Join us to help bring about
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Nelsust's
Top 3 congestion busters 
Questions & Answers about the SLink (Southern Link) - how to answer those awkward questions!
The space 200 commuters
take up depending on their mode of travel: 
One of the real problem with car commuting -
they are space eaters! We want our cities vibrant with people, not choked with cars. | ||||
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Tauranga City Council has produced these great little videos. The first video shows why building more roads won't solve congestion. The second video offers simple tips on behaviour change when encouraging public transport . If you want people to start using buses, then it must be at least as convenient and fast as driving their car - and this means bus lanes. |
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INDUCED TRAFFIC 101:
Increasing road capacity increases driving: congestion is not relieved
For commuters stuck in rush hour traffic the intuitive solution is more lanes or motorways, but the unintended consequence of expanding arterials is they almost invariably make congestion worse.
When feeder arterials are expanded in the hope of reducing congestion, the prospect of improved flows and reduced commute times creates “induced demand”, with many unintended consequences. New outlying developments spring up, people change their driving habits or even where they live, and businesses relocate.
A classic example is the M25 ring road around London, which was meant to work miracles for road congestion. But businesses relocated, people moved out of the city, and even took new recreational trips, so the new motorway was clogged even before it officially opened.
Almost every urban feeder in this country has caused settlements to sprout around its extremities, adding significant extra traffic, and soon rebuilding congestion on the expanded roading to the same level, but with more cars clogging bigger roads and disgorging in greater volumes into urban centres.
“Hoping to ease congestion by expanding arterials is like hoping to tidy a teenager’s bedroom by giving them more space.”
But the problem doesn’t end there. Clogged new arterials can still increase the flow of cars into a city, commonly overwhelming urban streets where they discharge, causing added local congestion, and a variety of other problems from noise and air pollution to community division to parking problems.
The key is to make other transport options more attractive to commuters. It is inadequate just to make active and public transport better, it needs to be the best option for most people most of the time.
Public transport is a key, but not in isolation. If buses take enough cars off an arterial to get it flowing again, that flow encourages people back into their cars. Tackling that needs strategies to make driving less attractive, like priority lanes, less parking, road tolls etc. “People will keep driving in London until the traffic slows to 8 m.p.h.” was a catch cry until they introduced congestion charging.
Low density subdivisions are also a villain in the congestion equation. Such developments cause people to travel increasing distances (and so rely even more on cars), and also reduce the viability of public transport, such as buses driving further to pick up fewer passengers.
Important points to note from Nelson Specific transport Studies: The Nelson Future Access Study (originally set up by the National Government as Nelson Southern Link Investigation) found through their traffic modelling that the Southern Link would make congestion worse than the “do- minimum” version. (See appendix for the lead traffic engineer’s confirmation of this). This reinforced the findings of many prior studies that also reported the Southern Link was not the best option.
The crucial point is what people actually want is to be free of congestion, and increasing the capacity of arterial feeders is a proven failure in that. Unless and until other options are more attractive than car commuting, we should not be surprised that the roads fill up with cars at rush hour. So our core task is to make options like cycling, walking, and public transport the most attractive across the widest possible range of routes.
Increasing road capacity increases driving: congestion is not relieved
For commuters stuck in rush hour traffic the intuitive solution is more lanes or motorways, but the unintended consequence of expanding arterials is they almost invariably make congestion worse.
When feeder arterials are expanded in the hope of reducing congestion, the prospect of improved flows and reduced commute times creates “induced demand”, with many unintended consequences. New outlying developments spring up, people change their driving habits or even where they live, and businesses relocate.
A classic example is the M25 ring road around London, which was meant to work miracles for road congestion. But businesses relocated, people moved out of the city, and even took new recreational trips, so the new motorway was clogged even before it officially opened.
Almost every urban feeder in this country has caused settlements to sprout around its extremities, adding significant extra traffic, and soon rebuilding congestion on the expanded roading to the same level, but with more cars clogging bigger roads and disgorging in greater volumes into urban centres.
“Hoping to ease congestion by expanding arterials is like hoping to tidy a teenager’s bedroom by giving them more space.”
But the problem doesn’t end there. Clogged new arterials can still increase the flow of cars into a city, commonly overwhelming urban streets where they discharge, causing added local congestion, and a variety of other problems from noise and air pollution to community division to parking problems.
The key is to make other transport options more attractive to commuters. It is inadequate just to make active and public transport better, it needs to be the best option for most people most of the time.
Public transport is a key, but not in isolation. If buses take enough cars off an arterial to get it flowing again, that flow encourages people back into their cars. Tackling that needs strategies to make driving less attractive, like priority lanes, less parking, road tolls etc. “People will keep driving in London until the traffic slows to 8 m.p.h.” was a catch cry until they introduced congestion charging.
Low density subdivisions are also a villain in the congestion equation. Such developments cause people to travel increasing distances (and so rely even more on cars), and also reduce the viability of public transport, such as buses driving further to pick up fewer passengers.
Important points to note from Nelson Specific transport Studies: The Nelson Future Access Study (originally set up by the National Government as Nelson Southern Link Investigation) found through their traffic modelling that the Southern Link would make congestion worse than the “do- minimum” version. (See appendix for the lead traffic engineer’s confirmation of this). This reinforced the findings of many prior studies that also reported the Southern Link was not the best option.
The crucial point is what people actually want is to be free of congestion, and increasing the capacity of arterial feeders is a proven failure in that. Unless and until other options are more attractive than car commuting, we should not be surprised that the roads fill up with cars at rush hour. So our core task is to make options like cycling, walking, and public transport the most attractive across the widest possible range of routes.
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Proximity as a
Transport Solution Here is an article from the Greater Auckland Transport Blog. The multi-story unit shown here is obviously more appropriate in Auckland than Nelson, but there are still lessons to be learnt from living close so commuting is much simpler. |
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This school year, Auckland University will be opening up housing for 600+ students at the City Centre Campus, including the 55 Symonds Street building pictured above. This is a welcome addition to the meagre (though increasing) supply of student housing of about 3,100 units.
For reference, 600+ people is close to the number of cars on one traffic lane running along Symonds Street through the campus during a peak AM hour. Of course, very few students travel by car, so the new residents are more likely to be releasing valuable seats on packed public transport services during the already oversubscribed peak period.
Students living in these new facilities will travel much shorter distances overall than their counterparts scattered across the city. People located in central locations travel shorter distance since they are close to their primary place of “work” and have a concentration of services and destinations close by. As students, they are not captured in conventional journey to work surveys and their daily walking trips aren’t even considered.
Here is an interesting article by California planning guru William Fulton in Governing Magazine, “A Low Cost Solution to Traffic” where he poses one obvious solution to the 21st century transport challenge as described in Austin Texas.
A couple of generations ago, we would have solved this problem pretty simply, by foolishly spending a lot of money to plow new freeways through existing communities. But attitudes have changed…
Which brings us to proximity. One of the few ways around this problem is to build more housing close to the urban cores — or, at least, close to the dense suburban job centres. Urban planners often argue for locating more housing along high-frequency transit lines, which makes sense because many people can commute by transit.
What’s not well understood, however, is that well-located housing can cut down on the amount of driving — and hence the need for additional road space — even if people are still tethered to their cars. One famous study in the San Francisco Bay Area found that people living in Berkeley and Oakland drive only half as far as people in the outer suburbs — not because they take transit more, but because the places they have to go are closer together.
As we develop transport solutions for the challenges of regional transport and city centre access, this is one area we could do much better in. Every new housing unit comes with a built-in transport requirement - what if centrally located or rapid transit proximate housing was funded/or supported as a transport investment? As the housing cycle inevitably slows, is there a role for government to support housing options that will also help solve the city’s transport problems, instead of exacerbating the issue by focusing on far flung, car-dependent development?
Proximity as a transport solution is something NELSUST has been advocating Council on. Rather than forcing people to live further from the city centre (such as Ngawhatu, Atawhai or Richmond) due to lack of alternative options, we have:
- asked the Council to allow two dwellings as of right for close-in suburbs (e.g. 1.5 km from Cathedral)
- suggested a townhouse zone donut of inner residential housing be created within the inner city fringe.
Both of these recommendations would use existing infrastructure (including roads, water supply, stormwater and sewerage). We also suggested elements such as low-flow water fittings, rainwater tanks and grey water re use, meaning no extra load on existing pipe works.
Allowing more close-in living will not increase traffic demand as these are the very areas where people can easily and actively transport themselves around the city. The image below is an examples of townhouses built close to the city centre - Hathaway Court opposite Trailways. Alongside this image, is a Japanese example of how the street around these buildings can become a playground - where the cars become the guests, rather than the main event.
Getting Trucks off Rocks Road - Log Barging
In 2018, we wrote a preliminary report exploring the feasibility of transporting logs from the South of the city (where most forests are) via barge from Rabbit Island, as an alternative to trucking them along Rocks Road.
Our proposal involved no additional cost, by replacing the current double-handling of logs on valuable port land with direct transfers from trucks to barges on the South Eastern side of Rabbit Island. When a log ship arrives at the port, the barges would be positioned on the seaward side of the vessel, allowing the ship to be loaded from both sides: logs from the south would be delivered by barge, and logs from the north delivered via the port. While this wouldn’t remove all heavy trucks from Rocks Road, it would remove 35,000 of the largest trucks from Rocks Road, Tahunanui, and Richmond roads annually, without requiring a lengthy detour over the hill.
Despite the potential benefits, we have yet to receive uptake from either the Port or the City Council to proceed with a more detailed investigation. Our full preliminary report is available below.
In 2018, we wrote a preliminary report exploring the feasibility of transporting logs from the South of the city (where most forests are) via barge from Rabbit Island, as an alternative to trucking them along Rocks Road.
Our proposal involved no additional cost, by replacing the current double-handling of logs on valuable port land with direct transfers from trucks to barges on the South Eastern side of Rabbit Island. When a log ship arrives at the port, the barges would be positioned on the seaward side of the vessel, allowing the ship to be loaded from both sides: logs from the south would be delivered by barge, and logs from the north delivered via the port. While this wouldn’t remove all heavy trucks from Rocks Road, it would remove 35,000 of the largest trucks from Rocks Road, Tahunanui, and Richmond roads annually, without requiring a lengthy detour over the hill.
Despite the potential benefits, we have yet to receive uptake from either the Port or the City Council to proceed with a more detailed investigation. Our full preliminary report is available below.
| barging_logs_nelsust__small_file__copy.pdf |
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NELSUST's Submission - Nelson-Tasman Future Development Strategy
Controversially, the FDS proposed urban sprawl as a large part of the solution for the projected population growth. In addition (and somewhat deviously we think) the strategy referred to additional rural dwellings as intensification. In response, we strongly recommended that Settlement Patterns determine transport demand, and pushed for the allowance of additional inner residential housing (townhouses - not necessarily apartments). The submission can be found below: |
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WE NEED YOUR HELP
Please express your support for the Rocks Road Esplanade by writing letters to the editors of local papers, and engaging on social media. Every little effort counts! If you are keen to be more hands-on, please sign up to our email list or contact us via the contact button at the top of the page! |