… but better than nothing, which is what was originally planned.
Thanks to one of our members attending a public meeting last night, we now have the design for the revised Abbotts Way / Grand Drive intersection.
You’ll recall this is where we – and you – fought hard to make sure that Auckland would not “go back to the past” by installing traffic signals on cycle routes without adding a single new cycle facility. And we won… in that the design went back to the drawing board.
The new layout is bound to disappoint those of us who had hoped for protected lanes though – what we’re looking at is painted lanes next to and between faster traffic. It’s a low-cost version of a traffic signal, changing the existing kerbs as little as possible – and only works here because of the road being so wide and having a flush median in the first place.
For people on bikes, it’s at best a “present” (or maybe a delayed yesterday), rather than a “future”.
But it’s also not “the past” (i.e. nothing, made even more dangerous by four-laning). It provides lanes and visibility for the more confident riders, and it keeps the space as a placeholder for the eventual Abbotts Way protected cycleway we’ve been promised a long while ago. And in the meantime, the riders who already travel through here will be a bit safer, and we have put a stake in the ground for minimums when it comes to roadworks. But we do get rather sick of the “better than nothing” spiel.
So how do you feel about AT’s changes here?
The signalisation is expected to be constructed around April or May.
