Subscribe to RSSBaguley Explains T2 Move
The Auckland City proposal to change the bus lane status on Dominion Rd has come in for considerable flak, including on this site.
I can’t work out why the decision was made.
So I asked Ken Baguley, chairman of the Auckland City transport committee to explain the decision.
This is his response and, noting further consultation will happen before the final decision, he says: ” In the end I just want to see some genuine engagement with affected parties and this includes local businesses, residents, cyclists and commuters both in cars and in buses.”
Thank you for responding to my request and let’s keep the debate here respectful.
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“The Transport Committee on 2nd June endorsed the design consultation for the midblock widening works to be based on a separate T2 lane (rather than a buslane) along the length of Dominion Road between View Road and Denbigh Ave and that consultation will confirm the operational requirements for the T2 lanes in terms of hours of operation.
The resolution further endorsed consultation with the Eden Valley and Balmoral village centres over the design options to be undertaken in these areas.
The original proposal put forward by officers was to have a design based on a 24 x 7 bus lane along the whole road.
Currently there are bus lane restrictions based on morning and evening peak flows.
The resolution by the C&R led Transport Committee gives all affected parties an opportunity to comment on the hours of operation plus the T2 vs dedicated buslane proposition. If the proposal had gone to consultation based on buslane only then the opportunity would have been for the consultation process to change the designation from buslane to T2.
The Tamaki Drive test of a T2 lane has shown that the percentage of people travelling in higher occupancy modes increased from 24% to 33% during the peak hour and the T2 lane now carries 55% of the people trips as opposed to 24% of people trips when the lane was buslane only. This is a compelling argument for making greater use of T2 and the consultation process will confirm whether T2 is appropriate for Dominion Road.
With Dominion Road being increasingly used as a through route to the airport the ability of taxis to use the lane needs to also be considered. Taxis are a legitimate and essential form of public transport and do not get any subsidy from the public purse.
For every 50 cents that is paid for a public transport fare someone (be it the tax payer or ratepayer) on average across all PT modes pays another 50 cents so ensuring that all users of our roads get a fair deal is not unreasonable in my view.”
38 Comments
Part of the benefit argument given by Cr Baguley talks about lane occupancy results of the trial. That is just part of the picture. I understand that in the Tamaki Drive example mentioned, in changing from a Bus-only to a T2 lane: “There has however been an increase in the average travel time. On average, it now takes an extra 25 seconds per person to travel through the study area, due to the excessive delays on the general lane.” http://bit.ly/aC5JZ5
Basically due to private vehicles with 2+ passengers queueing up behind a stopped bus, then merging with the general lane slowing it down and back into the T2 each time a bus stopped in the area.
I’m glad that this is still undergoing consultation and expect that the overall results of the study to be considered in that process.
Allowing taxis (with passengers) to utilise bus lanes does not need to allow open slather for all private vehicles. While there are very valid arguments for the existence and use of taxis, and buses are often not an acceptable substitute, buses are intended to replace private cars wherever possible.
The very point of a bus lane is to give public transport greater priority and improve travel speeds. The evidence from Tamaki Drive is that making bus lanes into T2 lanes slows public transport, at the expense of private vehicles. WE DO NOT WANT TO ENCOURAGE PRIVATE VEHICLE USE! We want to discourage it, in the strongest possible terms, for all persons to whom viable alternatives are available. Dominion Road is one of those viable alternatives, and should be left as such. A T2 sends the wrong signal: that private vehicles should be encouraged, provided their use is pooled. Pooling is better than single-occupancy, but public transport is better than private vehicles.
That said, until we have actual 24×7 public transport services, as opposed to the third-world service hours we currently enjoy, I see no point in designating a 24×7 bus lane. 0600-2000 should be more than adequate, maybe extending to 2200 on Friday and Saturday nights and starting at 0800 on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Designating for something that doesn’t (and won’t, if Joyce’s funding choices are forced upon us) exist is a sure-fire way to rile people and encourage disrespect. Look at the attitudes toward the Grafton Bridge bus lane, and that’s only 0700-1900.
Tamaki Drive has, what, approx 25% of the buses of Dom Road? The “benefits” gained there do not apply here!
Also, comments edit function being very screwy. Had to repost.
We need some real leadership to improve this city and Ken and the rest of the council haven’t shown any. As mentioned this route has far more buses on it than Tamaki Dr so the argument doesn’t stack up.
Also on the whole subsidy part there is a lot more to it than a simple “its not fair that the ratepayer pays half” type argument. The reason subsidies exist is that it provides a benefit to society in general by having people use it as we don’t need to spend as much money on widening roads to accommodate all the cars.
Matt
the problem with the 0600-2000 idea is that it turns Dom rd into basically a motorway. There are none/or very little issues between 9.30 to 4.
But if parked cars are removed - they turn Dom rd into 4 lanes of traffic - which goes thru serveral key character town centres. Pedestrians and shop keepers don’t want footpaths directly next to fast moving cars/buses. Parked cars do help with the urban environment - blocking noise etc. They also slow down cars - as they narrow the vision width ahead, and drivers are aware of possible doors opeining etc.
If we had no parking, I’m sure that outside peak - the speed of cars would increase.
And as I’ve said before T2 won’t work here given town centres/numbers of buses/ bus stop design and intersections etc.
Some interesting points here.
First, the Tamaki Drive situation showed an increase in average travel time by 25 seconds which is hardly a ringing endorsement. Dominion Road has many many more buses so the delay will certainly be greater.
Second, in response to Mark, Balmoral Road is four lanes with no parking. While it’s not exactly the most pleasant road I wouldn’t call it a motorway.
Third, the subsidy argument is hilarious. Bus lanes make PT more efficient and more attractive to use, so you need LESS subsidy. If Baguley is really concerned about subsidies then he should be putting in more bus lanes, not taking them away.
I don’t buy the arguments. This is a stupid decision, and as it has no chance of getting anywhere before November 1st it is just a big waste of time and money to even investigate.
I didn’t realise there was to be a consultation process still.
That is a good move.
We need to lower the temperature and explore this further. I am not convinced it is a bad move
I use the Dominion Rd buses 6 days a week and travel by car otherwise.
Someone else here mentioned light rail or making it one way. That might be a better solution all around.
I am sick of the long queues of cars even on a Sunday afternoon all along Dominion Rd.
As for buses part of the problem is the Balmoral town centre needs to be bowled and car parking banned entirely if the buses are ever going to have a clear run.
That is not feasible.
As someone who lives there and faces this every day, I suggest its a lot more complex than some may think and having read Mr Baguley’s comments, I now support that fact more discussions are being had to try to work out the jigsaw.
Like Tamaki Drive, cars and cyclists/buses have to find some way to live in more harmony and in both cases, the road layout and width doesn’t make any of that easy.
I love this site but this is the first time I have commented and I am rather nervous because of the anger about this issue.
I do so because I also get a Dominion Rd bus to and from work. I also think the T2 suggestion should be tried. Letting cars into the lanes may actually ease the congestion. Like Sarah says the trail of cars all up the road is painful and when i drive at the weekends I try to go up side roads to avoid it.
Balmoral Rd lights is a particular troublespot both ways and I dread to see what will happen when McDonald’s giant restaurant opens on that corner as well as the KFC.
Already cars have trouble when they turn left or right into Dominion Rd by the Balmoral shops, especially if there are cars parked outside the Capital cinema area.
Jon, thanks for inviting a council viewpoint as I hadn’t actually read much about the reasons and certainly don’t get that balance from other places.
Good on you councillor for fronting up and being part of the conversation. I find endless stimulating and interesting articles on here so thanks for all your work Jon which I certainly appreciate and feel better informed.
Sorry but we live in a fairly big city, congestion is inevitable and in some respects it’s actually a good thing in that it encourages people to choose more sustainable and efficient transport modes.
We’ve tried the “let’s just build more motorways and make our roads wider and wider” approach to fixing congestion. Has it worked? I certainly don’t think so.
Isn’t it time we tried a different approach? Provide a top quality public transport service so it makes sense for people to use it 7 days a week.
@William Ross, welcome to the comments! It is a bit scary not knowing how the reaction might go sometimes. Its definitely good to hear a new voice. Good on you for giving it a go. I’m sure there are lots of other Silent-Readers out there who have first-hand experience of buses on Dominion road as well. For Isthmus Auckland it’s almost our “Main Street” cutting down through the middle, perhaps why we really want to get the design right.
Bus lanes work best, funnily enough, when there’s no cars in them. Every car in a bus lane *reduces* its carrying capacity because that’s a low density vehicle (a car, max occupancy 5) where you can have a high occupancy vehicle (most Dominion Rd buses take the space of three or four cars and seat 53 with up to 30 more standing).
A bus carrying 53 queued at the lights behind half a dozen cars carrying 2 (or even 5) people each is not an increase in the efficiency of the lane. If those cars caused the bus to miss the green light…
No cars in a lane *solves* congestion within that lane (or busway!).
Cars in that lane *spreads* congestion into that lane, and those in cars hold up those people who have chosen the most space-efficient, and otherwise fastest, form of transport.
If a packed out bus is carrying say 50 people, then that 15m long bus is probably carrying as many people as about 500-700m of road space I reckon. The relatively “empty” look of the bus lane is very misleading in terms of how many people are shifting along that space.
Exactly. Bus lanes look empty and underutilised because most people are using congestion as a measure of utilisation.
Buses, light rail and heavy rail invalidate this form of measurement. It only applies to car vs car.
You need to count the number of people and tonnes of freight moved - not the number of vehicles blocking the route - to accurately measure utilisation of a transport corridor. This is something most car drivers don’t think about.
Jarbury, strongly disagree and don’t like your biased left-leaning rhetoric..
The Tamaki Dr move is a worthwhile experiment that may well be able to be translated elsewhere.
I congratulate the Council for the way it has handled the Tamaki issue - and the excellent consultation process it went through which suggests the same will happen with Dominion Road, before any decision is made.
I am a member of a group of social cyclists who go for a ride along the drive every Sunday morning. The accident that sparked the safety debate was horrific and something had to be done. But the road is a difficult one to accommodate everyone at once -as is Dominion Road which I have also ridden.
The Tamaki Drive moves are not going to be 100% perfect for everyone because it’s impossible unless you reclaim more land and extend the road. Likewise in Dominion Road with the villages along the way, where businesses rightly demand street car parking facilities for potential customers.
I will look forward to the Tamaki Drive experiment and whether it is a signal for other places like Dominion Road. I think it will be.
It is easy to sit from afar and make headline-grabbing statements about how bad and stupid the council /government/authorities are and how car owners must always play second fiddle to public transport; but if you are a regular user of Tamaki and Dominion Rds using various forms of transport, you get a different perspective of how complex the issue becomes.
WRT Valley and Balmoral Rd shops, howcome everyone’s assuming people will only shop there if they can drive and park there?
It’s actually just as easy to hop off a bus going through those shops on your way through, buy what you want (or eat), then hop on the next bus home. Or jump on a bus going there.
I’m a regular Sandringham Rd bus user (Dominion Rd’s poor cousin in terms of bus priority and frequency) and do this from time to time, although I wish there was a supermarket along the corridor somewhere as Dominion Rd has at the Valley Rd shops.
Jarbury - re 4 lanes in Balmoral - It is souless. Also there are no “town centres” that it passes through.
Dominion rd is a tricky issue - it’s a limited resource. On one hand you have the David Hay - knock down one whole side and turn it into a pakuranga Hwy arguement - god forbid. then you have the PT 24/7 side.
where is the right balance? I’m sure everyone passing through either by bus, as per some of the earlier comments or in cars, wants to just go straight through quickly. But for those of us who live in the area (Eden Valley for me) - we want to retain our heritage town centre.
So should everyone who wants to get a priority drive (either bus or car) through an area? ie take away parking and let it become a Balmoral rd type experience? what will happen with 24/7 removal of car parks? - the shops/businesses will close. It’s very very hard for them to compete with St Lukes etc now. people won’t sit in a cafe with cars/buses whizzing by.
So in my view we need to weigh it up carefully - removing parking etc for peak times is a sensible use - but removing it when the restaurants are operating - say after 7pm is too tough for them - as is weekends etc.
So I’d ask people to please consider the town centres - they are part of this equation as well.
Mark, I agree with you that it’s a tricky isse and the needs of the town centres themselves need consideration.
William Ross, I don’t see how pointing out that building huge roads and motorways everywhere hasn’t fixed congestion, and that congestion is actually a strong “price signal” that people shouldn’t be driving on that road at that time is “left-leaning”. Most economists would say the same thing: after all, you’re not in the traffic jam, you ARE the traffic jam.
What I would do is put the bus lanes down the middle of the road to assist higher capacity public transport flows along the corridor. I would make those centre lanes bus only in both directions 6am-10am and 4pm-7pm, and T2 at all other times. Within the two main town centres I would pave the traffic lanes on cobblestones or something similar through the shops to slow everyone down, and narrow the lanes down a bit to do the same. In the longer term the centre bus lanes would become modern light rail: quiet, fast and high capacity.
Mark Donnelly, I was referring to the proposal to have a 24×7 bus lane on Dominion Road, and suggesting that until we actually have 24-hour bus services it’s pointless to dedicate a stretch of road that will be unused for quite a few hours of every day. I certainly wouldn’t want those hours for a T2 lane.
William Ross, I would suggest to you that, until quite recently, public transport has played a distant third fiddle to cars. People who drive along the major routes are frequently in a position to make use of the public transport that plies those same routes. That they don’t is their choice, but we shouldn’t be trying to neutralise the negative impacts on them of that choice. If public transport gets priority, that’s an encouragement to use it in preference to a private vehicle. As someone else noted above, if a 13-metre bus is carrying 50 people, allowing for a 28-metre following distance (50km/h is roughly 14m/s) that’s 50 people per 41 metres. In that same 41 metres you could fit two cars, plus a fraction of the following distance of a third. Being generous, that’s 11 people per 41 metres. Replace the cars with 11-seater vans, and you’re up to 22 people per 41 metres. That’s still pretty dismal compared to the persons-per-metre density of a bus, especially since at 50 passengers the bus isn’t at maximum loading. In reality most cars in the T2 would have two people, not five, dropping the average persons-per-metre density significantly. And you want to demand equal rights for cars? Naff off!
“what will happen with 24/7 removal of car parks? – the shops/businesses will close.”
That argument is rather angsty in my view. I agree there will be an effect, true, but it won’t be the Great Depression coming to Dom Road! I suggest you should work with Council to get more parking in side streets or maybe parking lots, and to improve the pedestrian environment as much as possible.
Another first-time contributor to AKT. As a frequent user of Dominion Rd I am appalled at some of the attitudes displayed in the comments towards the value of creating more private vehicle lanes (read: increased congestion) and/or retaining on-street carparks along the route.
Whatever the results of the Tamaki Dr “experiment”, Dominion Rd is an extremely busy bus corridor which will respond differently to T2 conditions.
Improving PT services along the route will result in patronage gains as more people choose to switch modes. In turn, this will reduce congestion, making the road and its surroundings safer and more pleasant. In this regard, centre bus lanes (with controlled crossings adjacent to stops) should be considered.
The argument that on-street parking ought to be retained for pedestrian benefit just doesn’t stack up. Traffic calming measures on the outside lanes would be more than sufficient to insulate pedestrians from fast-moving vehicles - not to mention the planned cycle lanes which will act as a barrier between the footpath and the road. Moreover, local businesses would derive far greater benefit from having quality PT at their doorstep than a couple of carparks.
@Matt L telling a first time contributor to naff off because they support cars, even in jest, is not very encouraging.
I also ride a bike -most of us are forced to use a car in Auckland because the city has been designed for cars. It would be good to have no oil, no cars and fast public transport everywhere but wake me up when that happens.
For the record, i drive a Prius.
As for Balmoral, that town centre needs to survive because it has been overshadowed by St Lukes but now has interesting ethnic restaurants, good wine shops, an excellent DVD hire store and the return of the Capital Cinema.
There’s no shortage of parking in side-streets - or side-streets, for that matter - around Dominion Rd. The loss of parks immediately in front of their businesses will not cause the owners into immediate destitution. And if the trade-off is better bus services, that will be some compensation.
Another 1st-time caller.
I live in St Heliers so am very active in the debate about the Tamaki Drive situation.
I have only just found this site through googling about the waterfront trams. Excellent coverage and amazing site. Enjoying the photos and videos which will form an historical record online of the changes taking place.
Back to Tamaki: My son is a competitive cyclist who trains on Tamaki Drive every day. I worry about him.
I thank Mr Baguley and the council for their very constructive approach to listening to us and everyone involved over the months and finally coming up with a compromise plan that is worth trying.
I feel comfortable that it will work.
Like William, I have a feeling they may be on to something that may be able to be rolled out in major arterials like Dominion.
It’s good to find rabid public transport fanatics among the debaters here but a balance has to be found between the needs of motorists, public transport users and cyclists and funding has to be spread accordingly. You need to embrace trials such as the Tamaki Drive one instead of being so aggressive in your opposition.
William, we’re trying to encourage a reversal of the reign of cars. You wish it to continue, because it’s the established order. These are mutually-incompatible goals. Either we inconvenience drivers of private vehicles, or we disrupt public transport because, well, it’s not that great anyway and so there’s no point trying to make it a more-convenient alternative to cars.
For the record, I’ve been a commuter driver, a commuter bicyclist, a commuter train-rider, a commuter bus-rider, and a commuter pedestrian. I’ve also been passenger in emergency vehicles responding under lights to incidents across Auckland, at all times of day and night. There is precious little you can tell me about trying to drive in this city, or ride, or take public transport.
If you want us to wake you up when we have a high-quality public transport system, stop advocating for an extension of status quo ante, which is what T2 on Dominion Road is. It’s about cars uber alles, not about improving transport options.
This is a great debate!
Obviously my home patch - but re side street parking - there actually isn’t much. ASB call centre takes hundreds from early morning to say 6. Also there are a lot of people who drive and park around Valley rd to catch the bus - and many of the villas don’t have much off street parking - so a reasonably high parking rate for residents.
I probably haven’t made my point properly though - it’s not so much about parking for shops (all though they do want it a certain times) - but it’s more about the urban design and noise/fume protection that parked cars give outside peak bus lanes. everyone becomes a pedestrian around the town centres - whether they walked fom home (ie a local, bused or drove. And people don’t like walking right beside a major arterial with cars or buses just a foot away. people won’t let kids etc walk there - and won’t like it themselves.
If I good have another gripe - there were comemnts about Taxis in T2 - to me a taxi isn’t public transport! once you’ve hired it - it’s a private trip. A taxi in peak time into teh CBD is still just one person using a car to get to where they want to go…….
As a Balmoral resident, i would call it a great little village and a nice community that continues to develop and find its own voice against the rise of St Lukes (soon to get bigger).
Most of us strongly oppose the development of the McDonalds on the corner.
I agree 100% with Mark Donnelly who is also a good local voice around these parts and I hope will continue to work for the community post-supercity,
One other aspect that worries me: crossing Dominion Rd is risky in places, especially further up towards Mt Roskill including near the medical laboratory and around the busy Mitre 10.
I wish more work could be done on slowing down the traffic.
I would support a Ponsonby style 40k speed limit.
“Obviously my home patch – but re side street parking – there actually isn’t much. ASB call centre takes hundreds from early morning to say 6.”
Not aware of that. Are you saying there’s a large call centre that takes up all the parking? Well, not wanting to sound harsh to the workers, but you have the solution right there: Create time limit zones so that the parking isn’t used for commuting, but is available for the shops. Make those people take the bus or park further away and walk the rest.
“but it’s more about the urban design and noise/fume protection that parked cars give outside peak bus lanes.”
Which is why centre bus lanes would have been so much better. But do not despair - as you can see from the cross sections over at http://transportblog.co.nz/2010/06/02/dominion-road-two-steps-to-trams/ , there will be cycle lanes between the buses and the landscaping / footpath strip. So basically you get an almost 2m wide buffer. As far as I know, that is not affected by the decision to go to T2 instead of bus lanes. So peds should be fine.
“It’s good to find rabid public transport fanatics among the debaters here”
Uhm, yes, we are rather strong in our opinions. That is because helping public transport in Auckland by being meek has about as much chance as a snowflake in an exhaust pipe.
“but a balance has to be found between the needs of motorists, public transport users and cyclists”
Indeed.
“and funding has to be spread accordingly.”
So why does all our funding go to cars then? We have spent upwards of 80% of our funding for decades on roads, motorways, more roads, more motorways. That scale is so out of balance one scale has broken through into the basement, if you will allow me such colourful imagery.
So of course to right that balance, we now need lots of investment into public transport. You don’t get healthy by switching from 6 days fast food a week to 5 days a week.
“You need to embrace trials such as the Tamaki Drive one instead of being so aggressive in your opposition.”
Sorry, but we actually KNOW the details of the Tamaki Drive trial, and that is the REASON why we dislike the idea so agressively. Tamaki Drive has about 25% of the buses that Dominion Road has, and unlike Dominion Road, it is not slated to be even more bus-centric in the future. We aren’t even comparing apples with oranges here, its worse. Further, Tamaki Drive showed clearly that even in much less constrained situations, the buses suffer in such a change, so it’s clearly an anti-PT change. On on of our major PT arterials!
“would support a Ponsonby style 40k speed limit.”
That would make sense, certainly in the town centres at least.
It is great to see so many new people contributing to the debate and I hope you will continue to contribute further.
William - I think you have the wrong Matt, there are at least two of us on here and I never told you to naff off.
One thing that does annoy me about this debate is the perception that just because you own a business in the area you have more rights than others. I completely agree that we don’t want to destroy our character areas and those shops are important but we shouldn’t water down a project so much just to cater for them alone.
Parking is a thorny issue, the businesses on the street obviously want it retained but the reality is there isn’t that much street parking to begin with only about 20 spaces between Rocklands Ave and Balmoral Rd across both sides of the road for example. That parking is still valuable however and as part of the improvements it could be replaced else where close by.
Part of this proposal is to drop the designations for having buses (or originally when I first saw this proposal in the late 1990s, light rail) “go round the back” of the shopping centres.
What if cars went round the back instead with carparking accessible from there, and the mainstreets were redesigned to be more pedestrian friendly with outdoor seating, display art and so on, initially with buses down the middle, and ultimately light rail?
The buses could travel at 20-30kph through the centres, but wouldn’t have to queue with cars through them, and much more of the “mainstreet” is given back to pedestrians.
We live near the Valley Rd shops. Mark is correct when he talks about the narrow footpaths making bus and car fumes uncomfortable for pedestrians and I notice that when I wheel my baby along to Foodtown.
My partner bought a bike as his friends decided cycling was healthier than catching up for a boys night at the bar but came home one day and said he had had enough of Dominion Rd which was too narrow and dangerous for cyclists fighting it out with cars and buses.
The 40k suggestion is a good one.
I would go further and suggest a Grafton Bridge approach. No cars weekdays only 7am to 7pm.
So what are people thinking when they suggest trams down Dominion Rd.
The discussion here clearly proves there is not enough room for buses let alone light rail in the middle of the road.
I would like the waterfront trams to go somewhere useful like Dominion Rd but that’s ridiculous.
I enjoyed reading the council’s view.
I catch the bus from Sandringham every day to work in the CBD and in fact mainly use buses.
Sandringham Rd is also a busy road that needs some work on it.
As is Mt Eden Rd and Great North Rd.
These four roads should have a joint co ordinated approach that deals successfully with the rate of buses cars and cycles etc.
Let’s not just tackle Dominion Rd.
If the population forecasts for Auckland you had on the site some months back are correct, then how are we going to cope with the increased cars along these routes in the next 5 years.
And didn’t I read here some time back that people are buying more cars and SUVs than ever.
Good to see new faces here.
Welcome - and I hope you continue to debate.
BJ - Putting trams in would actually use less space for buses as the “lanes” don’t need to be as big. This is because drivers tend to leave more space between themselves and vehicles next to them, I believe this is even more pronounced when approaching traffic in an opposite direction. Trams on the other hand don’t have to worry about that as the rails keep them the correct distance apart so they don’t need as much extra room.
The mid block proposal (there is a link to it earlier in the comments) allows for a 2.5m footpath/tree pit, 1.8m cycle lane, 3.2m bus lane, 3m general traffic lane on each side and separated by a 1.6m median. A tram could easily fit in a bus lane with some room to spare and you could probably do away with the median strip, granted these widths most likely won’t apply through the shops but there is currently space for 4 lanes through them so shouldn’t be to much of a problem.
If I was in charge (which of course I’m not) I would put the bus lanes down the centre of the road, stations would be in the middle of the road and would help to slow traffic in the area down through controlled pedestrian crossings etc. This would also help raise the visibility of public transport and combined with a high quality and frequency service it would attract more users. The one issue would be what to do with cars that want to turn right.
In the future if we need to increase capacity it would then be fairly easy to lay tram tracks down the bus lanes and with the stations already in place there wouldn’t be as much disruption.
Well, unless this project is REALLY held up (which has major downsides of course as well), we won’t get centre-lane running. Then again, the switch from kerb bus lanes to centre tram lanes won’t be so huge (compared to the base cost of even HAVING a new tram system) that we probably shouldn’t worry too much about it now. There is always a big reluctance to rip up a street again once it has been done - so as I said: unless we are willing to do exactly zero with Dom Road for the coming 3-5 years (which I reckon is the minimum until Auckland would be willing to look at “real” trams) then this is as good as we can get.
Upgrade Dom Road more or less as planned now, either as T2 or bus lanes (sigh - but it really doesn’t make that much of a difference in terms of the road geometry, and can be changed later if it really becomes T2) and then worry about trams later.
Great debate here!
I think Andrew has nailed the point home here though. The utilisation of the bus lanes cannot be measured by the amount of vehicles per minute. The bus lanes need to stay as bus lanes, simply to maintain (or even improve) the reliability of our public transportation network. Dominion Road is a major transportation corridor in Auckland. Ideally, this corridor should’ve been an RTN corridor. I reckon if this corridor has a 24-7 bus lanes with dedicated bus stops/station ala the Northern Busway, this corridor would be even more successful than the Northern Busway!
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