After around 10 years of delays and frustration, Auckland Transport are finally going to make Gt North Rd greater.
In an update sent out yesterday, they said:
We are pleased to advise that we have appointed JFC Ltd to deliver the work and they’ll be starting work early January.
The entire project is expected to take less than 12 months, and to complete the work as quickly as possible we’ll stage the work along the route, working in two locations at a time (see staging map below). The first work areas are:
between Northland Street and Elgin Street
between Maidstone Street and Ponsonby Road
We are timing work at the busy Ponsonby Road end of the route during January-February when traffic volumes are lowest.
The government are making a lot of noises about the need to speed up the delivery of infrastructure around New Zealand, with a big focus on trying to deliver big projects. While there is absolutely room for improvement in the delivery of these, big projects also deserve big scrutiny. The government would do well to lend some focus to the much larger number of small projects that suffer from unnecessary delays, like as to why it takes nearly 10 years to deliver 1.6km of improvements, even when the community support it.
The first murmurings of this project were way back in 2014 with a series of planned improvements to intersections. Things really kicked off in 2015 when John Key announced the funded projects from his government's Urban Cycleway Fund (UCF). The UCF was one of National's 2014 election promises and would see $100 million spent on cycling projects to be delivered by mid-2018. Combined with money from the National Land Transport Fund and local government, it would equate to nearly $300 million towards cycling. Gt North Rd was one of the projects included in the UCF.
In late 2016 AT consulted on designs the corridor noting "We have some further investigatory work to complete, but expect to begin construction in late 2017". Progress was continuing to be made and in 2017 they conducted another consultation.
But then after a small amount of opposition, AT got scared and the great cycleway freeze hit and AT paused most cycleway projects to review them - wasting years during a time with a government that was very supportive of exactly these kinds of projects.
During this time, the project was incorporated into the Connected Communities programme with failed last year in what should have been a massive public debacle. The project design was tweaked as part of that and in March 2021 the project was consulted on again.
In July 2022 AT announced the project was finally happening
Auckland Transport (AT) is delivering 1.6km of bus, safety, walking and cycling improvements along Great North Road, between Ponsonby Road and Crummer Road which will help move more Aucklanders along one of Auckland’s most iconic roads.
The changes will include safer crossings and intersections, a protected cycleway, extended bus lanes, longer loading zones for large vehicles (including car transporters), and more trees and landscaping.
Construction will take place from late 2022 till late 2023. Before major construction begins preparatory work is planned from August which will involve some minor work getting underway on the street.
Then the local body election happened and managers delay merchants within Auckland Transport seized on grumblings from the mayor and local councilor to take the opportunity to do what they do best, delay things further. It took a huge effort from advocates and many locals, including local schools to get the board to agree to proceed with the project.
The change in government late last year has seen a lot of changes in transport priorities and I understand that a number of people both inside and outside of AT who oppose the project have tried to use that to try and relitigate the project once again.
With yesterday's announcement it seems the constant relitigation of this project is finally over. This is great but we shouldn't need to take a decade to plan a project that can be built in less than a year.
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