Tom Dillane finds out why Auckland’s congestion is about to be more manic
The busiest month on Auckland’s traffic calendar is set to collide with the closure of yet another major city intersection, as students rouse themselves on Monday to a congested Mad March.
The beginning of the university semester is the worst time on Auckland’s roads, as students attend classes at city campuses.
For many, Monday is the first day of lessons and coincides with closure of the major city intersection of Wellesley St West, Albert St and Mayoral Drive for Aotea Station, part of the City Rail Link project.
Thirty bus routes using Wellesley St West have been diverted to other streets.
Already 63 separate road-work disruptions are slowing travel on CBD streets.
Automobile Association principal adviser Barney Irvine said congestion data showed “the city-wide trend is for March to get a little madder each year. Things in the CBD usually follow the same sort of pattern. For the last couple of years, we’ve seen congestion jump by about 6 per cent on the routes we monitor between February and March in the CBD.
“Though because the travel times are short, the actual increase is pretty small.
“There’s no doubt the closure of the Albert-Wellesley intersection is going to have an impact — it’s just not clear how big.
“The question in the CBD, though, is: where do you re-route to? With all the work going on, the back-up options are getting scarcer and scarcer,” Irvine said.
Deputy project director Dale Burtenshaw of the Link Alliance — a consortium looking after the CRL project — insisted that AT, Auckland Council and City Rail Link Limited all “worked closely together to plan the [Wellesley St] intersection closure”.
Asked if it might have been better to delay the intersection closure, Burtenshaw said the March 1 start date was “critical to construction of the Aotea Station beginning on time”.
“Although disruption is unavoidable, the sooner we start and finish the first stages of our station work, the sooner we can re-open part of the intersection. While the intersection is closed, we encourage people to continue to use it on foot and if they can, to consider an alternative to driving their car into the