Auckland paralyzed by damaged bridge

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antonknee

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#2574971 27-Sep-2020 21:44

BillyAnderson:

Even if they were able to be compared, all of those cities have congestion issues as well, many much worse, despite supposed "functional public transport" they have.

Which of course is a function of them having such large populations. Imagine how bad the congestion would be if their public transport was bad or non-existent? You are quite right that higher population density makes public transport more efficient and easier to provide.

As someone who uses public transport in Auckland every day - I no longer own a car, although I used to hate sitting in traffic when I was a daily driver - I can confirm our PT is more than functional.

Scott3

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#2574977 27-Sep-2020 22:33

mudguard:

If we are being pedantic then there are six or seven harbour crossings surely? I guess if the long way around avoids the motorway you don't need any crossings at all. Not sure I'd want to drive it though!

There is only the Auckland harbor bridge & the upper harbor highway.

While my understanding is that the latter is made separate north & south bridges (+cycleway?), My thoughts are that their very close proximity, makes it reasonable to consider them a single crossing.

BillyAnderson

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#2575555 28-Sep-2020 19:46

mudguard:

BillyAnderson:

There are already two bridges, has been for decades. Any new Auckland Harbour crossing would be the third.
(Plus of course the long way around that doesn't cross the Harbour at all.)

If we are being pedantic then there are six or seven harbour crossings surely? I guess if the long way around avoids the motorway you don't need any crossings at all. Not sure I'd want to drive it though!

True, but most people when they talk about a "second Harbour crossing" mean a vehicular crossing, so doesn't include the ferries. They always forget the Greenhithe bridge, which has been there for years (opening in 1975) and was purposely upgraded a while back to be part of the motorway link to the Western Motorway. Further upgrades are in progress to properly link it to the Northern Motorway (i.e. without going back to almost normal road levels ... although from what I read some time ago it wasn't going to have southbound links, only northbound, which would be stunningly idiotic). There's even a Wikipedia page that goes on about the "second crossing" despite saying in the very first paragraph that they mean the third crossing.

BillyAnderson

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#2575557 28-Sep-2020 20:00

antonknee:

As someone who uses public transport in Auckland every day - I no longer own a car, although I used to hate sitting in traffic when I was a daily driver - I can confirm our PT is more than functional.

For some people maybe, mostly those needing to go to the CBD, but for most people it isn't. For example, someone living in Albany wanting to go to Penrose or Manukau (even off-peak) the bus system is almost useless - you have to get one bus from your local stop to the bus station, another bus from there to the city, another bus from the city to Penrose, and depending on where you're going possibly another bus from that bus station to your destination area. It takes much longer and you can't take much with you or drop kids off at playcentre, etc. (Plus that ignores having to walk to / from various bus stops, which in the pouring rain isn't pleasant.) Don't even get me started on the idiocy of the "Hop card" ... bring back simple cash and punch-tickets purchasable at any diary!

There's also the massive amount of money inefficiently wasted by having busses going hourly along suburban routes during the day on the wishful thinking hope that someone might want it ... 99% of the time they're empty or near empty.

The tax-payer / rate-payers are paying subsidies for all this because the system isn't actually profitable or efficient in it's own right.

Handle9

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#2575563 28-Sep-2020 20:20

BillyAnderson:

antonknee:

As someone who uses public transport in Auckland every day - I no longer own a car, although I used to hate sitting in traffic when I was a daily driver - I can confirm our PT is more than functional.

For some people maybe, mostly those needing to go to the CBD, but for most people it isn't. For example, someone living in Albany wanting to go to Penrose or Manukau (even off-peak) the bus system is almost useless - you have to get one bus from your local stop to the bus station, another bus from there to the city, another bus from the city to Penrose, and depending on where you're going possibly another bus from that bus station to your destination area. It takes much longer and you can't take much with you or drop kids off at playcentre, etc. (Plus that ignores having to walk to / from various bus stops, which in the pouring rain isn't pleasant.) Don't even get me started on the idiocy of the "Hop card" ... bring back simple cash and punch-tickets purchasable at any diary!

For the % of the population who has your described use case who cares? Public transport isn't there to cater to every use case and never will in New Zealand. It's primarily there to move large numbers efficiently down heavily used routes.

Roading hasn't, can't and won't scale. Public transport usage has rapidly increased with the quality of service. It's a more efficient use of capital than just building more roads.

bmt

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#2575612 28-Sep-2020 22:24

BillyAnderson:

antonknee:

As someone who uses public transport in Auckland every day - I no longer own a car, although I used to hate sitting in traffic when I was a daily driver - I can confirm our PT is more than functional.

For some people maybe, mostly those needing to go to the CBD, but for most people it isn't. For example, someone living in Albany wanting to go to Penrose or Manukau (even off-peak) the bus system is almost useless - you have to get one bus from your local stop to the bus station, another bus from there to the city, another bus from the city to Penrose, and depending on where you're going possibly another bus from that bus station to your destination area. It takes much longer and you can't take much with you or drop kids off at playcentre, etc. (Plus that ignores having to walk to / from various bus stops, which in the pouring rain isn't pleasant.) Don't even get me started on the idiocy of the "Hop card" ... bring back simple cash and punch-tickets purchasable at any diary!

There's also the massive amount of money inefficiently wasted by having busses going hourly along suburban routes during the day on the wishful thinking hope that someone might want it ... 99% of the time they're empty or near empty.

The tax-payer / rate-payers are paying subsidies for all this because the system isn't actually profitable or efficient in it's own right.

Yeesh, so many issues with your comment.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for people living in Albany going to Manukau if the purpose of that trip is for work. Far too many people live on the opposite side of town to where they need - the end result is spaghetti junction is a mess. I know, because I used to be one of those people, and knew I was directly contributing to traffic congestion by doing so.

How is the HOP card idiocy? I take 1 second to tag on and go to my seat. If there are 5 people its 5 seconds. If 5 people are paying cash, the bus is delayed by maybe a minute, then at the next stop another 5 people? And so on. What a silly comment.

Finally, why should public transport be profitable? It is a service provided by the council. Are roads profitable?

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K8Toledo

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#2575802 29-Sep-2020 13:08

elpenguino:

One thing that no one has mentioned is why this particular truck got blown over. I would expect, bearing the consequences of the incident in mind, that the police will be looking at the driver's behaviour to assess whether he/she was careless/reckless in driving their vehicle over the bridge that day.

Driving large, flat-sided vehicles in very windy conditions over an exposed crossing is not wise, especially when the vehicle is not loaded. I haven't seen any comment from the media about whether this particular vehicle was loaded or not.

I would have thought the article made it pretty clear why:

K8Toledo

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#2575873 29-Sep-2020 14:04

old3eyes:

Most cities in the world would have put in another 1 or 2 harbor crossings years ago . Just look at Europe , Asia and North America. They just get on and do it but not NZ. Takes years and millions of dollars for reports , meetings and at the end it may get built by 2050 if the wind blows in the right direction. Don't expect another crossing anytime soon just election promises..

True, but NZ is a very small country with limited resources/money for roading.

From 1996-2004 I worked as a long haul truck driver in the USA, I can say hand on my heart the biggest issue with Auckland is it's an urban area of nearly 2million people with no way around it.

State Highway 1 goes straight up the middle.

Almost all major cities in the States have secondary ring roads for through traffic, eg, Houston, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Charlotte. Generally the system works.

However a few don't, this is due to the geography. New York, NJ, Baltimore basically the entire eastern seaboard - like Auckland have water beside them.

Driving through or leaving Chicago (prob the worst offender) takes 3hrs during peak traffic.

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