Support for turning Auckland's Queen St into a pedestrian mall

2:31 PM Wednesday Mar 16, 2011

Outside the Whitcoulls flagship store on Queen Street. Photo / Dean Purcell

Two-thirds of 323 Aucklanders surveyed support turning busy Queen St into a pedestrian mall.

Sixty four per cent wanted more pedestrian access to Queen St, with either no traffic at all or shared by pedestrians and vehicles with business in the area, such as delivery vans.

UMR Research said 33 per cent of those wanted Queen St closed to all traffic and made into a pedestrian mall, 31 per cent preferred a shared zone and 32 per cent wanted to keep the street as it is.

Research director Gavin White said support for changing Queen St was solid across all demographics, including residence, gender and income, although it was stronger among 45-59-year-olds, with 72 per cent wanting some change and over 60-year-olds, with 69 per cent wanting change.

He said the Auckland response showed the passion of people who wanted a change in Queen St.

"It says a lot about the general dissatisfaction about how Queen St is at the moment.

The survey, done last month, was part of a nationwide survey of 1000 people on a range of questions although the Queen St questions were restricted to Auckland participants.

The margin of error for the Auckland part was plus or minus 5.5 per cent.

- NZPA

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10712844

Making Queen St a pedestrian mall won't fix tired old hick town look

By Brian Rudman9:30 AM Monday Feb 14, 2011

We need better shop verandas and input from property moguls and their tenants.

Plans to turn Queen St into a booming retail space won't necessarily draw the shopping crowd as much work still needs to be done to make it look less like the centre of a tired, provincial town. Photo / Richard Robinson

It seems like only yesterday that the ever-suffering ratepayers of the old Auckland City bowed to the wishes of the city planners and the Queen St shop-keepers and paid out $43.5 million to tart up what was once dubbed the Golden Mile.

Out went the old volcanic-coloured paving slabs and in went the grim Chinese granite replacements. Footpaths were widened, nikau palms planted and there was much back-slapping and self-congratulating all round. Now, just three years on, the planners have had another rush of blood to the head and are softening us up for Plan B. They want to turn some or all of Queen St into a pedestrian mall - some time in the next 20 years.

I say softened us up, because it was hardly coincidence that a year ago, the Danish urban design crusader for ridding city streets of cars, Jan Gehl, was commissioned to prepare a report on how it could be done, this following much publicised sorties to places like Melbourne and New York's Times Square.

The latest proposal is all part of the orgy of master planning and visioning that's going on within the bowels of the new Super City, as bureaucrats and politicians jostle - not just to demonstrate they're doing something, but also to try to get their personal hobby-horses near the top of the pile.

Back in the dark ages, Queen St was indeed the premier shopping street in the region, probably in the country. It was so busy when I was a kid that the city council painted white lines down the centre of the footpaths to ensure people kept to the left, and patrolling policemen - remember them? - ordered gossiping shoppers who were cluttering the streets outside the main department stores to move along.

Aucklanders' shopping habits have moved on since then and it's hard to see that opening up the main thoroughfare to pedestrians will alter 50 years of history and bring customers flooding back to the CBD. Particularly if it includes the planners' latest fad which has shoppers dicing with death and "sharing" the space with buses and cars.

Apparently it will relax us, make us sit down and watch the rest of the world go by. That sort of thing. Reading the draft report, I couldn't help thinking, aren't we already spending untold tens of millions on flossing up Queens Wharf for the same purpose, to say nothing of the $80 million gone on the remodelling of Aotea Square?

Surely what Queen St needs to turn itself into a world-class shopping street is not another injection of public money on another infrastructural makeover. What might help is more input from the building owners and their merchant tenants.

The wide new footpaths are fine - though a white line up the middle to encourage people to keep to the left would help. And with all the traffic-slowing crossings and lights now installed, it's hardly a busy road any more.

What I said at the end of the $43.5 million makeover still holds true. Much of Queen St looks like the main street of a tired old provincial town, slowly dying since the state highway through town got bypassed.

The dream of shoppers promenading up the centre of the street ignores the unpalatable truth that, in summer, the hot sun makes Auckland melanoma central and throughout the year, the risks of cloudbursts are ever present. Which brings me to my hobby-horse. Shop verandas.

The BNZ headquarters did destroy the art deco attractions of the Jean Batten Building but it did show other building owners what a functional, attractive, well-lit, pedestrian-friendly veranda looks like.

Recent "tropical" downpours were a reminder to those of us who work in the CBD how colander-like much of Queen St's shelter is. Much of it is old and dirty with leaks down light fittings and between ill-matched neighbours.

The council sets the mood, with no cover for anyone wanting to visit the Town Hall, the city administration building or the Aotea Centre on foot.

We were told three years ago that the $43.5 million makeover was what was needed to make Queen St into a world-class destination. It didn't, and nor will pedestrianising it at great public expense. What might is a bit more input from the property moguls and their tenants.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10706140

Pedestrianise Queen Street? Hell yeah!Published: June 16, 2011 by Gareth Hughes

The Auckland Council is consulting right now on a discussion document called the City Centre Master Plan (PDF). It almost slipped under my radar but I’ve managed to draft up a quick submission to go in before the closing date – this Friday, the 17th of June.

I encourage you to make an online submission or send in an email too. This discussion document is short but it has some great ideas in it which should be encouraged.

I mainly got interested in it because of the transport aspect – the document suggests that Queen Street should be pedestrianized. It also says many of the other streets in the CBD should be made safer and more attractive for walkers and cyclists. Naturally they want to complete the CBD rail loop (who doesn’t? Apart from the Collosus of Roads that is).

Other exciting ideas include a proposal to two-way Hobson and Nelson Street (which right now are absolute wastelands for everybody not in a motor vehicle) and connect up the waterfront using a light rail system. Of course, this process has already started with the heritage trams at Wynyard Quarter.

What else is discussed that I like the sound of? More tree planting, a heritage trail, sustainability design standards for new buildings, and trying to create an amazing learning precinct.

This would be awesome and sorely needed as right now the two big universities in the CBD (AUT and University of Auckland) don’t really feel very well connected at all.

They also talk about the need to provide more facilities for families living in the city with children and better designed apartments for families. This is something I’m very conscious of, bringing up my kids in a flat in the Wellington CBD. We need more children’s playgrounds and sports fields in our city centres, as well as primary schools.

Finally, they talk about making the waterfront more accessible. They suggest there could be a continuous boulevard and cycle path from the Harbour Bridge through to Saint Heliers. This would be a great use of Tamaki Drive – an outstandingly beautiful road which right now is just dominated by heavy traffic and parking. It would have flow on effects that would increase the value of the land adjacent for business and residential development.

In general, I’m a pretty big fan of the City Centre Master Plan right now. But please do make a submission to try and make it even better! A few ideas I’ve suggested to improve it are daylighting the Horotiu Stream (imagine Queen Street with a stream down the middle – it happened in Seoul where they turned a freeway into a river) and extending the walk/cycle way on Tamaki Drive all the way out across the Harbour Bridge.

Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management | THE ISSUES by Gareth Hughes on Thu, June 16th, 2011

http://blog.greens.org.nz/2011/06/16/pedestrianise-queen-street-hell-yeah/

The City Centre Master PlanBy admin, on May 19th, 2011

It’s certainly a busy time at the moment for big long term planning documents in Auckland. As well as the much talked about “Auckland Spatial Plan”, Auckland Council has now released a discussion document on

a “City Centre Master Plan.”

I have talked a bit about the Master Plan in the past – when it was in its earlier stages of formulation. But it’s probably worth discussing a bit more, and encouraging people to submit on the Master Plan, now that

we have a full discussion document completed. Furthermore, the vast number of comments on a few posts I’ve written recent about pedestrians, shared spaces and the city centre would indicate to me that

there’s a lot of public interest in making our city centre work better.

Auckland Council has some great sounding big picture objectives for the city centre – to be the real heart and soul of Auckland:

As well as all the normal things that everyone tends to agree on (like better heritage protection, taking advantage of the harbour location, improving friendliness for business and so forth) it seems to me that

the fundamental change proposed by the Master Plan is that the city centre is for people.

This focus on improving the walkability of the city centre, making it a nicer place to be in as a pedestrian, rather than simply a place to pass through, it utterly critical in my opinion. As I noted a few days back,

historically we have treated pedestrians like rubbish: designing intersections in ways that are likely to kill them, banning them from easily walking between the city and the Domain and so forth. It would seem as though the Council has finally got the message that if we want the city centre to be an attractive place for

people to work, live and visit – then it needs to be nice to walk around:

One thing the Master Plan discussion document appears to acknowledge (although it could highlight it more

clearly in my opinion) is that improving the pedestrian friendliness of the city centre will come at the cost of general vehicle capacity. To ensure the city centre has its accessibility and connectivity with the rest of

Auckland maintained, let alone enhanced, it will be critical for these improvements to be matched by improving public transport. Obviously getting the CBD Rail Tunnel built is the utterly critical factor in

enabling all this change to happen.

Exciting to see both the idea of pedestrianising Queen Street and two-waying Nelson and Hobson Streets being proposed!

While the Master Plan discussion document is full of fantastic ideas, I think perhaps where it could be improved is taking a closer look at a large number of little things that could be done to help achieve its

goals. Things like auditing all intersections to find out ways of improving life for pedestrians, or looking at temporary street closures over lunch periods or at weekends, or ways in which we can improve bus

priority in the city centre to encourage people to catch public transport rather than driving.

I suppose that I worry if we have too many big and expensive ideas nothing will actually happen for a very long time. If we want to make Auckland’s city centre a much nicer place then we need to look at what can

be achieved quickly, and at relatively low cost. Is it possible to redo Hobson and Nelson Streets without having to change around the kerb lines? If so, how much money does that save? Is it possible/desirable to

pedestrianise Queen Street but not repave it for now?

I certainly know there’s always a warranted desire to do jobs “properly”, but quite frankly unless we’re all willing to pay a lot higher rates we need to look at some low-hanging fruit so that we might actually

achieve something within the next few years. After all, one could argue that re-phasing the traffic lights along Queen Street did more to improve its pedestrian friendliness than the $40 million or so spent on

repaving the street.

Auckland’s 1st Pedestrian Shared Space Gets Final Go-Aheadin General by Jon C — November 12, 2009 at 11:14 pm | 7 comments

Auckland city’s first shared space, which

gives priority to pedestrians, has just been given the final tick –and that’s great news.

The council’s approved the final design for the upgrade of Elliott St. Costing $7.2m, the upgrade starts

construction next June in time to be completed for the RWC (isn’t everything except electrification!).

To ensure the timeframe is met for Elliott Street, the adjacent Darby Street pedestrian mall plans have been

de-coupled and will proceed separately.

The Elliott Street design sees paving across the full width of the street and the removal of kerbing to allow

pedestrians to move more easily into and through the area. This also provides opportunities and space for

outdoor dining and a variety of other street activities, such as events.

Public feedback has meant some changes:

an additional tactile indicators to assist the visually impaired,

installation of six bollards in specific locations to protect canopies from delivery vehicles, allowing general

vehicles access to restricted loading bays (6am to 11am) Monday to Saturday, to support local

businesses, introducing loading zones on nearby Wellesley Street to support local businesses

the removal of all the on street vehicle parking though parking for motorcycles and bicycles will be

provided for

rearrangement of the seating layout to provide more choice for users.

The final concept promises “high quality street furniture, vegetation and lighting” and –“high quality stone

paving across the full width of the road reserve on both streets.” The latter will be interesting in view of the

questionable Queen St paving and paving used in places like the Swanson St upgrade which is already

showing wear.

Only 19% of the 134 who submitted feedback to the council expressed unhappiness. Predictably there were

mainly sad sacks who think Auckland should stay as a polluted car-dominated city. They were unhappy with

the lack of vehicle access and parking available within the area and felt this would have a negative impact on

local businesses.

Others felt, the CBD had enough pedestrian priority areas already and a few respondents felt the design was

bland.

But one brave person felt the design did not go far enough and suggested the whole area should be

pedestrianised. Good on you. I want to see Queen St for pedestrians only. But this is a practical solution and

a good start.

Several expressed concern about vehicles and pedestrians sharing space while others felt the street already

operated as a shared space.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the project objectives for the upgrade of Elliott Street and Darby Street:

integrate the Elliott Street and Darby Street area into the CBD streetscape and open space network

Provide greater pedestrian priority to the Elliott Street and Darby Street area

Create a distinctive public space and provide opportunities for the Elliott Street and Darby Street area to

be a popular destination in the CBD

Improve spaces that support business and provide for a variety of activities

Provide a high quality, attractive and durable streetscape that contributes to a sustainable and

maintainable CBD.

So far, so good. The final concept seems to tick the boxes. There’s plenty of evidence to match the claim that,

where shared space has been introduced overseas, it has been shown to improve pedestrian safety, calm

traffic, attract more people, enhance business and retail activityand encourage diverse outdoor activity.