Congestion Free Network - Part 3

This is part three of a series on the Congestion Free Network (CFN). 

For those not familiar with the plan, I go into some detail here about its origins however it is essentially of copy of Auckland Transport's (AT) "Regional Land Transport Plan" although it upgrades everything to fully grade separated busways or railways.

Given the CFN is broken down into '5 Year Plan' segments I have been looking at each one in turn. In my previous post I looked at the network as proposed by the year 2020 and found that the initial portion of the works would likely cost in the range of $7-8 billion, this is despite the plan having had only allocated some $1.3 billion for these works. I also excluded the Central Rail Link (CRL) and the additional rolling stock from the previous estimate and so we should really round off the total cost for the first 5 year CFN plan at $11 billion.

In today's post I am going to look at the works for the 2020 to 2025 plan and see how far over budget we get given the we spent all of the CFN's budget in the first 5 year plan..

CFN - 2025

CFN 2020 to 2025 Projects:

The 2020 to 2025 plan for the CFN appears to be mainly extensions to existing section of the Rapid Transit Network (RTN) rather than creating new lines and therefore we can expect this phase to be cheaper then the $11 billion spent in the fist 5 year plan.

To set the context, the CFN is a network of grade separated high speed and high frequency public transport (PT) routes similar to the northern busway or Vancouver's SkyTrain.

Vancouver Sky Train - 2015

During the previous 5 year plan the busway was extended 4km from Constellation Station up to the Albany Station to remove the segment where buses are required to drive on a congested section of the motorway network, during this 5 year plan the busway is further extended 12km north from Albany through to Silverdale. Given this section of motorway only has an AADT of 40,000 it does seem somewhat excessive do build a grade separated busway however I can only assume that the authors of the CFN are expecting large amounts of traffic growth on this route, potentially due to the Puhoi to Wellsford motorway extension. 

Another busway extension is planned to go from Westgate 7km along SH16 to Kumeu. This is another peculiar extension as currently the two-lane two-way SH16 only gets 20k vpd here, it also sits on the existing rail line and could easily be served by extending the existing rail service slightly further. Personally I can see there being some merit in extending a high quality bus serves out here as part of extending the motorway, however I would only do this once we get some more urban sprawl, something which the authors of this work are dead set against and so their justification for this route is unknown 

We get two more busway extensions as part of the plan, a 6km extension to Howick and another 6km extension to the airport. We also get the Onehunga Rail Line extended 9km to the airport. All 3 of these make perfect sense and would be quite useful if there were here today for us to use, in particular the busway to Howick which is one of the most deprived parts of the city when it comes to PT.

The plan also adds a ferry to Northcote, Birkenhead, Beachhaven and Hobsonville. I'm not too sure how they plan it implement a fast and frequent ferry service as ferries are generally slow and their high capacity inherently means low frequency. Ferries are also pretty poor when it comes to CO2 commissions being about the same as a car on a per km rate, they usually offset this by taking much shorter routes however the route shown is no shorter than travelling by road

CFN 2020 to 2025 Costing:

The CFN website has the following costings for these projects:

1. Northern Busway Extension = $300 million (12km)
2. Western Busway Extenstion = $150 million (7km)
3. Howick Busway Extention = $150 million (6km)
4. Airport Busway = $235 million (6km)
5. Airport Rail = $700 million (9km)
6. High Speed High Frequency Ferries = $30 million

From that last time I looked as this we had a unit rate for busways of $35 million per km, we also had a property cost of $20 million per km in urban areas.

So using those rates and taking account that some of the busways are out in the country side we get the following values.

1. Northern Busway Extension = $420 million (12km)
2. Western Busway Extenstion = $245 million (7km)
3. Howick Busway Extention = $330 million (6km)
4. Airport Busway = $330 million (6km)

Looking at the rail option, $50 million per km is about what I would expect however due to the reduced geometric flexibility the property costs are likely to go up. On a pure per km rate we are looking at $720 million however the tricky part here is the crossing over the Mangere Inlet. The current plan is to have a bridge weaving its way across the inlet between the existing two bridges, however I suspect such visual destruction is not likely to be approved, unless it follows the same grade as the existing motorway bridge, and so we are more likely to see a tunnel here if this route is to be approved. Once you take this into account the cost of the route is more likely to at least $1 billion.

Mangere Inlet - 2015

So if we put the various parts together, the total cost for the CFN 5 year plan from 2020 to 2025 comes out at $2.3 billion, comparing this to the CFN budget of $1.5 billion we have managed to come in much closer to budget than we did in the first 5 year plan.

The total cost to date for the CFN is now at $13.3 billion running at 136% of the total CNF budget of $9.8 billion.

Similar to last time, I have updated the 2025 CFN plan to show what we could build if we limited are funds to what the CFN has allocated.

Costed 2025 CFN - 2015

The next post will cover the years 2025 to 2030. 

The Anti-Road Campaigner

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Great North Road - 2015

This is similar to other tree lined streets within the city.

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 most amusing aspects of the "save the trees" campaign was the unanimous opinion that shared paths are no good for cyclists, with the TransportBlog stating "in my book shared paths don't count".

To a similar extent Cycle Action Auckland doesn't like shared paths either as they put cyclists in conflict with pedestrians. What's ironic in this case is that it was only the previous day they had celebrated the opening of another section of shared path just up the road.

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.

Great North Road - 2015

Another funny thing to be seen was from the TransportBlog when the posted the following image.

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.

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).

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.

1. Westbound vehicles would be directed into the eastbound right turn lane resulting in head-on collisions.
2. The traffic waiting to turn onto the SH16 eastbound on-ramp would block the eastbound buses.

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.

Auckland Transport History - Part 4

Following is Part 4 of my series on Auckland's Transport History.

As before, this series is sort of in response to a paper I read:
"The American Heresy: Half a century of transport planning in Auckland"

Recap:

To recap from the previous posts there have been 3 main transport plans developed for transport in Auckland, these are:

• 1946 Regional Transport Plan
• 1956 Auckland Plan
• 1965 Auckland Regional Transport Plan

Of these plans, the 1946 plan presented a regional road network that was outside of the Auckland urban area.

The 1956 Auckland Plan reduced the regional extent of the previous plan but envisaged an extensive series of motorways wrapping around all 4 sides of the CBD. Of the 35km of inner city motorways that were planned in the 1955 plan only 4km (10%) of these were built during the years 1955 to 1965.

The 1965 plan was the most extensive of all the plans and included both an extensive motorway network and rapid transit network. Approximately 65km of additional motorway was marked out over the urban area of Auckland, however in the 50 years since this plan was put in place only extra 20km (30%) of these urban motorways have been built. Of the RTN component roughly 75km was marked out to cover existing urban areas, the existing rail lines made up 50km (65%) of this network however nothing was added to this until 2008 when the Northern Busway was opened.

When you look at Auckland today it may appear that Auckland has an extensive urban motorway network, however this network is actually a result of Auckland growing and following the regional motorways into the country (similar to the Waikato Expresssway) rather than these motorways being planned as urban links.

In terms of what was planned inside the urban area it has taken 50 years to complete roughly 40% of what was planned to be delivered over 20 years. In terms of the rapid transit network; 65% of the urban area was was already covered by the existing rail network, however slow and unreliable service meant it was never operated as a rapid transit network.

Auckland Councils Part:

As we have seen, the various plans were all regional plans and were mainly in relation to the surrounding areas of Auckland rather than the urban area itself. Of the routes that went through the urban area, the ones that were built were intended to connect the northern, southern and western areas of Auckland but also provided access to the CBD.

The above regional connections were all delivered by the government as building and maintaining regional connections is managed and delivered at a national level. When it comes to local transport needs such as local arterial roads, bus services and metropolitan rail the local council generally manages the delivery. So while the government built their regional state highways what did the Auckland Council get up to?

Well it turns out, they didn't do much of anything.

One thing the council did do is remove the tram network and replace it with buses, this was done with the intention of making PT faster and more flexible. It's not overly clear how well thought through this plan was as the bus terminal in the city was built in 1937 when most PT users took trams yet no upgrades were made when the tram network was replaced with buses.

The other thing the council did between creating the various transport plans was sell off land and approve construction of housing and industrial developments where these planned transport links were intended to go.

The councils worst contribution however was to prevent these future routes being built  by building local roads along the planned alignment with property access for the full length. For any transport link to be effective at moving freight or people is to reduce side friction, being property access and intersections, however the council maximised side friction meaning these links become trapped as low speed urban roads.

One example of this is Ti Rakau Drive, this road was planned to be "expressway standard" meaning no side access but some high standard at grade intersections. Although for a time this road would have been rather nice with little traffic and wide grass berms, as the city has grown it has become a constraint on the area and not the most ideal street to live next to.

Ti Rakau Drive - 2015

Slightly better is Te Irirangi Dr which does have some level of access control but rather than being an expressway is a partial boulevard. With this section being posted at 80km/h with various major signal controlled intersections its not a very safe route to drive. Adding to this are poorly design entrances and exists from side lanes along with trees in the median which makes it understandable that there have been some serious crashes here in the past.

One of the merits of this route is that they did try to future proof for rapid transit with the wide grass median, however this is appears to not have been thought through all that well as there is no logical place to have stations in the middle of the road and every intersection would need to be grade separated.

Te Irirangi Drive - 2015

Robbie's Rail:

One of the things the Auckland council did do back in the day was try and stop the CMJ. Although first planned in 1956 and scheduled to be completed by 1976 by 1970 the only connection that had been built was a now removed bi-directional link to Wellesley St.

Although quite a bit of rural motorway had been built with few issues over the previous 20 years the work on the highly destructive inner city section was only just starting. It is estimated that as part of building both the CMJ and the southern motorway from Ellerslie that some 15,000 homes were destroyed forcing the relocation of some 50,000 people and so it it understandable that it was not very popular at the time.

Wellesley Ramp - 1996

Adding to the disruption that was going on as part of the building the CMJ, congestion levels were growing as the city had grown along the rural motorways letting users quickly drive into the city but then being left to use the existing local roads through the most congested parts of the city.

In the lead up to this when the full costs of the CMJ were starting to be appreciated the Mayor at the time (1968) Sir Dove-Myer Robinson championed the scrapping of the CMJ and building an inner city loop, similar to the CRL of today, as the way forward out of Auckland's congestion. The design presented was pretty much the RTN design from the 1965 Regional Transport Plan and the idea was to build the rail link first rather than scrap the CMJ altogether.

Given the size of the proposed inner city loop and the technology at the time this rail link would have been similar in terms of extent of destruction as the CMJ was and would have likely resulted in the loss of a number of historical buildings in the CBD. In the end the rail scheme was put on the back burner and plans for the CMJ continued.

Not long after this the world experienced the biggest and longest spike in world oil prices with oil prices increasing by up to 600% and taking 13 years to return to normal prices. This oil price increase resulted in a large increase in PT usage which would have meant many of the public would have seen the continued progress on the CMJ as a waste of money when PT funding was needed, however as soon as the oil prices when back to normal PT usage also declined to the lowest annual usage in Auckland's history.

Between 1970 and 1978 the southern and northern motorway's where connected at the CMJ and in 1983 the northwestern motorway was connected. However it took till 2006, 30 years late, to complete the various ramps and Dominion Road was removed from the scope. 

Conclusion:

In general, Auckland's transport History seems to be one were we make pretty good plans but then fail completely to deliver them.

For the Rapid Transit Network, we had 65% of it in place however didn't actually start running an effective service until recently, and even then we still limit ourselves to trains every 30mins off-peak.

For our motorway network, we only managed to build 40% of it yet we have taken more than twice as long as planned to do that.

For the sections of both motorway and RTN that we haven't built, little has been done to future proof these and so we are left with significant expenses and disruption if and when we actually try to implement them.

This all comes at a rather convenient time as the Auckland Council is looking for feedback on their new 10 year plan.

It's very clear that the reason Auckland's Transport is in the shape it's in now is from under investment in the past along with inadequate vision to invest in the future. If your at all passionate about Auckland's transport I suggest you provide feedback to the council which they are engaging the public.

SkyPath v1.0

Introduction:

A few weeks back the SkyPath submitted its application for a resource consent and we all had our chance to put in a submission on the current plans. It will be sometime before we know what the outcome of the submission and in all likelihood we will never know the actual details as these are for the person who submitted the application and not the general public.

CAA.ORG.NZ

When it comes to submissions on these sorts of things your normally get about 50 or so from a various locals who are being disrupted, however every now and then a marketing machine will get behind it resulting from people from all over the world making submissions. We saw this with the SkyPath where Generation Zero created a easy submission form that brought in about 11,000 submissions including my one.

The idea of the Generation Zero form was to get people to submit in approval of the project and therefore they gave 5 reasons as to why the project should go ahead as follows:

1. The Skypath will provide much needed transport choices by providing a long overdue walking and cycling link between the North Shore and the City.
2. The Skypath will be a great way to encourage cycling. It will connect the two sides of the harbour allowing people to commute or for a Sunday ride.
3. It will be easily accessible with great work done by Auckland Transport to accommodate all stakeholders.
4. The best thing about it though is that it'll be amazing iconic attraction for Auckland.
5. There's one thing we think that should be changed and that's it's opening hours. We think it should be open till midnight rather than closing at 10PM. If you support this make sure to tick the box to add it to your submission.

Of the 5 reasons I think two of them are key, being:

1. The Skypath will provide much needed transport choices by providing a long overdue walking and cycling link between the North Shore and the City.
2. The best thing about it though is that it'll be amazing iconic attraction for Auckland.

The Existing Path:

So there we have it, the SkyPath is needed both as a important transport link and as an iconic attraction. But what would you say if I told you we already had a SkyPath right here in Auckland? All lies I'm sure you'll say but it just so happens we have one just down the road over the Mangere Inlet as part of the Mangere Bridge opened in 1983.

Magere Bridge - 2015

Being built in the early 80's when lowest cost was the primary driver it's not exactly the best pedestrian/cycle bridge in much the same way its not the best motorway bridge either. However what it does that the existing harbour bridge doesn't is provide an pedestrian and cycle connection over the harbour.

Being a nice sunny Saturday I biked my way down here in the weekend to give this thing a go and see what it was all about. The first thing you will notice about it is that it's had quite a few years of the wrong type of love with no shorted of depictions of self expression. However riding over it was actually a rather nice experience and the grade wasn't an issue. 

Magere Cycle Path - 2015

One thing I wasn't expecting to find were two observation platforms located approximately a 3rd of the way along from each end. Although a little on the small side each one of these had a seat and rather nice view out across the harbour. Given there was a bit of a concert going on in the reserve by the south bridge abutment a few people were making use of the elevated position the bridge gave to get a better view.

Magere Bridge - 2015

The new SkyPath intends to have a few of these widenings along the route, which originally they were going to charge extra for, and generally the feel of the route will be somewhat similar to the Mangere Bridge.

CAA.ORG.NZ

The main negative to the Mangere Bridge crossing from what I could see is the inadequate security which has resulted in years of vandalism and neglect. The other downside it has is that it needs to be a long narrow route with only one way in and one way out meaning it pretty much fails when it comes to CPTED. This means that the only way people can feel safe using it is when it's busy or if it has visible and active security.

The SkyPath will be in exactly the same situation as the Mangere Bridge and will need to have extensive security measures to make sure people feel safe and to prevent any vandalism.

The other obvious thing any cycle or pedestrian crossing needs to access to and from the crossing. The Mangere Bridge has been pretty well connected since it was built back in the 80's however there have been a few recent upgrades at the northern end including a new bridge over Onehunga Harbour Road and a new board walk.

Mangere Bridge North Abutment Boardwalk - 2015

Findings:

Before actually testing the bridge out myself I wasn't expecting much as I had heard various people talk it down along with hearing stories about homeless people living there and lighting fires. But after giving it a go I think the crossing is actually pretty good and if I lived in Mangere and wanted to commute to work in Onehunga I would probably give it a go. During my brief ride across, with a few short photo stops, I saw about 15 other people using it and so it wasn't a complete ghost bridge.

When relating it to the SkyPath, the Mangere Birdge is 650m in length whereas the SkyPath is about 1.3km. The Mangere Bridge is at about 3% in grade whereas the Skypath will be about 5%. Both of these grades are pretty easy to climb but the safety issue arises when it comes to cyclist heading downhill where they like to go as fast as they can which doesn't mix all that well with children randomly stopping and darting side to side.

Users:

When it comes to the SkyPath one of the biggest issues I see is that in order for it to feature as part of your daily commute you will need to be cycling quite some distance. Assuming you live Northcote Point you will be looking at 5-6km to get to the city depending on where you live. If you relate that to people on the CBD side of the harbour it would be like cycling in from Waterview, Mt Roskill, Ellersle or Meadowbank. Physically all these trips are pretty manageable, however what portion of people are actually willing to bike 10km or more to and from work each day.

In Auckland the average commute is just over 5km and about 70% of all commutes are <10km, therefore anyone wanting to cycle over the harbour bridge would be cycling more than the average commute distance and by the time you get to Glenfield this cyclist would be up in the 85%ile of longest commutes. The point being is that the SkyPath will only provide for a very small portion of all commuting cyclists and in all likelihood zero pedestrian commuters.

Auckland - 2015

And so this is why I think the main use for the SkyPath will be for recreational and tourist users, in the weekends you can expect to get a few cyclists who are up for doing 30km or so and you will also get quite a few families driving down to Westhaven and walking up the bridge. In effect I think the SkyPath will be sort of like the Sky Tower as a tourist attraction but I don't see it being an overly important transport link.