Auckland traffic chaos this weekend
Auckland Council is warning of major delays on the region’s road and huge crowds as the city plays host to a number of events this weekend.
Auckland Transport media manager Mark Hannan says it is going to be one of the busiest weekends ever with the annual Pasifika Festival at Western Springs, Round the Bays running event, Kumeu Show, World Softball Championship in Albany and tomorrow’s Blues rugby match at Eden Park.
He says the fine forecast will only add to expected bottlenecks around the city and traffic delays are inevitable.
The news comes after yesterday afternoon’s nose-to-tail collision between a van and a truck in one of the southbound lanes on the Newmarket Viaduct left commuters all over the city stranded for hours.
Automobile Association spokesman Phil Allen labelled the snarl-up the “worst ever” and Auckland mayor Len Brown only got to his scheduled afternoon meeting on time by getting out of his mayoral car and walking back to the city.
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Comments and questions31
Surely Len was on a bus or train.
where was he driving from ? I thought council buildings to TVNZ would have been a handy walk anyway ?
Surely the Mayor can put some effort into getting the Council, NZTA and any other traffic groups and authorities to WORK TOGETHER to get the best out of our roading infrastructure? There are so many simple things that can be done, street by street to make traffic flow better in Auckland. Street 'beautification', speed humps and trees planted in lanes by anti car Greenies is not one of them!
So Len obviously thinks that public transport is something for other people to use - not him!
EOM
"Traffic chaos this weekend...." as distinct from.....?
...just during the week!
The solution is easy. Encourage businesses to relocate to satellite mini-cities of 200,000 people. You don't need any more than that to live a good life. Leave AK CBD to a few super event locations for those super events. Empty out the CBD buildings to achieve less traffic congestion.
How about mini-cities at Silverdale, Kaipara Helensville. Kumeu, and Bombay. That is a million people gone from the CBD. Problem solved. The developers would like it. The people would like it. The opposition would only come from the planners who want to control peoples lives into shoe boxes on rail corridors. I smell corruption in their ranks. It certainly isn't democracy.
Top thinking. Can we have this sorted by tomorrow morning?
Sounds great in theory... but so does socialism. Reality is another matter entirely.
Take Christchurch and the rebuild. Employers can't find enough skilled and willing labourers to work in construction - not because there aren't the people/unemployed. Most either think being a "labourer" is either beneath them with the zero work/life expereinces they don't have - or they can't be arsed giving up the herbage and booze to be able to pass a drugs test allowing them into the industry.
NZ has plenty of unemployed, yet we still need to bring in seasonal fruit pickers from the Islands, because the unemployed here have it far too easy for the free money they receive.
Pass the drug tests and work as a labourer in the rebuild... or your tax-payer free money stops and you support yourself. Unemployment solved.
Then there's the problem of the enemployable... but cut off the free money that encourages the flippant lifestyle... and hey presto! Attitude adjustment...
Not to mention Bill's barn party on saturday night - gonna be huge!!
Interesting the similarity between Len + Charles re big ears + token train rides every 20 years? The ears have it...............
The solution is simple: get rid of those on- ramp traffic lights.
Why is it that 'enlightened' engineers and others who are supposed to be reasonably clever adopt ideas for NZ from countries who threw them out as being silly years ago? Germany tinkered with onramp lights and discarded them just as quickly - 10 years ago. But no, our fools must repeat the exercise hoping for a better outcome. What a joke!
Welcome to Auckland.
Enjoy your delay.
Had it not been for the NIMBY socialists in the 1960-80 period and the need for an 'over my dead body', the Western motoway would now be complete, without the extravagant expense of a tunnel.
send an insult to N. Korea, they will nuke you and solve all your congestion problems.
The problem with Auckland transport and planning is simple. Too many dumb people with even dumber ideas. And what, together, do they sum to? Gridlock!
Can you see that changing any time soon? I know I can't.
I use Waze in Auckland. It's a free app that helps route me around traffic problems in real time. It's available for android too: waze.com.
Ir will be good once they finish the Newmarket viaduct (seeing as reduced speed signs seem a permanent fixture) or in fact any road around Auckland that suffers interminable reduced speed signs and constant lane closures with convoys of trucks with flashing arrows warning of something that is probably just them changing 1x light bulb on the bridge which takes all night and most feeder routes.
How about we start with what we already have - a motorway network at full capacity. Agressive and visible enforcement of considerate driving, an instant $20k fine for at-fault crash that backs up the traffic, with visible public shaming of the party at fault, and the ability for businesses and individuals stuck in said snarlup to pursue the at-fault for lost productivity, wasted fuel, and adding to our sooty carbon footprint. And if they happen be dead or injured, sorry, they were stupid, they had it coming. If you can't afford the risk, use public transport. And if you can't afford that, move to the provinces. Last but not least, we already have enough cars and people, Auckland is full, go elsewhere if you were thinking of coming here, there is no housing or roading crisis, just too many people.
If you want an answer to Auckland’s traffic woes, then you only need to look at what happened on the two occasions of the great, Auckland power black outs, a few years back.
Auckland traffic on those two occasions had never flowed or, moved more freely.
In the meantime, Auckland’s ‘traffic engineers‘ continue to carte blanche, choke the life out of Auckland’s economy, together with their absurd and reckless expenditure of $millions of taxpayers money on traffic control/hardware systems, which do nothing to facilitate or, improve point to point travel times, only hinder them.
Paul Marsden
You are so right !
In fact lets go a step further and remember the occasions when the buses were on strike. Again the traffic was bliss, moved freely and without fuss.
About time the loons finally admit also that the on ramp signals are a miserable failure and the congestion they create has made surrounding feeder routes a shambles.
Auckland Transport and NZTA is filled with pin heads.
You're not wrong. Look at the utter shambles they have turned Lunn Ave in Mt Wellington into. What was once a free flowing street connecting south Remuera, Meadowbank, St Johns and adjacent suburbs with Panmure and Mt Wellington highway is now a clogged bumper to bumper cess pit with no less than five sets of traffic lights down that route where there used to be only one! Auckland Transport is a disgrace to this city and an economic liability to this country.
Until such time as Auckland traffic engineers develop traffic control systems which trump the power of the human mmind, then Auckland’s traffic woes will only worsen, and the cost to the economy will increase exponentially.
Some of the works been undertaken by Auckland traffic engineers is so inane and causing such damage to the economy, a Commission of sorts (with a statutory power of veto), needs to be urgently convened to oversee any future, Auckland roading works expenditure. The ‘Commission’ needs to be comprised of lateral thinking individuals whom (amongst possessing other skill sets), must be adept in the science of material handling; have a sound understanding of human psychology and, can understand a cost benefit analysis is. In addition and as a further priority, they should also be charged with exploring novel solutions from the public, which would also include changes to the road code, and learner driver tuition
If I had the magical wand, I would invoke a raft of changes which would see Auckland traffic flows improve by 15-20% overnight; buses would still have some priority and pedestrians could still cross the road (actually, at anytime they want). Now, it only takes one pedestrian to push a Cross Now button to send Auckland traffic into grid lock. And who pays..?? . If anyone can show me one, single cost benefit analysis of this example of madness, then I retract all I have said.
Paul Marsden
Paul, you are on the money. I have hassled all relevant authorities on roading in Auckland over the years to no avail. Sadly transport/roading was not seen as a sexy job in the past so most in those roles are either fresh immigrants or greenies, neither with any clue or desire to make traffic flow. If they would listen we could tackle the problem street by street, motorway intersection by intersection until we had FLOW - a concept the 'engineers' struggle with. Think hard about the number of vehicles travelling at any ONE time....do the math and you get a figure around 100,000. Which is not much for the infrastructure we have. Anyone reading this - bombard council and NZTA with ideas on how to make traffic FLOW - the more people who do this the more chance we have of actually achieving a 'Livable' city. Len Brown listen up!
Lake Road between Takapuna & Devonport is like this every Weekend. If they can't fix a simple straight road like this then Auckland is doomed !
One lycra clad moron on a bike takes precedence over hundreds of cars, but what can we expect because said moron probably turns up at Auckland Transport for a few hours of pretend work while really practicing for a triathalon.
Sadly you are right - its only the Greenies or Eco Warriors who take time out from stressed and busy days to attend NZTA forums - and they all want bike lanes. Real people are at work flogging away to make a buck.
I live and work in the same suburb. I try to travel outside of congested times - and try to schedule other members of my team to do the same. Time in traffic is a huge cost to business.
I struggle to understand why non client facing industries and business units need to have so many of their staff located in the CBD. A large number of the high density businesses in the CBD employ people from suburbs outside of the city fringe. I think it would make more sense to move the offices closer to the people. Most floors of these larger businesses don't need to be in the same physical location.
The cost must be astronomical to society. How many millions of man hours each month are we spending in our vehicles waiting in traffic. It's staggering and mind blowing to think what New Zealander's could be spending that time on instead.
We need more businesses operating in areas like Albany, Takapuna, Penrose, East Tamaki, Manakau and south Auckland as a whole.
Maybe if some of these businesses located themselves outside the CBD, we might solve 2 issues. There is plenty of land for new affordable housing, north and south of the city. People would love to be able to live further north or further south.
Auckland has done well - Park and Ride is a huge success on the north shore - and helps plenty of people get into the City each day no doubt easing the congestion slightly.
Some questions I have:
1. Why can't I commute from Hamilton to the Auckland CBD in 30 minutes?
2. Why does the local bus in my suburb need to drive all the way to the city. Why can't it simply feed me into a high speed transit corridor, then loop back... providing regular uninterrupted local transport - regardless of what traffic everywhere else is doing.
3. Why can't I then hop onto a high speed transit system, which gets me into town comfortably and quickly?
4. I don't want to wait longer than 10 minutes for public transport so why is it that if there is a "crash" on the motorway - I can be waiting up to an hour for my public transport to arrive.
5. Why isn't the high speed transit network - independent of the "traffic" network?
Sigh.
Well that's the price we pay to live in New Zealand's greatest city! It's not like its an unusual problem. Los Angeles has worse traffic. But I agree with other comments. For example: Why do we never see office buildings like the Vero Centre built in places like Albany? It's almost 40 stories high, but so? Does that mean it has to exist near all the other tall buildings? Wouldn't it help to spred out the future office space. We should build more office towers but distribute them evenly around the city.