Comments (11)

By admin, January 23, 2013

It’s been a while now since a large part of Ian McKinnon Drive was changed from a “faux-motorway” into a more walking & cycling friendly road. Some time after the initial construction works in 2011, Cycle Action was contracted by Auckland Transport to undertake a user audit of the completed scheme.

We raised a variety of issues, some significant, some minor, and asked AT to look at fixing them. Some of these have since been done, others will hopefully occur later this year, as we have just had confirmed. The two most important ones to note were:

• Heading southbound into the big interchange, there is a long section where cyclists are “out in the open” between the through lane and a sweeping left turn lane – a remnant of the “let em go fast” speedway design that gave us the interchange in the first place, some decades ago.
  • Auckland Transport have now confirmed that they will extend the traffic island (where the ramp physically splits off from the road, tip shown in photo at right) further northwards, and will change some road markings. This will reduce the length of the exposed section where cars can suddenly cross the cycle lane.
• We were concerned with the speed limit of 70 km/h on Ian McKinnon Drive. This has since been dropped to 60 km/h. Not quite as low as we had wanted, but there’s some truth in the decision they made, which is that the road still “feels fast”, and that a 50 km/h speed limit would not be likely to be obeyed by many. All the more reason, then, to keep pushing for further improvement of the walking and cycling facilities here, such as uphill from Newton Road bridge to Upper Queen Street.

There were also a variety of further minor issues, such as markings or signage that were not yet installed, or that we asked them to tweak. So how do you feel is Ian McKinnon and the northern part of Dominion Road working for you nowadays?

Comments (9)

By BarbC, June 7, 2012

Hey – what a terrific turnout last Thursday night to launch the Grafton Gully Cycleway! (That’s the new name for the path bringing the NW Cycleway into town).  Many thanks to our presenters – Scott Wickman, for his superb virtual pedal- through of NZTA’s section of the route;  Gyles Bendall (Auckland Council),  giving us glimpses of how Council’s Urban Design and Parks team will add to the project, and Melanie Alexander (Auckland Transport) for her assurances that we will get a seamless link path all the way to the Waterfront. The team at ‘matter’ (our favourite architectural practice from Grey Lynn) brought the show to a close with fast talk and great urban design and cycling images. We are impressed they can walk a tightrope between keeping things real, while floating stimulating and novel ideas.

Scott Wickman has given us a copy of his presentation and Melanie’s AT colleagues are just starting on the drawing board. This is your chance to get your ideas and comments into the ring. Add them to this blog and we will pass them on. Scott’s presentation is available for download in PDF format.

Comments (4)

By Max, April 12, 2012

The Herald has an interesting article on the speed limit of Ian McKinnon Drive between Dominion Road and the City Centre – which just got lowered from 70 km/h to 60 km/h. As the article points out, dropping the speed limit even lower (to where it should be – 50 km/h) would have created a situation where most drivers would have ignored the new limit. Because the road design simply tells motorists: Speed up here.

Auckland still has a few such remnants of our motorway obsession in the middle of our residential areas, part of the street system where we are supposed to walk and cycle – you could even argue that we are building more such mistakes, but at least new motorways these days usually come with separated walking and cycling links (see Waterview).

Cycle Action strongly supported the speed limit reduction during our work with Auckland Transport last year. The change is very welcome, and together with the new cycle facilities, will make the street much more welcoming to cyclists than the racing strip it used to be (see image to the right for the layout before cycle lanes were added). And an extension of the cycleway facilities uphill to Upper Queen Street is likely to be part of the Northwestern Cycleway extension to be built in the coming years.

But for now, the speed reduction is just one partial step in a long journey of getting our city back to human scale – where people, not cars, dominate. So what other streets around Auckland would you like to change that are signed faster than 50 km/h?

Comments Off

By MarkR, September 21, 2011

Cycling visions for Auckland usually revolve around great new projects like extending the Northwestern Cycleway, building a waterfront promenade or getting new cycling overbridges built.

Cycling visions for Auckland usually revolve around great new projects like extending the Northwestern Cycleway, building a waterfront promenade or getting new cycling overbridges built.

But a great cycling city also needs to get the small things right. That is, for example, why Cycle Action Auckland has recently been meeting with Auckland Transport to coordinate our road design better, so we don’t get more pedestrian crossings built that “squeeze up” cyclists into narrow traffic lanes. But it also involves our members and friends – including YOU – mentioning small things to Council and Auckland Transport when they are “broken” (literally, or metaphorically) for cycling.

Some of you may wonder whether there’s any use in doing that, whether it’s really worth it. So we thought we could list a small trifecta of small changes that occurred recently, just as examples of what small requests can do:

- On Dominion Road, where the flyover bridge starts towards New North Road, an expansion joint had been broken and cracked for years, creating a “lip” several centimetres high. One of our members recently asked Auckland Transport to please fix this. And after a week or two, we now have a smooth new bitumen ramp. One big bump gone.

- In Newton, there’s a small pedestrian bridge over Ian McKinnon Drive, near Evelyn Street. Whoever rode the bridge felt very frustrated at the harsh chicance that had been placed at the western end. You had to dismount – and all but lift your bike over it by hand! At the time, our member didn’t feel that it was important enough to mention, and that he would report it later. Obviously someone has now beat him to it, because recently a space was cleared at the side of the chicane to now allow you to get around much easier, without any acrobatics.

- On Mayoral Drive, at the intersection with Cook Street, Cycle Action had (as part of the Rugby World Cup report we did in 2010) requested cycle lanes to lead into the Vincent Street cycle lanes going uphill. We thought that request “had gone away” – but just this week, I noticed the lanes had been marked! They aren’t greened yet, but instead of the usual cycle advance boxes [only], we now have a real cycle lane, allowing cyclists to bypass 40m of queued cars to get to the front. A neat little change, and many thanks to Auckland Transport for moving the three other traffic lanes for us.

In summary, we can only repeat that you should log all your repair and improvement requests with Auckland Transport by either calling 355 3553 or using the online feedback form.  Every request like that not only makes it that much more likely that your issue will be fixed – it also supports those politicians and transport managers who want to help cycling, by showing that there is a public demand out there.

DO ask for a great cycling city.

Comments Off

By jenan, June 18, 2011

After a long planning history in which the proposal went through many different shapes, the walking and cycling works on Ian McKinnon Drive finally began last Monday. The Auckland Transport project will add various walking and cycle facilities (large parts of them off-road, the remainder on-road but pleasantly wide at 1.8m) to this road once designed for motorway-style driving. Together with a proposed reduction of the local speed limit, and slightly narrower car lanes, Cycle Action Auckland is keen to soon see the whole road – and the flyover ramps – become much more friendly for cyclists. This will make it much more pleasant to get from the Dominion Road area into the city, or onto the future cycleway route down Grafton Gully.

Features will also include a new signalised crossing for pedestrians and cyclists across Ian McKinnon Drive at Piwakawaka Road, so that cyclists who prefer not to ride on-road in the steep last section up to Upper Queen Street can switch to the existing off-road path on the eastern side. All works are intended to be finished before the Rugby World Cup.

Cycle Action was allowed a generous amount of input into this project, and we are very pleased with some of the intended new features – such as raised traffic islands that will protect riders from cars cutting across the merge zone of two cycle lanes (island shown in purple on the concept plan example). This level of facility is what we are increasingly seeing rolled out around our city, showing that cyclists don’t only have a place on our roads, but that we can even treat them with the same care and quality we provide to other road users.