Fixes mooted for gridlock
A bus lane and more frequent buses are tipped as solutions to the Cambridge-to-Hamilton commuter grind
Amanda Till’s journey from her front door in Cambridge to her desk at Waikato University used to take 25 minutes.
Today, the same trip typically takes 45 minutes. On bad days, the drive can stretch to an hour.
‘‘The other day I had to be at the university by 7.30am, and so I left home at 6.30am, and it took me a good hour to get into work,’’ Till told Stuff.
‘‘More people are trying to leave home early to beat the rush, but it just means the backlog starts earlier.’’
Unprecedented growth across Waipa¯ and Hamilton is being blamed for the commuter gridlock which sees traffic heading north into the city backed up as far as Tamahere most mornings.
The daily logjam has prompted top-level talks on ways to ease traffic congestion between Cambridge and Hamilton, with a dedicated bus lane just south of the city on the cards.
And even the prospect of a congestion charge isn’t being ruled out in the longer-term.
Traffic figures provided to Hamilton City Council show 130,000 vehicle movements in and out of Hamilton each day, with about half that figure travelling along the Cambridge Hamilton route.
City councillor Dave Macpherson said the council is in talks with Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency about the three-laning of State Highway 1 from the Riverlea gully north into Hamilton.
City leaders support one of the three lanes being a dedicated bus lane or a transit lane restricted to vehicles carrying a specified minimum number of people.
‘‘I’m certainly favouring a bus lane, at least a timed bus lane,’’ Macpherson said.
‘‘The argument is we don’t ever want the third lane to be an extra car lane.
‘‘It’s very hard to take away lanes from cars, and so we don’t want people to get used to having it.’’
Macpherson, along with fellow
‘‘I think we need alternatives to car travel in place before we look at congestion charging . . .’’
Sarah Thomson
city councillor Sarah Thomson, also favours a more frequent bus service between Cambridge and Hamilton.
‘‘Frequency is the key. We’ve seen there is a huge uptake once a route becomes more frequent and more reliable,’’ Thomson said.
‘‘And with a bus lane, it then becomes faster and more reliable to travel into Hamilton on a bus than driving in a private vehicle.
‘‘We have a two-lane expressway but at the moment everyone gets choked up at the end when they come into Hamilton.’’
Thomson said thought needs to be given to providing park and ride facilities in Cambridge where commuters coming from elsewhere can park and take a bus into Hamilton.
Congestion charges are a proven way of changing travel behaviour at peak times, but introducing such measures in Hamilton would be premature, she said.
Parliament’s transport and infrastructure committee is calling for submissions on congestion charging in Auckland as a means of managing demand on the city’s roads. Submissions close on May 20.
‘‘I think we need alternatives to car travel in place before we look at congestion charging otherwise it doesn’t feel very fair to people who suddenly have to pay an extra charge but who don’t have a real viable option for travelling,’’ Thomson said.
Waipa¯ mayor Jim Mylchreest favours moves to encourage commuters to use public transport but believes Cambridge is being unfairly blamed for Hamilton’s traffic congestion.
Given Cambridge’s current-day population is 20,000, it doesn’t make sense to attribute 60,000 vehicle movements to Cambridge alone.
‘‘Let’s quantify what the problem is rather than simply using a figure which shows how many vehicles are coming from the south,’’ Mylchreest said.
‘‘The inference is all the traffic problems in Hamilton are being caused by people coming out of Cambridge and that’s just simply not possible.
‘‘It seems like there are a lot of people coming from further south than Cambridge.’’
City councillor Rob Pascoe said congestion charges shouldn’t be an immediate consideration but, longterm, could help fund the infrastructure needed to ease traffic congestion.
A bus lane heading north into Hamilton and park and ride facilities are not bad ideas. However, any public transport offerings need to be efficient and faster than car travel to encourage people to change their travel behaviour, Pascoe said.
Macpherson wants to set up a working party to consider what the Cambridge-Hamilton transport corridor needs, with elected and management representatives drawn from the city council, Waipa¯ District Council, Waka Kotahi and Waikato Regional Council.
The soon-to-completed Hamilton section of the Waikato Expressway will ease gridlock between the two centres in the short term, but traffic volumes will quickly return to present-day levels, Macpherson said.
The city council has plans to change the intersection connecting
SH1 to Cambridge Rd, from a roundabout to a traffic lightcontrolled intersection, as a way of better regulating the flow of traffic coming north into Hamilton.
Till said she now starts work at
9.15am in an effort to avoid the morning peak hour traffic. Her partner, Mike Woodd, has started riding to work in Hamilton using the Te Awa River Ride. The 30km trip takes him just over one hour.