From stuff NZ:
The $630 million Kapiti expressway has actually doubled the amount of time it takes to commute into Wellington during the morning rush, some motorists say.
One Kapiti Coast resident believes the morning crawl into the capital is now so bad that she is vowing to use the train instead, even though it will cost her $100 more a month. …
The problem is that while the new four-lane expressway between Mackays Crossing and Peka Peka has shaved minutes off the journey through the Kapiti Coast, it has also created a traffic bottleneck where it connects to the old two-lane State Highway 1, just north of Paekakariki.
The counter-argument, of course, will be that the problem can be solved with more widenings and roads. Which is exactly the case here:
Neil Walker, the transport agency’s Wellington highways manager, acknowledged earlier this month that congestion at Mackays Crossing was likely to continue until the Transmission Gully motorway was built.
I don’t think evidence or rational argument will change minds. We have that urban/rural-suburban divide. Each side has a different identity and idea of the good life. Each tribe feels that the other poses a potentially existential threat. Politically, this division will continue to be exploited by the right and to divide the left. I don’t see how we can improve our cities and suburbs unless that division is transcended.
The best hope it seems to me is to shift the cultural ideal of the suburb. If people want what the urbanized suburb has to offer – if they want the bicycle paths, the neighbours, the corner stores, and so forth – then they will get built. Actually, even this is wrong. I could reel off any number of advantages, but in the end it comes down to aspirational identity. If people don’t visualize themselves in new suburbs all the benefits in the world are meaningless.
I suspect (though without evidence) the downtown renaissance had a lot to do with Hollywood: shows like Seinfeld, Friends, Sex in the City and Frasier recast the city as a desirable place to be. People saw them and thought: I can just see myself living like that. I’m not aware of any similar cultural representation of the new urbanist suburb.
And it’s not all good. Those shows reinforced a divide. If you’re young, hip, educated, single, areligious, then you can see yourself there. If you’re not, you can see that these places are not for you, your kids, your values, your way of life.
Actual planning practice and experience can help, but it’s a long slog, personal experience has very limited reach, and when it comes to funding the big bits – transit – it’s chicken and egg. In Burnaby, for example, that though the town centres have undergone massive intensification they have not become aspirational.
I worry that the city is its own worst enemy. The more it realizes its cosmopolitan vision, the more desirable it becomes, the more expensive, the more hip: the more it leaves the suburbs behind, the more it reinforces the divide: those people are not like me, and a place like that (or even a bit more like that) is not for me.
I don’t know why they are even being presented as rivals. I think it’s a good thing that people have the choice to live in different places that are different from each other. If one type of environment isn’t working for them then they can try out a different one.
Perhaps this is where the tried and true 19th Century streetcar suburb can be used as a model to both urbanize the suburbs and tone down the city. The older inner city neighbourhoods in almost every western North American city contain these forms of gentle density, and most are now protected to a degree with zoning. Even in a place like Calgary, known mostly for its embrace of the car and far flung exurbs, central neighbourhoods like Mission, Inglewood, Kensington, Hillhurst and Sunnyside have become more attractive for young and old.
It is somewhat awkward that we have rapid-transit conceived town centres of such high densities juxtaposed directly with large lot single-family detached residential (Brentwood, Metrotown, Surrey Centre, Marine Gateway …). Economically, these are deemed a roaring success. Yet the cultural gravitational pull of Commercial Drive, Main Street, West Fourth, Fraser Street, Hastings Street by Nanaimo and further along in Burnaby Heights, and a number of other historic neighbourhoods and arterials, most formerly served by streetcars or the Interurban, remains genuine and significant.
New Urbanism tried to replicate the 19th Century town but with a super cleaned up version literally whitewashed into unreality and unaffordability. Most of the earlier NU developments seem fake now and are just another kind of (slightly more attractive) car-dominated residential environment. The newer ones were became more successful when they adopted mixed-use zoning and mixed incomes. I feel they have a ways to go still, and would benefit immensely with better transit, preferably with rail-based permanence.
Transit isn’t just about mobility. It’s about social connectivity between city and suburb, and breaking the cycle of suburban isolation. The cul-de-sac gets replaced by a commercial-residential high street within a quiet grid of low rise and small lots and substantial public amenities like libraries and schools, and with a central train station to connect directly with the high-powered, edgy urban amenities. A middle ground is possible.
The congestion is really just a staging error / problem. They built the feeder before the trunk line, so to speak.
The transit equivalent is building the Millennium Line to feed into the Expo Line without an alternative (Millennium Extension to Canada Line).
It’s a planning and timing (staging) issue.
The conclusion in either case wouldn’t/shouldn’t necessarily be “don’t build [the expressway or Millennium Line]”.
If something becomes easier more people will do it and more often. If something becomes more difficult people will expend a hundred times more energy complaining about it than actually looking for alternatives.