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The slow trip through Jervois Rd
It continues to be a slow car journey and bus crawl around parts of Auckland.
I’m sure it’s only going to get worse as the Victoria Park tunnel project really kicks in.
It’s the price of progress - as we know from the slow journeys on the trains at the moment.
But couldn’t some projects do better at explaining to frustrated motorists in hot cars what’s going on.
The busy Jervois Rd continues to be a painful journey, even at weekends, because of major pipeline works reducing lanes.
But certainly hitting it from the Herne Bay end, city- bound, there is no information about what this is about and how long it will continue (many weeks, it seems).
Motorists may feel kinder about such things, if there was a least a sign explaining why so much disruption was needed.
Major water pipeline works reduce lanes
Back in January, I commented how it feels as if every second road is always being dug up.
EARLIER; Why are roads always in disrepair?
5 Comments
As a side from this topic. What’s with traffic lights around the city. More of them and worse traffic. I note the ‘upgrade’ of Sandringham/Mt Albert Road intersection leaving huge queues in all directions now. I seriously question the design and phasing of most signals around Auckland. A lot of money and time is spent on traffic signals and intersections but to the determent of free flowing traffic. It’s about time they stop dumbing down the roads and educating drivers from the get go, before we are truly grid-locked…..PLEASE!
@zeon Well said.
There may be relief on the way
http://www.aktnz.co.nz/2009/12/14/road-planners-at-last-see-the-light/
And also the Blockhouse Bay Road/New North Road intersection, it used to be plain sailing and now there are often queues all the way back to Tiverton St!! These upgrade impede the flow of traffic, just like the on ramp lights shift congestion from the motorways onto the roads…brilliant. And while I am ranting, whoever thought it was a good idea to have three lanes converge into one on the North Western city bound on ramp at Great North Rd? Crazy! So many near misses!
Unfortunately Traffic Lights are purely put in for Safety reasons, determined by a calculation of number of accidents and seriousness of the accidents. They should be minimising the effects by phasing them properly, the problem with that is getting the right phasing which can be hard as it only takes one slow driver to create grid lock on the phasing sequence.
“Unfortunately Traffic Lights are purely put in for Safety reasons, determined by a calculation of number of accidents and seriousness of the accidents.”
Joshua, I disagree with you almost 100% here. In five years of working in Auckland and doing tons of traffic-related resource consents and discussing traffic signals quite a few times with Council, I do not think I ever suggested (or had it suggested to me) that a traffic signal be put in primarily for safety reasons (except a few pedestrian signals). They were all proposed to boost capacity of an intersection, especially where turning flows where increasing.
However, I sometimes wonder (this may be affected by the fact that I am not a traffic modeller) whether traffic signals really boost capacity, or whether they just create a different form of gridlock.
Also, I dislike them even for pedestrians. Sure, they may be safer for people who have difficulty crossing the road at all otherwise. However, I feel are just another way of restricting pedestrian freedom of mobility, which is the main davantage of walking in the first place. By channeling traffic so that it becomes unwise to even think about crossing anywhere else than at the lights, we create even bigger barriers. Instead we should be slowing traffic where pedestrians cross, use kerb build-outs to reduce crossing distances, use flush or raised medians or refuge islands to break the crossing process into several stages, and do all these things to make our cities share the road, rather than divide it between antagonistic parties.