A few items not quite worth a full blog at this stage, but which might pique your interest…
Sarawia closing time – but not for bikes
People in the Newmarket area may be happy to hear that Auckland Transport has re-visited the options for the closure of the Sarawia Street rail crossing. Now ALL alternative options (the final one is not yet chosen) will provide for a walking & cycling bridge across the rail line! CAA was one of the submitters pushing for keeping some form of walk/cycle rail crossing.
Seeing that this location is where the “Newmarket/Parnell Rail Trail” will come out of the tunnel from lower Parnell, we think that’s a great little win.
Tiverton-Wolverton – delayed but not gone
Chasing a project where we hadn’t heard a lot for a while, we have been told that the cycle side-route on the Tiverton-Wolverton project between New Lynn and Central Auckland had been delayed due to delays on the main project. That’s obviously a shame for cyclists, but there’s a silver lining in that CAA will get another chance to input into the designs, when we thought this had been completed without us having another chance to comment on the final product.
Auckland Domain – changes coming…
Meanwhile, works in the Auckland Domain have started on further footpaths, cycle lanes and speed humps, and will be ongoing for a few months. While we were very happy with the first part of the works, we will reserve judgement on the second set of changes. These will include a cycle lane on Domain Drive – going west to east (see photo) – but no cycle lane in the other direction. We understand that Auckland Transport wants this unidirectional cycle lane (which we recommended against) because of concerns that cyclists could otherwise be squeezed against the retaining wall along the western part of the road. Fair enough comment, but if not enough space is available for cycle lanes on both sides, we would have preferred none at all, and instead suggested marking the traffic lanes much narrower, creating “shoulders” on both sides. On the other hand, more speed tables will be added through both upper and lower Domain, which should reduce the amount of cars (and their speeds) when cutting through the Domain.
We are interested what your opinion will be of these changes once in place…
