When I had a job in Auckland Central I spent so many hours in traffic, so I started recording time logs and duration and putting together ideas that were:

    • Easy to implement
    • Cheap or free
    • Increased the speed for traffic

My trip from Colonial Road to Mayoral Drive was
– Avg 60 mins
– But could often peak to 2.5 hours (approx 2x per month) so this meant to start at 9am I MUST leave before 7.

I work now as an entrepreneur full-time as I couldn’t deal with the traffic. If you want to talk further to me about it, I am more than happy to make myself available.

Updates 2019

Have done a bit more research and wanted to add some extra ideas here

At the moment the bus lane is flowing well, but the main car lane is back around 1.2km from motorway to Highbury plaza.

  • Offer free ferry for a month (one month it only made $87, so getting people into this habit is helpful.
  • Then offer free bus month for certain bus stops in the Birkenhead / Beachhaven catchment. Should increase bus usage by 10%
  • Then remove parking from Onewa road (will flow smoother through day)
  • Then setup a lighter weight movable barrier between lanes 2 and 3, allowing 1 bus lane, and 2 road lanes
  • I still feel that a T2 lane will get more people using the T2
  • Permanently allowing electric cars (or at least guaranteeing for 5 years) will increase electric sales, which helps greenhouse emission targets and most are / will be self driving which is faster, can have closer follow distance and smoother merging.
  • As a raw comparison, the current morning traffic jam is around 480 stationary cars (carrying 1-2 passengers). Average trip is 20min-1.5hours.
    The same people in a bus, would be just 5 buses and each bus is only 11 metres long. The entire Onewa backed up with doubledecker buses could hold around 20,000 commuters which is almost all of the electorate.
  • Encouraging the use of Google Maps or Waze has averaged 22 mins and routes everyone via the path that is least congested. Regular usage will reduce say Onewa route being 1 hours and the other 4 paths being empty.
  • I do not understand why they increased the hours for the T3 lanes (to 5 – 10am)

https://calendly.com/jaybestnz/

1) P2 would be an instant fix, though are there implications for then this backing up traffic from Onewa through to bridge etc?

2) I agree removing the bus lane from Queen St down, as that area is almost never congested, and doubling that area would speed up the rest of the roads.

3) One key issue with our catchment traffic which I am not sure anyone is aware of, is that there are 3 routes from say Birkenhead, left to Northcote, Onewa, or down Hinemoa / Maritime.
– What you are often seeing is that a person randomly takes route
1, 2 or 3
And then this is meaning that each route will take up to 2 hours or as little as 10 minutes (I did do some analysis of each route, but it was clear that there is no clean trends, and it seems to be that people chose each route, then moved to the one that was quickest, until that would congest and then move to next route.

A simple route trip estimator at the Highbury Bypass listing each route trip time, should standardise the loads, and get less volatility to the trip time (eg it will consistently take 1 hour vs 10mins – 2.5 hours)

4) If you were to approach Navman or AA they could supply data then the peaks and troughs could be identified, (I am happy to help out with analysis, and I have a number of friends with degrees in Advanced Mathematics, one of whom has done similar analysis) – I am happy to  do this for free, but of course would be happy to charge also. 🙂

5) One item I noted, was that while the policing of the T3 Lane is in place typically route was averaging around 1hour. When they were not policing then it dropped to about 10-15mins. My suggestion would be to combine the data from item 4 and then strategically NOT police the transit lanes, as I could see no impact to congestion.

If you removed it completely then the bus lane would become congested so only doing it strategically.

6) Dropping the Bus fare, also adding more buses (if you check most days in Summer there is totally standing room only) they currently have hiring issues (trying to get good drivers).

7) When the park and ride was first introduced in Northcote, there was heaps of fanfare, and it was very popular but there was a news report showing that they ran out of parking, and that people were getting ticketed, the reps from the council seemed rude and unrepentant about ticketting people who couldnt find parks, so were forced to park on grass rather than be late for work.

I would be surprised if people would rely on the park and ride as a result.

What is the current state? If the cost of building a multi level park for the park and ride would reduce congestion why not do that?

8) I recall also there had been heaps of pressure on pushing people to buses, and the bus companies said they had to put prices up due to too many passengers – seems stupid to me?

9) What about a free shuttle buss to the Northcote ferry from a park and ride?

9) I saw an idea put forward a few years ago which I thought was amazing – move Retail to a 10am – 630pm roster – I understand that this would remove 30% road congestion in 1 move. Also likely to see increase in Retail sales. Also the % of people staying in town shopping would take them also out of the peak traffic. No idea why that didn’t happen.

10) Suggesting to companies that can introduce it “glide time” eg if you arrive at 10 you still work 8 hours, but there is no real need to start at a set time.

11) Encouraging work from home businesses also, or promoting a “Work from home day” on the 2 days which have the most congestion