In which we solve all traffic problems forever

In purely coin­cid­ent­al tim­ing just before an elec­tion, the Nation­al Party is hand­ing out new roads in an Oprah-like fash­ion. You get a road, and you get a road and YOU get a road. How we’re going to get a couple of bil­lion dol­lars of new roads out of a budget full of holes for […]

Bypass surgery complete. Has the patient survived?

At last, the final stage of the bypass has been opened, and the dec­ades-long drama is draw­ing to an end. The Dom­Post reports…

At 6am yes­ter­day, south­bound traffic was dir­ec­ted from The Ter­race Tun­nel onto a one-way Vivi­an St via a new off-ramp.

At the same time, Buller and Ghuznee streets rever­ted to two-way streets.

Trans­it New Zea­l­and pro­ject man­ager Jon­nette Adams said some motor­ists had teeth­ing prob­lems with the new lay­out, but were mostly cour­teous to each oth­er. Some “tweak­ing” of inter­sec­tion lights helped alle­vi­ate con­ges­tion on oth­er routes link­ing with the bypass.

A team of engin­eers would be on hand today to make sure things ran smoothly, Ms Adams said.

Trans­it opened the north­bound sec­tion of the bypass in Decem­ber.

Mean­while, frus­trated Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are turn­ing to the Web to vent their anger at delays caused by the region’s trans­port infra­struc­ture.

Aha! Haven’t they just.

So, how was it for you?

Crazy Intersections of our time: #31

the madnessThis week, the stretch of Adelaide Road where it inter­sects with Brito­mart Street/Herald Street, and then, a little fur­ther up the road, with Lux­ford Street.

As you can see on our hast­ily assembled little map on the right there, North-flow­ing traffic splits into two lanes once it gets past the Britomart/Herald inter­sec­tion, so right-turn­ing traffic gets its own turn­ing lane into Lux­ford.

Now, this would work fine if there wer­en’t a couple of 5 minute park­ing spots (out­side a dairy) in the straight-ahead lane (photo 2). Cars parked in that 5 minute spot (indic­ated by blue in the graph­ic) act as a road­b­lock, so once the turn­ing lane hits a red light, traffic quickly backs up to the point where no-one can actu­ally get into the straight-ahead lane (photo 3).