Time to Ditch the Auckland Harbour Bridge Tidal Flow?

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Time to Ditch the Auckland Harbour Bridge Tidal Flow?

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bmt

574 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1986444 31-Mar-2018 17:18

Lias:

bmt:

If only there were dedicated cycle lanes for them to cycle in so you wouldn't have to "pull out or swerve around them".......

But those dedicated cycle lanes come at the expense of roads lanes or already hard to find car parks! If someone could magically take cyclists off the roads WITHOUT doing anything to further reduce the space available for cars, I'd happily support it. Unfortunately that's not the reality, it comes to "room for cars" or "room for cyclists" and I'm going to pick cars every day of the week.

Those road lanes and car parks come at the expense of dedicated cycle lanes! I want to be able to cycle to a house/shop but instead of cycle lanes, there are precious parks where single occupant vehicles can sit for hours at a time, serving a small number of drivers vs dozens/hundreds of cyclists.

See how your argument isn't what you thought it was?

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Journeyman

1077 posts

Uber Geek

#1986462 31-Mar-2018 17:47

Hundreds of cyclists? Hahahaha!

Batman

Mad Scientist
29052 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1986470 31-Mar-2018 18:08

Journeyman:
Hundreds of cyclists? Hahahaha!

In Auckland at least tens of thousands if the infrastructure (home to destination) were there. But there won't be, due to the chicken and egg issues.

Journeyman

1077 posts

Uber Geek

#1986494 31-Mar-2018 18:42

That's funny. You're funny!

mattwnz

19389 posts

Uber Geek

#1986501 31-Mar-2018 18:55

bmt:

Can't believe someone brought up packed trains in London/Hong Kong/Singapore etc.

1. The density of those metropolitan areas is WAY higher than Auckland.

2. Lets take away public transport in those cities, they can all drive to work or study instead!

Wow.. just wow.

Aucklands main problem is a crap public transport infrastructure and poor past planning. A train infrastructure that has stations in the wrong places etc. It has improved, but that wasn't difficult. But it will likely need expensive underground links to fix the lack of past planning. In London when they were doing the underground and town planning, they had subdivisions created to service the new stations, to allow for teh growth, and allow people to eaily travel into the city.. In NZ we are an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff mindset, where if it is broken now, it doesn't need fixing, so we build subdivisions without planning for the infrastructure, and then wonder why we have problems later down the track.

In Wellington for example we have all these new subdivsions going in, but we aren't building new water storage lakes from the infrastructure costs that are collected by the councils. Yet for the last few years we have risked running out of water, and that will only get worse, especially with global warming. People quickly forget, and the poor media in NZ doesn't help with coverage of local issues.

With the Auckland harbour bridge, they seem to be very slow at making changes. How many years after that bridge was paid for, did they eventually remove the toll booths, as I believe the tolling was only suppose to exist up until the bridge had been paid for.

jpoc

1043 posts

Uber Geek

#1987924 3-Apr-2018 23:56

FireEngine:

...

Why? The bridge is fed by a max of 4 lanes both North and South, they act as choke points so having 5 lanes in the priority direction on the bridge itself is of no benefit.

...

What?

A max of 4 lanes both North and South?

Where do you get that?

I cannot see how anyone who is at all familiar with the bridge and its environs can possibly make such an inaccurate claim.

Let's see if we can count the lanes and see how good a figure four is.

Heading South from the North side of the bridge.

SH1 has three lanes of traffic just before the Onewa Road junction.

Then directly to the South of the bottom of Onewa Road, SH1 is joined by three more lanes of traffic. One is carrying traffic from Onewa Road onto SH1 going South. Then there is the Onewa Road bus lane and finally the Northern expressway. The expressway and the Onewa bus lane merge into each other a few metres before the Onewa Rd on-ramp joins alongside SH1 and then the combined bus lane merges into the lane formed by the Onewa Road on-ramp. At the same time, a new lane opens up to the right so that traffic can move over to make space for the three lanes (the two bus lanes and the Onewa Road on-ramp) that are forced into one. The net effect there is that six lanes of traffic merge into five shortly before the bridge.

So what about the other direction heading North?

Two lanes leave spaghetti junction heading towards the bridge.

Two more lanes leave SH16 to head for the bridge. They are forced into one lane and they join alongside the other two lanes of SH1 to make three lanes heading down to the tunnel. They would be pretty well packed out at the time that the tidal flow will give 5 northbound lanes over the bridge but they then get an extra feed from an on-ramp just before the tunnel to ensure that the tunnel itself is three utterly packed lanes. Then the tunnel exits as three busy lanes and joins all of the lanes that come in at the Fanshawe St on-ramp.

How many are there joining at that point?

When there are 5 lanes going North over the bridge, one lane on the right of the three SH1 lanes opens up to feed traffic in from Fanshawe. That makes four.

At the same time, two other lanes from Fanshawe are forced to merge together before joining those other four lanes from the left but also, another bus lane is merged into those combined two lanes. So there, we actually have seven lanes being forced into 5 lanes for the run up to the bridge.

Finally, at the start of the bridge, another lane merges in from the Curren St on-ramp.

Do feel free to explain to me where 'a max of four lanes' comes from.

jpoc

1043 posts

Uber Geek

#1987927 4-Apr-2018 00:03

1eStar:

...

However there is a technical reason why it is important that the traffic is kept moving over the bridge, ie that the traffic flow is managed to prevent congestion to the point of causing a stoppage...specifically the structural capacity of the bridge is such that the bridge could become overloaded should sufficiently dense heavy traffic volumes become stopped bumper to bumper on the bridge.

...

You have been misinformed.

There was a problem about ten years ago when it was realised that there would be a problem on the clip-on lanes if every vehicle on the two clip on lanes on one side or the other was a max-weight goods vehicle and if they all came to a halt bumper to bumper as a result of heavy congestion.

As an interim measure, heavy vehicles were asked to avoid the clip on lanes until the cluip on strtucture could be strengthened. That work was completed about six years ago and now there are no worries about the loading on the bridge.

Jase2985

12353 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#1987935 4-Apr-2018 05:23

jpoc:

As an interim measure, heavy vehicles were asked to avoid the LEFT MOST clip on lanes until the clip on structure could be strengthened. That work was completed about six years ago and now there are no worries about the loading on the bridge.

edited for accuracy, there were signs over the bridge stating no heavy vehicles in the left lane while the work was going on.

FireEngine

1217 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1987952 4-Apr-2018 07:39

jpoc:

FireEngine:

...

Why? The bridge is fed by a max of 4 lanes both North and South, they act as choke points so having 5 lanes in the priority direction on the bridge itself is of no benefit.

...

What?

A max of 4 lanes both North and South?

Where do you get that?

I cannot see how anyone who is at all familiar with the bridge and its environs can possibly make such an inaccurate claim.

Let's see if we can count the lanes and see how good a figure four is.

Heading South from the North side of the bridge.

SH1 has three lanes of traffic just before the Onewa Road junction.

Then directly to the South of the bottom of Onewa Road, SH1 is joined by three more lanes of traffic. One is carrying traffic from Onewa Road onto SH1 going South. Then there is the Onewa Road bus lane and finally the Northern expressway. The expressway and the Onewa bus lane merge into each other a few metres before the Onewa Rd on-ramp joins alongside SH1 and then the combined bus lane merges into the lane formed by the Onewa Road on-ramp. At the same time, a new lane opens up to the right so that traffic can move over to make space for the three lanes (the two bus lanes and the Onewa Road on-ramp) that are forced into one. The net effect there is that six lanes of traffic merge into five shortly before the bridge.

So what about the other direction heading North?

Two lanes leave spaghetti junction heading towards the bridge.

Two more lanes leave SH16 to head for the bridge. They are forced into one lane and they join alongside the other two lanes of SH1 to make three lanes heading down to the tunnel. They would be pretty well packed out at the time that the tidal flow will give 5 northbound lanes over the bridge but they then get an extra feed from an on-ramp just before the tunnel to ensure that the tunnel itself is three utterly packed lanes. Then the tunnel exits as three busy lanes and joins all of the lanes that come in at the Fanshawe St on-ramp.

How many are there joining at that point?

When there are 5 lanes going North over the bridge, one lane on the right of the three SH1 lanes opens up to feed traffic in from Fanshawe. That makes four.

At the same time, two other lanes from Fanshawe are forced to merge together before joining those other four lanes from the left but also, another bus lane is merged into those combined two lanes. So there, we actually have seven lanes being forced into 5 lanes for the run up to the bridge.

Finally, at the start of the bridge, another lane merges in from the Curren St on-ramp.

Do feel free to explain to me where 'a max of four lanes' comes from.

Well lets see, coming under the One Rd on-ramp heading South you have 3 lanes (3!), then an additional lane joins from the on-ramp so thats...4 - all southbound traffic is committed at that point so that is the Southbound choke.

Coming Northbound you have 3 (again 3!) lanes coming from SH1 with through traffic plus what look like two merging lanes...but wait! They both have the same junction as the source so although making merging theoretically easier they don't carry full lanes and are either part time or carry on-ramp lights so don't act as two full lanes...so my count was effectively 1 making a total of 4...you can Google it if you wish, in addition to driving it twice a day I just did...just to make sure.

If you can get past your sarcasm I'll be happy to carry on the discussion...

Regards FireEngine

1eStar

1604 posts

Uber Geek

#1988017 4-Apr-2018 09:36

jpoc:
1eStar:

...

However there is a technical reason why it is important that the traffic is kept moving over the bridge, ie that the traffic flow is managed to prevent congestion to the point of causing a stoppage...specifically the structural capacity of the bridge is such that the bridge could become overloaded should sufficiently dense heavy traffic volumes become stopped bumper to bumper on the bridge.

...

You have been misinformed.

There was a problem about ten years ago when it was realised that there would be a problem on the clip-on lanes if every vehicle on the two clip on lanes on one side or the other was a max-weight goods vehicle and if they all came to a halt bumper to bumper as a result of heavy congestion.

As an interim measure, heavy vehicles were asked to avoid the clip on lanes until the cluip on strtucture could be strengthened. That work was completed about six years ago and now there are no worries about the loading on the bridge.

What you have said re the structural strengthening work of the "clipons" is correct, however despite this strengthening work, should there be an incident on the bridge in the early hours of the morning (when heavy transport densities are higher), the motorway information signs will instruct all heavy transport to pull off the road prior to the bridge. This is one of the strategies the bridge management engineering team utilise to ensure the structural integrity of the bridge is not compromised. Another is closing lanes during high wind.

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