John O'Hara: Don't wait for new roads to alleviate peak-hour chaos

COMMENT

I have just returned to Auckland from a trip to London. In that overcrowded, congested major city, the road journey from Heathrow to Knightsbridge took less time than my journey from downtown Auckland to Auckland airport.

The major transport initiatives now being discussed will not bear fruit for many years. In the meantime, there are a number of relatively simple steps we could be taking to make things better now.

We should embrace the opportunity to learn from the experiences of other cities to solve Auckland's problem. My overseas travel suggests there are simple steps we could and should take to alleviate our appalling congestion.

First, there is the issue of utilisation. During peak times we have a six-lane motorway system that has three congested lanes and three relatively empty lanes. If we look at Chicago's road link from O'Hare airport to downtown, the centre lanes are divided from the outside lanes so they can be used to supplement lanes in peak times.

The application here would be to move the centre barrier over one lane and add another barrier, giving three sets of two lanes, providing four lanes in peak times. This represents a 33 per cent capacity increase for the cost of barriers and a few changeover mechanisms.

Secondly, there is the question of flow control. On Californian freeways heavy traffic moves freely. At each on-ramp there are traffic lights that are used at peak times to regulate the volume of traffic entering a freeway, ensuring the freeway continues to flow.

There is a short wait at the on-ramp but once you are on you keep moving. Isn't this a better approach than what we have here?

Then there is the question of intersections. As a starting point, it is neither safe nor wise to proceed on a green light at an Auckland interchange. Red-light running is more than endemic; it is accepted as normal behaviour.

Leaving aside the obvious benefits in terms of providing organ-donors, blocked intersections impede traffic flow often. We need only to look to Singapore, London and a host of other cities where there are yellow lines on intersections and fixed cameras.

If you enter the box without being able to leave when the lights change, or you run a red light, you are ticketed - end of story.

There is also an issue with opposing traffic. The Southern Motorway from Market Rd to Khyber Pass in both directions has the on-ramps and off-ramps reversed. I hear they were designed by American engineers who thought we drove on the other side.

In any event, all those intersections have traffic entering the motorway joining in front of traffic trying to leave, a recipe for the chaos we observe each day and have endured for some 30 years. When do we get smart and change them to what they should be?

We also need to have congestion pricing. In Canada the toll varies according to the time of day, its setting ensuring that demand is matched reasonably to capacity.

So to cross the harbour bridge might be free until 6am, then $1 from 6am to 7am, $3 from 7am to 10am and then free again until 3pm. A crude tax on petrol will raise funds but will not change behaviour at peak times, which is the issue.

Then there is the question of public transport. Having ridden the new trains (very nice) into the new Britomart terminal (silly design with too narrow and too congested platforms), it is clear what is possible.

Now let's make it work. Let's copy the systems that work well - London, New York, Chicago and Singapore, for example - and get it right.

Let's also provide infrastructure and fund ferry operators to serve our city better. Why not ferries to Takapuna, West Harbour and Te Atatu?

Finally, to make it happen, we need to get the stakeholders, particularly civil servants, to travel to these cities and look closely at how they work - and then copy the best.

* John O'Hara is an Auckland businessman.