The Wrong Side of my Car

The blog that wants to go obsolete

Te Hā Noa: it is actually happening

One of the more uplifting bits of news this week is that Te Hā Noa, also known as Victoria Street Linear Park, is actually going to be built.

And well, it is not really a linear park, is it? We should call it what it is, a street upgrade. There is nothing wrong with that. Street upgrades are important and badly needed. So, let’s go.

It is badly needed

I can’t stress this enough — this is an area which is at the same time densely populated (some of it), but those people have to put up with generally shitty streets.

And now we are going to get a train station, Te Waihorotiu, named after the stream that sits buried somewhere under Queen Street. Inner city train stations are busy, so you will want some dignified way to walk to those stations.

Where are we?

First some context. These are serious roadworks. They are not just plonking down some planters and concrete tim tams here.

You see those red dashed lines? These are the current kerb lines. They’re filling in a couple of driving lanes and properly moving kerb lines. Greater Auckland reports the budget for this project is around $50 million, for a 400 m stretch of street. That is 125 million dollars per kilometre. *2 For that price it had better be good.

And this is in the city centre, a 30 km/h zone, and a street that is unlikely to carry heavy car traffic under any reasonable circulation plan.

That cycleway

And here we have it, we have to talk about it. It is a bidirectional bike lane on the the south side of Victoria Street.

Bidirectional

Bidirectional? OK, right there, bicycle advocates can go apeshit. Other countries have figured out decades ago that a bidirectional bike lane on one side of the street is not ideal in cities. Nobody builds these things anymore on city streets.

This makes entering and exiting at either end quite awkward for riding eastbound.

It doesn’t continue across intersections

At some point Auckland Council and Auckland Transport will have come to peace with the fact that proper cycleways continue across intersections. We will once again have to roll out Bicycle Dutch’s video and blog post about protected intersections *3.

You notice how the green bits form continuous paths in all directions? We could almost copy/paste this onto the Queen Street intersection, if we would have gone with normal bike lanes.

And this applies also to the two ends. How do you join this cycleway, and how do you continue at the end?

The Armchair Expert strikes again

So, let’s look at one of the ends. Not the western one at Federal Street. I mean, are they joking? And OK I know it is a draft. So they can still change their mind.

What about the other end at Kitchener Street?

The most logical route for cyclists to continue is Bowen Avenue. This street climbs up quite smoothly towards Princes Street, and avoids the 20% slope at the end of Kitchener Street.

Auckland Council publishes very detailed contour maps where this is very clearly visible.

Cyclists going more towards the south probably will probably avoid this hill altogether by going via Lorne Street or Queen Street.

So, how? Maybe there will be a Barnes Dance style crossing phase, with green in all directions. Otherwise you have to follow paths like this:

That is a long way to be completely unprotected on an intersection. What does our Armchair Expert say?

Well first, obviously, use the leftover space on Bowen Avenue to create some space for cyclists entering the cycleway.

Lorne Street is hardly a major arterial, so, we get another continuous footway.

For eastbound cyclists it is quite awkward, the cycleway is on the wrong side to easily reach Bowen Avenue. We can provide a protected crossing across Victoria Street, and then continue as usual on a protected intersection.

Well you get the idea. Get a traffic engineer to draw this out properly.

Or maybe there is some insurmountable problem and we go for the Barnes Dance.

Auckland for Everyone

We will once again have to bring up Access for Everyone (A4E). *5 Where is that circulation plan? If we don’t need 2-way car traffic on Bowen Avenue, it is trivial to continue the cycleway on that street. Or maybe Victoria Street will not carry much traffic after all, and we don’t need to build a separated cycleway and roadway to begin with. Are we going to allow through traffic across Queen Street at all?

The lack of circulation plan isn’t doing us any good here. *6

Anyway. Enough about that cycleway. It doesn’t look like it is a large part of this project. But still, how does a project with this sort of budget end up with such a cursed cycleway design. This is a problem. After this level of roadworks we should be able to take for granted the reinstated street has proper bike lanes.

The project

It really is happening. (it’s quite sad that this is so unusual). It features bespoke seating elements (sic). Things like odd seating and planters usually don’t just provide the obvious things, but also more subtle things like impromptu play opportunities for toddlers (which is, again, sadly unusual).

Dropping the section between Federal Street and Hobson Street is an unwelcome surprise, since Hobson Street has so many apartments and they have especially poor access to any sort of open space (that isn’t parking). Maybe they can do a scaled-back version on this block anyway, like the temporary works we had on Queen Street?

And one more thing. Bollards. Don’t forget about the bollards.

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