Subscribe to RSSVideo: Dom Rd Madness
Did the Auckland City Councillors who made the proposed Dominion Rd bus lane decision recently spent any time during rush hour watching the present madness?
If they did, they must have had their eyes closed before then going and ignoring their officials’ good advice.
Dominion Rd is already a very congested car and bus arterial
Dominion Rd is an extremely busy arterial at the best of times. Auckland’s busiest bus route. It’s not uncommon on a Sunday to see cars banked up because of the number of traffic lights and intersections along the way.
Buses already have trouble - especially around the tricky Balmoral town centre where cars can park there until 4.30pm, which itself is unacceptable.
Buses already have trouble having a clear run using the left lane.
If officials didn’t spend any time on site doing research - I did today watching morning and afternoon peak flows.
And the decision to allow T2 lanes, letting cars use the bus lanes is absolutely lethal.
It has to be reversed.
I would suggest bold action, as Dominion Rd moves eventually into 24 hour bus traffic and even more frequent bus timetabling.
Ban all cars from Dominion Rd.
Now if those councillors haven’t been to Dominion Rd, I will save them the bother.
Here’s a sample 36 seconds of rush hour traffic today. You don’t have to wait long to see a bus try and manoeuvre through the heavy traffic flows and parked car scenario.
Then, can the councillors remind us why they are reversing their officials’ decision?
11 Comments
I thought the t2 thing was a proposal… rather than something which has gone though and is going to happen?
I often use Dominion Road buses, and ANY further incentive to take a car instead will kill the entire area through inaccessibility.
Not sure about banning cars completely- if people are desperate enough to move at walking pace, there is enough space for 2 narrow car lanes, along with widened bus lanes (24/7 and going all the way up to intersections).
Even with 24 hour lanes and not having T2 cars to contend with there will still be delays for buses as people pull out of and into driveways, stop to drop of mail etc.
What we should do is put the bus lanes down the middle of the road and only allow traffic to turn right at the bigger intersections (Valley Rd, Balmoral Rd etc). Having them down the middle would mean cars would almost never hinder bus operation, is more visible and as an added bonus would make it easy to convert to light rail in the future.
I occasionally use Dominion Road and it’s a dog’s breakfast with lanes going all over the place, very confusing and hazardous. I suggest:-
Get rid of parked cars the length of Dominion Road.
Make Dominion Road one way out bound with two traffic lanes plus cycle lane and a contra flow bus cycle lane,
Make Sandringham Road one way inbound with similar contra flow treatment.
It’s not far for cars to travel between the two roads and the capacity should increase dramatically.
They probably did go and have a look and thought. “You know what will fix this problem? Two lanes of cars.” Which it probably will, for about 5 minutes, and then you will need 3 lanes. This is my bus route and it is horrible at present and I get on/off before View Road, I feel sorry for the poor people who have to go all the way to Hillsborough.
Moving the bus lanes to the middle of the road would be ideal and would remove the issue of buses being slowed by cars pulling out of side streets. They should do something along the lines of this:
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Oerlikon,+Zurich&sll=-41.244772,172.617188&sspn=39.17209,74.179687&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Oerlikon+Zurich,+Switzerland&ll=47.414342,8.551226&spn=0.001082,0.003286&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=47.414257,8.551163&panoid=4Tgq-SMFywwd1u9NCQ4rIg&cbp=12,99.43,,0,4.19
rtc your link above highlights for me yet another benefit of light rail over buses: because they run on rails, spacing can be very precise, with one tram passing within mm’s of another going the opposite direction.
If we upgraded Dominion road to light rail instead of wider bus lanes (and I agree in the centre is the best place for them), then a lot of the widening works may not need to be carried out (such as moving buildings etc). This would save a lot of money, possibly offsetting much of the extra cost of the light rail. And of course buildings, greenery and pedestrian space would be much better off too.
@Sam
Trams are definitely desirable.
The current plans call for bus lanes 3.2 meters wide. Trams are (generally) narrower than buses (2.3m vs 2.5m.) Plus buses need room for wing mirrors and minor driver steering error.
So width required for 2 bus lanes = 6.4m. Width for trams = 5.3m allowing 30cm between trams and 20cm either side.
Im sure the extra 1.1 meters could be put to good use. In addition the planed painted median (~1.6m) would not be required.
Of course middle or the road stations will need to be 2m plus wide. My favorite aspect of trams is that grass can be planted between the tracks. This would dramatically improve the street scape.
I think trams would be perfect, but for now can’t parking on Dominion Road be banned 6am - 10am & 3pm to 7pm? Or even 24/7 and buses getting sole use of the lanes? With the travel card being introduced the buses won’t need to stop as long as it’ll be faster to board.
Agree totally, it’s been shown in Los Angeles that their BRT is considerally slower than if the system was light rail as the buses slow when approaching one another to make sure they don’t hit - with a tram the road can be much narrower as stated without these issues.
“but for now can’t parking on Dominion Road be banned 6am – 10am & 3pm to 7pm?”
What part of Banks/Baguely’s “We like cars and all things that go with them!” did you not hear about? Snowflake on engine hood chance.
The streets look like Asia :S