Las Vegas

I'm currently in Las Vegas for work, and I thought I'd snap a picture of the intersection of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard. Las Vegas has major urban issues as it is a low-density city with a small hyper-dense strip. It completely gets scale wrong.

You can't cross this intersection at street level.

What happens when you have too many pedestrians and a poorly designed road.

Onehunga Branch

To finish off Auckland week, I thought I’d share a video of the newly opened Onehunga Branch rail line. If this doesn’t scream, “This looks just like something that would work in Surrey!”, I don’t know what else will. Enjoy.

Quote of the Day - Freeway

I like the following quote I found in the Auckland Rail Development Plan.

Won’t the new motorway [freeway] construction relieve the traffic congestion?

The Government is making a huge investment in roads.

The expanded motorway network will undoubtedly improve off-peak travel speeds and road safety in the short term. These roads will also reduce truck travel times and freight costs in the short term. However, motorway expansion is much less effective than good-quality Passenger Transport systems at moving the huge number of people who wish to travel at peak periods. Moreover, current projections show that by the time Transit NZ’s 10-year programme is complete, traffic growth will have outstripped the increased roading capacity. Average morning peak travel speeds will reduce. In other words, roads alone will not provide long-term sustainable solutions to Auckland’s congestion. Passenger Transport enhancements are required as well.

It needs to be recognised that a single lane of motorway will only move around 2,000 vehicles per hour, or around 2,400 people per hour. In contrast, a single lane of busway can carry around 12,000 people per hour and a single line of rail can carry over 20,000 people per hour.

In the few major cities which have attempted a private car/motorway transport solution, such as Los Angeles, the huge scale of motorways has caused major urban blight. Traffic congestion is far worse in Los Angeles than in New York or Chicago, both of which use good-quality rail transport as well as roads.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Auckland Cycle Network

One of the interesting things about Auckland is that it grew cycling mode share from 0% in 2003 to 1% in 2009 which is pretty close to cycling mode share in Metro Vancouver. This is a really low number and Auckland has a plan to growth cycling by completing a 900km regional cycling network.

Auckland Transport in conjunction with Auckland Council and the New Zealand Transport Agency is working towards achieving the target in the Regional Land Transport Strategy 2010-2040 to build at least half of the regional cycle network by 2016 and to complete it by 2026.

Red is the current cycle network. All other colours are proposed expansion to network.