AT is consulting on an upgrade to the shared path at Western Springs, on the south side of Great North Road as it passes the sports grounds and MOTAT – a key pathway for kids en route to local schools. Feedback is open until Monday 7 May 2018 – please take a moment to add your voice!
A quick feedback guide
We see three things to support here, and three ‘could do better’ points:
- support the raised crossings that give priority to pedestrians and people on bikes
- support the widening for better footpaths/shared paths
- support the improved connection to Ivanhoe Rd
- please pay more attention to signage clutter along the shared path
- please make sure surfaces are smooth (some recent paths have been pretty badly undulating)
- please add bollards to ensure that the Ivanhoe Rd connecting path isn’t parked over, during events
Feel free to use these points in your feedback – here’s the direct link to the form.
The wider picture
The design ((check out the PDFs here) aims to make travel safer where Great North Road crosses a major motorway interchange. The really big win here is the two proposed new raised crossings over the on ramp and the off ramp, which give priority to pedestrians and people on bikes – meaning cars must give way, and you don’t have to dismount your bike.
These new crossings will provide a crucial ‘gateway’ alert to drivers – and, along with a tightening of those swooping curves and an enlarging of the traffic islands, will serve as a message to motorists to slow down and pay attention.
The plan also upgrades a popular and useful shortcut into Ivanhoe Rd, which connects under the motorway to Western Springs. Combined with safer passage for bike and foot travel across the motorway on-and-off-ramps, this will be especially important for the many kids from nearby and from the other side of the motorway, who use this route to get to school.
Likewise, where Great North Road passes the service station, the path will be widened, and the entrances to the service station will also get the raised and red-paint treatment to provide walk/bike priority and an alert to drivers that they must give way when swinging in and out from their petrol top-up.
Elsewhere, journalist, cyclist and local Russell Brown has delivered a pretty withering assessment of this wider stretch of Great North Road. The overall situation is far from ideal, we agree. The Great North Rd/ St Lukes Rd intersection rebuild pitted traffic against trees and left bikes in the lurch, even after the trees were left in place. And the recent signalization of the bottom of the Bullock Track, while intending to address some issues at a notorious black spot, has inevitably created others.
Everyone who regularly rides through here no doubt has their own series of ‘life hacks’ for safer passage. Great North Road is a key cycling route into the city – a more direct alternative to the NW cycleway, it gets you up onto the ridge route and will connect to the future protected cycleways along the city end of GNR and K Road – and yet this section overall remains a harrowing gauntlet for people on bikes riding on-road.
Even so, these quick fixes through the motorway junction are very welcome and well worth supporting.
Below is some footage of the current situation on a typical Monday morning – note the school kids on bikes on the traffic island at right. (You’ll also see vehicles making illegal left turns into the motorway on-ramp instead of queuing for the slip lane. Enforcement is the only thing that will stop these dangerous movements.) Please take a quick moment to speak up for the widened path and raised priority crossings on behalf of these kids!
Here’s the direct link to the feedback form – go for it!
Upstanding motorist behaviour at the St Lukes onramp this morning (far right)
(note also that's no left turn across the ped crossing, that's what the SLIP LANE is for) pic.twitter.com/0onDS95pli— Andrew W ?? (@aw_nz) February 25, 2018
