact details of the new speed rule are yet to be released but initial estimates are that around 1,800 roads, or about 57% of all roads that were changed, will be required to have speed limits increased again by 1 July 2025. This is mostly going to be local streets surrounding schools.
In the cases of around schools, new variable speed limit signs will need to be installed but only outside the school gates and only operating at the start and end of the day.
Doing all of this isn’t free either with AT expecting it to cost nearly $25 million, for which no funding has been provided by the government.
The costs could increase further as AT also say that they will need to reassess any infrastructure impacts from the reversals – which suggests things like speed tables might need to be removed.
Those costs will quickly be dwarfed by the economic and social impact of any additional deaths and serious injuries that come as a result of the changes. AT say they will be putting in place a plan to monitor the impact on the changes, including how speed and journey times are impacted.
I know there are dedicated people working in this space within AT but there are also many (senior) staff who support this change and I can’t help but think that if the situation was reversed, they’d be pulling out all the stops to delay change as much as possible.
Carrington Rd Preferred Option for Approval
Last year Auckland Transport consulted on plans to widen Carrington Rd to accommodate the expected population growth in the area as a result of the Unitec site development and to improve travel options. The plans included dedicated bus/transit lanes and protected cycle lanes as well as other safety improvements.
The board are being asked to approve the business case for the project and to proceed with detailed design and construction.
AT say the consultation showed general support for their preferred option which is expected to cost up to $105 million and has a benefit-cost ratio of 4. That is within a $120 million funding envelope approved under the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund. They also say “there may be a requirement to incorporate third party funded upgrade works (e.g. utilities) within the project delivery scope“.
Public consultation on the short list options in 2023 showed that over 60 per cent (of 365 respondents) supported an option which includes bus or transit lanes in both directions and a one-way cycleway in either direction, and 60 to 80 per cent supported the proposed new or relocated crossing points.
The preferred option (see Attachment 4) accommodates the expected future growth and has the following key features:
- Approximately 7m of widening through land acquisition along 1km of residential development frontage.
- New special vehicle lanes – bus or transit lanes.
- Maintains a one-way cycleway on either side of the corridor.
- Maintains one general traffic lane in either direction.
- Three new traffic signals, required to be provided for the development for access and safety, at the Gate 1, Gate 3 and Woodward Road intersections.
- Two new signalised crossing points.
- A relocated and more direct Northwestern Cycleway crossing point.
- Widening of the Mt Albert Rail overbridge for active modes (to be confirmed in design stage).
- Bus stops consolidated and located closer to crossing points.
- New landscape and streetscape plans with 2-1 tree replacement.
- Rain gardens and improved stormwater management.
- Side road entrance treatments including raised platforms.
It’s interesting that they note that the widening of the rail overbridge is still to be confirmed. Last year they say it cannot be easily widened for vehicles but later in the paper they note they will also investigate this for vehicles in the next phase.
AT included this table highlighting the results from the business case. One thing that stands out to me is that despite the rhetoric around mode-shift, the biggest single increase in users will be more vehicles and despite a 49% increase in vehicles between the baseline and the recommended option in 2031.
Business Report
The business report has a number of items that stand out:
Some positive news around public transport:
- Accelerated Ferry Programme nears completion: Gulf Harbour ferry services returned to full schedule in September, with uplift in customers observed immediately. Daily patronage has almost doubled from approximately 200 to just under 400, with a peak over 500 in early October.
- Halfmoon Bay is the last route to return to full service and will do so in November, five months earlier than anticipated. This will complete the accelerated ferry training programme.
- Encouraging adoption of the 7-day fare cap: since we introduced the 7-day fare cap at the end of July, over 20,000 Aucklanders have benefited from the cap.
- We have recently promoted the fare cap to remind Aucklanders that once they reach a $50 fare spend in a 7-day period, all following travel is free. Our aim is that this encourages more public transport trips and increases patronage.
- Expanding Fareshare scheme: 20 organisations have signed up to the scheme, with over 800 employees on-boarded so far. In September the Fareshare team exhibited at the Climate Change & Business conference, attended by around 350 organisations. We’re now working on the leads gathered at the conference.
- Northwest bus network changes: the WX1 and 11 services (introduced in November 2023) have reached a milestone of 1.5m boardings since go live. AT is working with New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) to make incremental improvements; additional bus priority is expected in November 2024 at both Triangle Road and Fred Taylor Drive to provide improved reliability for bus passengers.
This sounds like an interesting and useful piece of work but surely the big risk to it is getting funding prioritised to be able to do something about the risks identified.
Landslide Resilience: The Science and Sustainability Group have developed a framework to predict and identify locations on the road network which are susceptible to landslides. The framework was developed using the 2023 flood events data and was applied to the AT road network using Artificial Intelligence (AI) / machine learning. This leading approach will enable works to reduce landslide risk, increasing the resilience of the network and support adaptation planning. Auckland Emergency Management team is interested in the system and the ability to connect to live meteorological data will be investigated.
Dominion Rd Flyover Removal
There are three public presentations to the board on the agenda
- Wellsford footpaths – Geoff Upson & Colin Smith
- Overnight parking and wider city discussion – Viv Beck
- Simplify the intersection of Dominion Road and New North Road – Graeme Easte
The presentation for last one, by former Albert-Eden Local Board member and regular reader of the blog – Graeme Easte – has been included in the agenda and is an issue we’ve long supported, removing the Dominion Rd flyover.
He notes that by removing the flyover it allows for the return of over 24,000m² of land for development and an estimate eight years ago suggested that was worth nearly $100 million – however it would be worth a lot more now.
Graeme suggests that the money from the sale of this land could be used to progress level crossing removals along the Western Line while the land itself could provide thousands of new homes and jobs close to the city.
There are a few of other papers on the agenda, is there anything that stands out?
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On Carrington Rd, and your comment, “One thing that stands out to me is that despite the rhetoric around mode-shift, the biggest single increase in users will be more vehicles and despite a 49% increase in vehicles between the baseline and the recommended option in 2031.”
At least they admit it, I suppose, although their outdated modelling means they are won’t be showing the full impact.
Council; they’re no excuse for letting AT continue with their shit planning methodology. This didn’t need to cost $120m. It could have cost under $20m, and reduced traffic volumes significantly throughout the whole area.
AT’s living in 1970, but Council? Willing to be undermine their own plans. Really poor governance.
Also, advocacy bodies need to step up. Stop undermining climate action by lending support to moar road projects.
Very supportive of removing the Dominion Road flyover as a nearby resident.
The development opportunities so close to Maungawhau station are obvious, but redesigning the roads around there gives us the opportunity to make the bus lanes along New North Road continuous.
Currently, buses heading into the city in the morning peak need to come back into the single general lane for the underpass, get cut off by and stuck behind cars merging onto NNR from the flyover, then return to the bus lane. When the general lane gets backed up as it often does, this 500m stretch can take multiple minutes, bunching up buses and slowing down journey times.
This bus lane being continuous and getting priority will increase capacity, meaning AT can increase frequencies and more PT users move into the area between Kingsland and Eden Terrace (and hopefully Kingsland itself if we can upzone it!).
Removing the flyover is a no brainer that is worth the cost and disruption.
The only issue I have with it is that at some stage AT will surely realise that Dominion Road buses should go via Ian McKinnon Drive (as light rail would have), so removing the flyover will introduce another delay to buses.
I’m kinda wondering about the bad shape factors of that left-over land though (that’s developer speak for land that is funky shaped and/or too-thin to develop easily). And some of those are sloped areas too. You’d probably need to consolidate with some adjacent land to get some good building plots. Not saying I think it’s a bad idea, but it may have some fishhooks in actual implementation…
Also, even without considering our “what does the traffic model say?” approach to intersection design, that map above shows no intersection widening at all – it even narrows down a bit compared to the approaching midblock. Unlikely. Not unless you want to go without walk and cycleways. If you do that, then even before you add extra turn lanes to make the modellers and politicians happy, you need more intersection space. Even more yet if you want to have a proper PT interchange there (even a neighbourhood size one).