• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Public Transport Spine Workshop

 

When and where

Saturday, 16 July 2016, 1–4pm, Matiu Room, Te Wharewaka. You may find it useful to review the information in this document in advance. However, it is not essential; all contributions will be equally valuable.

     

PDF settings (show)

• colophon: off (include or omit colophon)
• fontset: kepler (predefined collections of sans and serif fonts)
• headingcolor: RoyalBlue (use specified colour for heading text)
• parasep: space (separation between paragraphs)
• subtitle: “Proposed Agenda” (appears on cover and in page footer of books and reports)
• colorlinks: on (use colour to denote hyperlinks)

Purpose

Identify key elements of a strong Wellington public transport spine and the actions required to deliver a spine that supports efficient and effective public transport.

The workshop is intended to inform how we provide for public transport, including as input to the Get Welly Moving Programme, the Wellington District Plan, the Wellington Regional Public Transport Plan and the Regional Transport Plan.

Scope

We can spend a lot of money to increase road capacity, to achieve moderate and temporary congestion reductions and bear higher future costs from increased motor vehicle traffic, or we can implement other types of transport improvements.

This workshop is about actions to implement a strong public transport spine, covering the railway station – hospital – airport corridor. We will also be thinking about how the spine affects other things, such as walkability and transit-oriented development.

The workshop is not about route selection or mode selection. We are not getting down to the brass tacks of designing a route or detailing mode mix.

You are here to work; it is not a presentation.

Context

The Wellington Regional Public Transport Plan sets the long-term direction for public transport in the region. It is our blueprint for an easier-to-use and more sustainable public transport network.

The Plan includes significant initiatives that aim to improve the region’s public transport over the next six to eight years, including:

• Redesign train services giving people more travel options
• Simplify the bus network, particularly in Wellington City, giving more people access more frequent services
• Move towards an all-electric bus fleet with a transition period when the oldest diesel buses and the trolley bus fleet will be replaced with hybrids
• Introduce simpler fares with free transfers and integrated ticketing

What else is needed to deliver a strong public transport spine that promotes efficient and effective public transport?

Session 1

Get Welly Moving big question

The Get Welly Moving web site says Wellingtonians value “an efficient and affordable public transport system” and that we think:

• public transport should be our top priority
• our city should be more pedestrian friendly
• some congestion is a fact of life

They have recently published 12 Guiding Principles. These urban design and transport principles will be used as basis for planning and assessing potential solutions.

Over the next 10 years, is it better to tackle congestion along the Wellington spine by:

• ☐  expanding the urban motorway network, or
• ☐  investing in a congestion-free rapid transit corridor, or
• ☐  we need both, or
• ☐  we don’t need either — Wellington’s congestion is not that bad

Why?

PT spine principles

(Use to focus on the qualitative interaction with the rest of the questions)

We need to design the PT spine around the needs of people, not cars.

We need to promote quality mixed-use and residential development along the PT spine.

We need to future-proof the PT spine corridor to enable future migration to rapid transit (light rail or BRT on a dedicated PT right-of-way).

Session 2

PT spine strategies and best practices

(Identify barriers, changes, and comments)

We need to give public transport priority over other vehicular traffic.

We need PT services that are predictable (run to schedule) and fast enough to be an attractive alternative to the private car.

We need efficient transfers between services at PT hubs, including suburban rail services, feeder bus routes, and park and ride for cars and bikes.

We need to reduce dramatically the number of peak hour buses on the Golden Mile.

We need to make the Golden Mile PT and pedestrian only (with off peak access for commercial delivery vehicles).

We need to prevent vehicular traffic, including other buses, from delaying PT services.

We need to price PT services so they are cost-competitive with other transport choices, such as relative to the cost of parking.

Session 3

Further discussion questions

Who should be targeted to get them to shift mode, and what changes would be needed to get them to shift?

What changes are needed to better integrate walking, cycling and PT?

Where would the most patronage gains be made in terms of competing with cars?

How could the PT strategies and changes be extended to other urban spaces, such as Newtown, Porirua City, Hutt City?

What are the biggest problems making PT unpleasant for current riders? To what extent will the proposed strategies and other changes fix these?

Is there anything we haven’t covered? What other changes are needed to make the PT system more attractive?

Before you leave question

What’s most important to you? If you could wave a magic wand and make just one PT wish, what would you wish for?

What happens next

The workshop organisers will collate the information and make it available to:

• the Get Welly Moving programme
• candidates standing for Wellington City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council
• workshop participants who provide an email address

All information will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.

If you want to receive updates, please sign in and leave your email address.