Reviving an old thread. Last night I mentioned how maybe some good visualisations are needed to convince people what a quiet/shared space might feel like compared to the car-centric streets of today. And today I wondered what chatgpt could do. So I asked it nicely….
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Nice! Gen AI is getting better at this type of stuff. Very helpful - I’ve moved this to Projects > Improvements Wiki as that is what this hopefully will evolve into.
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Update from Simone today:
The business case is on our website Albany Street Connection - Dunedin City Council (at the bottom).
As a heads up, we are currently preparing another round of consultation – focused on the proposed parking restrictions – to go live this Thursday.
I totally agree with this. I think a Dutch style “Fietsstraat” (Bicycle Street) would be a much better option. There would be no need to get rid of car parks.
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I note, that in the Netherlands they would not put a cycleway on a minor street like Albany Street. They would make the whole street more people-friendly. I think a fietssstraat would be much safer because when you build cycleway you got all these crossing, which are potentially dangerous.
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The problem with Albany st is it’s not a minor street. It’s the first arterial link between SH1 and SH88 after the university and the first direct link as dundas meanders round butts road or multiple corners through the polytech. Albany is so dangerous because it’s one of the busiest roads in the city, regularly getting gridlocked at rush hour (which is why the bus to port chalmers is always later because it gets stuck at that corner).
Albany st. is a major street, it just was never designed to be a major street.
I dont think an alternative to Albany, but a better shared path and cycleway alongside Albany st definetly.
Union St. used to be that, before bikes were banned from campus, the old and awful union-to-leith cycelane could be made safe, possibly but its dundas st crossing being across the bridge will never be safe, it could cross at st david with a new, wider bridge?
There’s also the option of Minerva to Riego then through university, or leithbank st but they both involve intersections where cars on busy forth and clyde streets aren’t expecting traffic so are dangerous (but also i currently use them anyway when I’m headed to Burns or Castle).
The best alternative I have seen proposed is the Love Your Leith https://www.orc.govt.nz/media/5764/love-your-leith-forth-st-harbour-potential-concepts.pdf proposal for a shared path along the leith as part of an upgrade mostly about natural water absorption to stop the lower leith flooding so often. (not a perfect proposal, for some reason all the benches in it are those hostile architecture anti-homeless ones).
It’s an ORC plan but would require DCC and ORC and Uni to work together on it. But it would be a safe corridor from the stadium through to the gardens that could be fully separated from road intersections!
Someone on FB has suggested Dundas as an alternative and as a former LPHS student who lived in NEV at the time and cycled to school, capitol N No. Going down the hump of dundas on a bike in winter needs to be prevented!
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I know Albany street is used as a link between SH1 and the west harbour…. but it should not be used as such: the planning dept is quite clear that traffic is meant to use Frederick street. The problem is that there is nothing to encourage this.
It is hugely frustrating that they appear to be incapable of implementing restrictions and street design on Albany street. For over 2 years I have been saying to dcc that the cycle way solution was not necessary, but due to co-finding requirements.
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4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Albany Street Cycleway, Submissions, and Decisions