University Planners Connect Auckland Waterfront

The Masters in Planning Practice class of 2011 prepare to present their Auckland Waterfront Design Projects in the 7th Floor studio. This is the Planning 701 Urban Design course. Prof Kai Gu is the lecturer.

There were 9 team projects this year, ranging from 2 to 3 students apiece. They covered topics including Princes Wharf, Queens Wharf, Quay Street, Copthorne Hotel corner of the Viaduct, and the Waitemata Plaza area of the Viaduct. Each project identified a particular focus area, mapped the history and planning environment, set out constraints, illustrated opportunities, and provided designs.

I was taken by many of the ideas, and am considering how to get a productive relationship going between Auckland Council and the Urban Design and Urban Planning research of Auckland University. This particular project was primarily about the public access between Britomart and Vector Arena. They proposed an elevated pedestrian walkway along the alignment of access lanes. It got me thinking....

So I took a few photos along that walkway. Here we are leaving Britomart Railway station building... looking towards the Ernst and Young branded building...

The generous walkway takes you past the interesting features built into the roof of the Britomart Station...

And there are several of these volcanic features, pedestrian friendly environment...

This takes us to the entry of the public walkway throuhg and under the Ernst and Young building...

This is a real opportunity inside the Ernst and young building. A generous and safe public space, well integrated with the public walkway we've just come along...

When we reach the end of the Ernst and Young building, you look across a street to see where to go next...

And there you are stranded. You've had a good experience so far, and now you are faced with signs pointing to a relatively unattractive back alley, a service lane designed for trucks and service vehicles, not the same sort of pedestrian experience. So that was the opportunity (and need) identified by the Design Project team.

Their suggestion of an elevated pedestrian walkway through this alignment got me thinking. That's the purpose of these projects. That's why I think Auckland should be benefitting from this sort of research and thinking. It made me remember this wonderful elevated walkway in Singapore...

Here it is again. Generous. Safe. Full of light. and what an extraordinary Helix design. Auckland's weather as we know can be unpredictable. Walking back to the station or to Vector in the rain not much fun in concert gear.

So here's that back alley walkway to Vector as it is now...

How about we try an elevated walkway though there. One that leaves room for vehicles. Runs behind what is now a parking building. Takes up some air space above the back alley...

Here's another view. (BTW, this is my output using SketchUp. A good tool for playing with ideas. Not my strength. Not a designer. But it is a good way to experiment and illustrate ideas.)

Here's another view. I agree that this walkway is a bit on the steep side! But you get the picture.

And here's a pic of the inside which I kind of enjoyed.... And the thing about Skletchup is you can produce animations very easily of your design. That's fun....

Kuala Lumpur Transport Oriented Design Study

This Google image shows a fair chunk of the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the most populous city region in Malaysia, with an estimated metropolitan population of 6.9 million as of 2007, and average population density of 2790 per square km. I had the fortune to Chair an International Integrated Transport Planning Conference there last week. Other posts will cover the conference. This post looks at the car-centric approach adopted in Kuala Lumpur. Reminiscent of Auckland.... In this pic the yellow lines indicate motorways and some large arterials.

This pic is a bit closer to my "Transport Oriented Design" study area. You can see medium to a high density development cluster, ringed or at least surrounded by motorways. KL is said to be a "primate city". It is the leading city in its country, disproportionately larger than any others in the urban hierarchy. A 'primate city distribution' has one very large city with many much smaller cities and towns, and no intermediate-sized urban centres....

This shows the study area. Significant motorway structures at the bottom, and high rise buildings in the top of the image. Highlighted is an urban arterial street at right angles to the motorways. Also shown is a rear access laneway, carpark access driveways, and an enclosed pedestrian environment...

This shows cars queued and turning into the highlighted street off the motorway exits....

The pedestrian environment underneath the motorway structures. Very noisy and fume laden. Poor provision for walkers with any sort of disability (like being old for example).

More of the same, and you can look up the street a distance...

These pedestrians wait cars accessing the arterial street. While there are a lot of pedestrian signs - their experience is hardly an inviting one. Just up the arterial street is a turnoff left to the rear access laneway....

...running off the street is this laneway access to the buildings for cars. It is almost unbelievable that the footpath to the left of the lane is dominated by potted plants. No pedestrian access along this lane...

...looking down the laneway we see a motorbike turning up one of the access driveways provided. You can see again how the footpath is taken up with potted plants...

Car entry driveways are provided at convenient intervals along this laneway....

This car is making its way up one of the driveways to access a carpark located in the office building where he/she works....

...the driveways are of the standard of a lovely footpath, but are only for cars. The guards at the top prevent cars parking outside buildings. Cars are the priority...

...lovingly designed car driveway accessways into the buildings that make up this commercial complex. It is worth noting that there is no residential accommodation provided...

Pedestrian amenity has not been forgotten in this development however. This image shows the central pedestrian courtyard that stands in the middle of the 6 office tower buildings. It is a pleasant enough environment. A sort of residential cul-de-sac. But it has nothing to do with the street. It is disconnected from the street....

Meanwhile, back out on that arterial street, this panorama gives an impression of the extent to which car access on and off this street is also provided for. This is to enable access to the street frontages of the buildings. This obviously compromises the pedestrian experience on the actual street whose footpaths are narrow, planted, and regularly interrupted with vehcle crossings which have priority. There is no bus service at all in this area of Kuala Lumpur, and no railway station for miles. It has been totally designed for car access.

And just to finish, near the case study area is this classic section of motorway where an exit wasn't properly provided, so a u'turn was provided. The case study is a logical extension of the private car culture. With complete separation between car traffic and pedestrian life. And if the roads were not always congested, and if petrol was cheap, and if fumes were not poisonous - it would be a rational approach. Interesting....

Auckland might be getting TODs, but PODs are slow to come...

A couple of years ago I attended Newman's presentation: TOD, POD and GOD. He'd gone beyond Transit Oriented Development, and Pedestrian Oriented Development - to Green Oriented Development, and was talking about green roofs and energy efficient housing and the like. Good stuff.

Here is Auckland, there is a head of steam up over TODs, we have the Northern Busway, and we have some successful rail infrastructure. Which needs electrification and extension and further development. That's all good. But public transport infrastructure needs to be linked into land uses to form a good TOD. There are a few of these in Auckland, but there's not been much in the way of PODs.

New Lynn and Newmarket are among the most successful TODs. Waitakere City Council has gone to exemplary lengths to get the New Lynn development up. This is a TOD (because you've got rail and bus services connecting there, and driving the development), but the council has also strived to make the whole environment pedestrian friendly by creating a trench for the rail and establishing more pedestrian oriented paths and spaces. It's not totally successful, because there is still - in my opinion - too much provision for the private car.

Newmarket is a pretty good TOD too. And its pedestrian environment is OK, but again, there is execessive emphasis on the car, and not enough on pedestrian and cycling amenity.

Auckland reaps what it sows.

Auckland's strategic documents don't really get to the core of what is needed to deliver PODs. I tried with the previous RLTS (the one that is active now), to get some policies in there about POD. And here is the salient policy from RLTS 2005:

3.1.6 Design transport connections within high
density centres and corridors to give priority to
supporting pedestrians, cyclists and public transport
and to enable improved urban amenity and land
use integration, rather than to provide for the free
flow of vehicle traffic. (ARTA, TAs, Transit NZ,
OnTrack).

Needless to say, that sort of sentiment expressed in a single policy statement is all well and good, but it needed to be fleshed out somewhat. Easy to ignore. And at the time it would be safe to observe that officers were not full of ideas about this stuff either. Auckland is so far behind the eight ball on things like this.

Anyway. Again at the RLTC I have raised the matter of the need to better integrate land use and transport policies - in order to deliver POD as well as TOD - arguing that Auckland transport strategies are too reliant on public transport alone to deliver the benefits and city shaping that is needed.....

I was asked, after the last RLTC to provide some feedback on how the new RLTS should be changed to better provide for POD thinking. So I dug back into that assignment and here is the advice that I have provided for consideration in this draft RLTS:

My contribution here is drawn from a paper I did earlier this year which you can find at:
http://www.joelcayford.com/AucklandsTransportCarbonEconomy.pdf

You will see in there, in terms of Transport Carbon Reduction - based on the work of VTPI (Victoria Transport Policy Institute - based in Canada - which is extracted and quoted in the paper), a region like Auckland can expect a 20% to 40% transport carbon reduction through ensuring that the transport/land use patterns of existing town centres, DOES shift to a much more pedestrian and cycling oriented transport pattern than now. But at present, my sense is that the policies in place in the RLTS and the performance targets, don't drive that outcome hard enough.

The key things I want to draw out, some of which may be in the current RLTS draft, include: Go back to the principles set out in the ARGS, including:

• Reduces the need to travel by car by encouraging more employment/business/retail/community facilities close to residential areas and the opportunity to walk or cycle. This pattern needs to foster a critical mass in terms of population to support a range of small local enterprises.
• …(the need to)…Enable a regional land use pattern where local areas have sufficient critical mass in terms of population to support a range of quality and accessible community facilities and services, including health facilities and education and training to support employment choice.

Then, from the other end of the policy spectrum, the Long Term Sustainability Framework (LTSF) proposes a number of performance measures and targets which I think need to be built into the RLTS, so that there is real focus on delivery:

• Proportion of private motor vehicle travel compared to sustainable transport.
• Community resource accessibility index.
• Percentage of population within identified growth areas.
• Percentage of employment within identified growth areas.
• Fuel consumption per capita.
• Means of travel to work.
• Average length of journey to work.
• Percentage of population within 500 metres from a train station or transport hub.
• Activity mix in centres and pedestrian traffic (measure of vibrancy in centres).
• Total urban footprint and measures of land use (industrial, residential, business etc).

... while some of these relate more purely to land use, and might be better placed in the RPS, a good number of them are better placed in the RLTS, and lead to the desirable outcome that there be targets (5 year, 10 year, 20 year, 50 year) for these measures, which are indicative of the implementation of the principle of the ARGS. They can be added to, for example, by including a mode share set of targets as well.

In the Growing Smarter (GS) document, it is stated, as part of its assessment as to why the ARGS has not been happening on the ground, for example:

• Subdivision codes and traffic engineering codes and parking requirements are often in conflict with good urban design and TOD-type development…."

GS goes on to state:

• To avoid the worst impacts of climate change and rising oil prices we need to rapidly reduce the use of carbon-based fuels, develop ways of recapturing carbon, facilitate a shift to the widespread use of renewable energy, and radically reduce energy use. Aucklanders will also need to significantly reduce their dependence on the private motor vehicle, and redevelop their urban form and rural centres into a compact urban form.
• The RLTS review needs to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions from the transport system.

I note that in the current RLTS the "Emissions" appendix explains that one of the reasons for increased emissions is that under the strategy, people will actually take on average slightly longer trips: "Longer average vehicle trips are due to higher vehicle speeds. The combined effects of significantly more investment in roading, public transport and travel demand management, result in higher speeds, which allows people to travel further in the same time period…." . In part this is a consequence of not achieving the sort of urban form, density, and POD transport mix, that will cause a shift in this.

I have prepared a set of policy recommendations in the paper, which you can see at Chapter 5.

In retrospect, I think priority should be given in the RLTS, to bringing out the ITA (Integrated Transport Assessment) policy tool, and having it triggered earlier/lower down the hierarchy in the consenting process. It needs to include some of the targets and performance/assessment measures mentioned above. This would in part achieve better TOD outcomes, but needs also to drill down into the POD outcomes.

Finally, last but not least, I note that - for example NSCC (North Shore City Council) is reviewing its pavement/footpath strategy at present. But this all rests on the bedrock of "Infrastructure Design Standards Manual". The IDSM. This manual - and the engineering standards it enshrines, is the root of many of the anti-cycling and anti-pedestrian and pro-car outcomes that we see. In my view the RLTS needs to require a review of these IDSMs as they relate to Auckland Region's town centres, so that there is a shift in emphasis. The drive for this review is bring about a mode shift, by making pedestrian and cycling environment much more attractive and safer than now.

This material probably needs a bit of rationalisation and tidying, but gives an idea of where I think Auckland (and SuperCity) needs to be going if we seriously want to change the amenity, and public experience of our town centres.

Wellington Waterfront - bridges to walk, places for shelter

Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Bridge 1.

Walking around the waterfront it is striking and wonderful and fun to encounter so many bridges of different kinds. We like being over the water. Biking or walking...

Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Bridge 2.

This is a simple lifting bridge. Elegant in design and operation.


Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Bridge 3.

This multi-purpose bridge for bikes and pedestrians has a wind break down the middle. You can choose to walk with the wind, or in the lea...



Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Bridge 4.

This wharf was separated from the main wharf, now linked with a multitude of small bridges. Easy access. Desire lines recognised. And no railings to mess things up...




Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Bridge 5.

This speedy cycle and pedestrian bridge does have a railing. The bridge is narrow, carries a lot of slow traffic. And - as the sign says - is part of a working environment. Safety rules...


Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Shelter 1.

It's windy in Wellington. In case you don't know. And it has been known to rain horizontally. Not to worry. Come to the waterfront and there's a shelter for you. These seats are positioned with screens behind. The screens are metal with holes - so you can see through, but rain and wind are all but stopped.


Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Shelter 2.

This walkway can be exposed, so there's a wall to stop wind and rain, and if it's seriously bad, a little roof over your head...


Wellington waterfront. Winter pictures. Shelter 3.

Here's a break in the Port's wrought iron fence, so you can get in, but while waiting the lights, there's a roof over your head...