Yesterday there was a rather large announcement for people who are passionate about transport, sustainability and urban design. In what will likely become a rather influential president a group of apparent 'pro-public transport' and 'pro-active transport' activists successfully campaigned the Auckland Council not to improve the walking and cycling facilities on Great North Road and not to improve the public transport on Great North Road. The announcement I refer to is the saving of 6 Pohutukawa trees that were going to result in a number of significant benefits for all transport users, primarily being PT users and cyclists.
Now you may think this is strange, why would people who are pro-PT and active transport campaign against what they are in support of? Well it all comes down to why people become campaigners in the first place, and it also comes down to those who are most vocal being happy to lie and misrepresent the facts to get others on board.
So to start with, when it comes to people who are pro-PT or pro-active transport there are two types; there are those who simply want to promote these modes whilst letting other people go about there own business, and there are those who who simply hate other people using cars and want to prevent anything that makes driving easier for other people.
Hatred of Cars:
What it is that makes certain people hate other people using cars so much generally comes from a high degree of self interest, they don't like the fact that roads get congested and they don't like the fact that increasing the capacity of roads generally results in them using up more space. These same people may very well use cars themselves, however this they will claim is because they have no option because the PT system is so poor. In their world they may very well only ever travel from inner suburbs to the CRD where PT is ideal however the fact that other people have lives of their own and are making different trips is of no relevance, these other people are simply getting in their way are nothing but an inconvenience unless they are adding to the ambiance of the area.
For example, the following image shows a busy street with many people eating away at a cafe. In the average anti-car campaigners world the entire city should be full of streets like this, how these people get there, where they live, or what they do for a living doesn't is irrelevant, their only purpose in life should be to add to the ambiance 24/7. In a way its like these campaigners live in a theater where they are in the audience and they don't want to ever see or know the inner workings going on behind stage.
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Busy Street |
Save the Trees:
Although the project in question has been in the public arena since 2013 there hasn't really been all that much concern over the loss of these trees until recently, the main objection to the project was that money was being spent to improve vehicle travel. This is actually evident in the numerous submissions that were made to save the trees, when reading the submissions that were in objection the general message in most of these was
"save the trees because I don't like you improving the intersection for cars"
Quite possibly the most important thing to get out of the way first is that most of these campaigners aren't actually all that fussed about chopping down a tree or two. In fact some of these folk have campaigned for years to have trees chopped down so they can get what they want. One good example of this is the Grafton Cycleway that required the removal of hundreds of trees and the only criticism was that it should have been done sooner. They will be equally keen to chop down any trees that get in the way of the Skypath.
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The Lost Trees |
Being a bit of a keen cyclist myself I've taken a few rides along this path however I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. The grade of the path makes it both a bit of a challenge for the average Joe and coming down the path is potentially quite dangerous as you can get up to some insane speeds and when you come into the corners that have the camber sloping the wrong way is an accident waiting to happen. Additionally the path doesn't give you access to anything, apart from a few mid-block access points its most suited for people going from the top of the CBD to the bottom and nowhere in between.
There other thing I have noticed about this path is that it hardly gets used, most times I've taken this path I haven't seen anyone else on it although one day I did see 5 pedestrians.
How Old is a Tree:
A good example of how disingenuous the "save the trees campaign" was is the quoting of the age of the trees. Throughout the campaign these trees were referred to as 6 giant and magnificent trees that were over 80 years old and in some cases almost 100 years old, yet in reality they were more in the range of 65 years of age.
You can see in the following image taken in 1940 that the trees didn't exist, yet they are claimed to be 6 years old at this stage.
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Tree Location - 1940 |
The following image is taken in 1965 where we can now see in the red circle the trees which they look to be around the size of 15 year old Pohutukawa, this would mean they were planted around 1950 making them about 65 years of age. In the blue you can see some other trees that were not overly apparent in 1940 however given there size are obviously older.
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Tree Location - 1965 |
Livable City:
One of the big slogans being used during the campaign was the "most livable city" which is what the current Mayor is championing.
To start the campaign they decided to claim there were 19 lanes in the area. Technically there were 19 lanes however this is because the count was based on 4 different roads. You could very well say there are 50 lanes here if you include a few more roads.
In reality Great North Road has 1 general traffic lane and one bus lane each way and so that's a total of 4. Add in the fact that we are at an intersection were you get additional turn lanes and we are up to 7.
The other thing the campaign implied was that the 6 trees would be removed and replaced with nothing but road pavement, when in reality 9 semi mature trees would to be put in their place along with some new and improved landscaping. All up there would be 3 more trees after the works than there were before.
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Proposed Landscape Plan - 2015 |
The general sentiment was that removing these trees would result in such extensive environmental damage that it would take generations to grow back. Given the trees were planted around 1950 and looked pretty snappy in the 90's, that would imply that if 9 semi mature trees were planted here it would take about a decade to get to where we are rather than some 80 years as implied.
The hypocrisy of this all is that trees get chopped down all over the show for a number of reasons, many of which are for improved pedestrian and cycling facilities.
Of course this in situation it is a bit of a special case as 230m down the road there is a long line of trees of the same species and so people like to imply these trees are part of that line.
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Great North Road - 2015 |
This is similar to other tree lined streets within the city.
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Howe St - 2015 |
The difference with these 6 particular trees however is that they are not part of a greater picture but rather a small disconnected patch of trees.
When is a Cycle Lane a Cycle Lane:
One of the criticisms was that the path was "only" 3m in width, that's 3m plus an extra 0.5m clearance either side but they chose to ignore that for their case. So in effect, this 4m (including buffer area) wide path was hopelessly inadequate, this is despite the path they were celebrating the previous day was 3.0m with no clearances. If they really were of the opinion that 4m is not enough space then they would be up in arms about the 4m width of the SkyPath, however we see here they think the 4m width of the skypath is fantastic and safe for all users regardless of the 5% grade.
The other criticism they had was that the path only extended for the extent of works and didn't connect into the existing network. This is again another rather funny one, if you look at a map of the area you will see that there isn't an existing network of any shape or form and so that makes it rather hard to tie into it. To a similar extent a project can only work within its extent of works and hence the name. A complaint of this nature is rather short sighted, it suggests that nothing should be done in stages and that they would rather get nothing than get it delivered to them one section at a time.
As it turns out they have got what they wanted, they said they didn't want a shared path and the council has listened to them and it no longer features as part of the works.
Stop Planning for the Future:
The other great argument they had was that the traffic model was predicting congestion in 2026, given the road is congested today it's pretty obvious that it's going to be congested in the future but the campaigners didn't seem to think this was an issue and that there was a good chance that if we do nothing that the congestion we experience today will simply vanish.
The following image is Great North Road on a typical Saturday when nothing special is going on, this is hardly a busy time of the day but as you can see there is a large queue of cars trying to turn left onto St Lukes Road and another large queue of cars trying to turn right onto the SH16 eastbound on-ramp.
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Great North Road - 2015 |
Another funny thing to be seen was from the TransportBlog when the posted the following image.
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TransportBlog - 2015 |
I can only image they weren't wearing their glasses when viewing this image as the only difference they could make out was that there were "slightly fewer vehicles on the eastbound off-ramp". I don't know how they failed to notice the queue on Great North Road gets extended over 700m to the Grey Lynn town centre and and off the map.
Buses are Too Fast:
The biggest losers in this situation are the bus users travelling along Great North Road. In the preferred scheme buses travelling both eastbound and westbound had a relatively uninterrupted run however the campaigners seemed to not like improvements being made to the bus network and for now they have go their way.
It was only last week that the people campaigning against bus improvements at this intersection were celebrating a new bus lane being installed. It seems the issue here is these people simply don't understand how the dynamics of traffic work and therefore don't understand how small changes can make a big difference.
In the case of the preferred option two things were being done for buses. The first thing was that by adding the additional left turn lane the congestion on Great South Road will be greatly reduced and therefore bus movements freed up.
As shown in the congestion map above the queue of vehicles on a typical weekend PM peak can be expected to extend back all the way to Grey Lynn town centre and therefore before the existing Great North Road bus lanes start.
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Grey Lynn Town Centre - 2015 |
So first up the buses will get stuck here, once in the bus lane they will be able to pass much of the stationary traffic up to about Tuarangi Road where the bus will again get stuck in congestion. The bus will then slowly make its way through the intersection of both Stadium and St Lukes Road before it is able to get back into a bus lane.
In addition to longer trips brought on by added congestion buses will also end up getting stuck behind other buses that are dropping off passengers as there will be no space to pass.
The 2nd benefit the buses get comes from the short 100m bypass lane. Although 100m doesn't sound like much, when it comes to peak time traffic this is the difference between waiting for the same set of signals once rather than twice.
Of course it seem the apparent "pro PT" supporters were not at all impressed with improving PT in the area, despite this being part of their Congestion Free Network (CFN).
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CFN - 2020 |
This makes you wonder how they plan to build this section of the CFN. According to their pricing it will cost zero dollars to build a grade separated busway from Te Atatu all the way to Britomart which they show going going through this area. If 6 trees is too high of a cost to improve PT in this area I don't know how they plan to build a grade separated busway through this area, even if they increase their $0 budget.
I am No.6
Throughout most of the campaign there was a claim there there was "an alternative option that provided all the same benefits but saved the trees", this option was referred to as 'Option 6'.
If there was such an option it would have been good to see, however if this 'Option 6' was an option that removed the 3rd eastbound lane on Great North Road then it wouldn't have provided all the same benefits.
One of the benefits of the preferred option was that it was safe for all users and that it provided for eastbound buses. If you were to simply remove the 3rd eastbound lane and then move all the other lanes over you would create 2 issues.
- Westbound vehicles would be directed into the eastbound right turn lane resulting in head-on collisions.
- The traffic waiting to turn onto the SH16 eastbound on-ramp would block the eastbound buses.
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TransportBlog - 2015 |
Winners and Losers:
So now that the trees have been saved, and we are no longer going to see as many improvements to the pedestrian, cycling and PT in the area who won in the end of the day?
Well in 1st place comes the trees who get to stay, apart from some long overdue trimming.
In 2nd place comes the automobile user. Although Great North Road is going to be more congested than it is today, this added congestion is a result of the benefits these users will be getting from using the SH20 tunnel, and so although their trip may take an extra 7mins or so in comparison to the 2-lane option they are still getting to where the want to go faster than they are today.
In 3rd place comes the humble pedestrian, although not great in numbers for most of the day they do come out in swarms from time to time when there is an event. They will get to enjoy some new and improved crossing facilities at the intersection which should reduce their wait time, although the existing slip left turn which is a bit of a safety hazard will be retained as chosen by the campaigners. Sadly they will have to live with the existing footpath width that reduces to 2m in width rather than the 4m (including clearances) path that was proposed.
Unfortunately for cyclists they have been hit rather hard by the campaigners, they were going to be given a nice and wide shared use path which could have been easily extended to Ivanhoe Road however the anti-road campaigners have put an end to this. The poor cyclist will now need to remain on the carriageway with the general traffic until they can get to the shared paths that have survived.
In last place comes Public Transport users, due to the overwhelming hatred of cars that many of the campaigners have they have managed to make life worse for those who take the bus in the westbound direction along Great North Road.
Moral of the Story
This is a classic case of people being unable to see the wood for the trees. So much focus was put on there being an additional general purpose left turn lane that the majority of people were unable to see that the biggest winners in the 2 left turn lane option were the bus users. The 2nd left turn lane effectively got the cars out of the way and by extending the bus lane just 100m was enough for it to be able to bypass this reduced queue.
What is probably most disheartening about this is that the main campaigners actually knew the benefits of the project yet chose to ignore these and set out on a campaign of spreading misinformation. This is quite possibly the best example of an anti-road advocate you can get.
Sadly the call has been made to slow down buses, increase congestion and provide no improvements to cycling and pedestrians and it has all been driven by the people who claim they want to improve PT, cycling and pedestrian transport.
The Community
All up there were only some 3,000 people who in favor of saving the trees despite there being extensive coverage in the media, yet the campaigners claim the entire community and indeed all of Auckland was in favor of saving the them. Even when it comes to these 3,000 people however, the majority of them were being sold lies on the project by a small group of anti-road campaigners, not being told of the benefits, the actual age of the trees and what was going to be put back as mitigation.
It is hardly a democratic process when 0.03% wins out over the other 99.97% of the city, or the tens of thousands who will be inconvenienced daily due to this result.