Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Russell Brown,
In your case it might make sense just to stay on Gt North Rd all the way to Pt Chev. I do that when I’m going to the beach. Yes, you do have to have the courage of your convictions to take a lane (the middle one) from the lights by the motorway bridge as far as point that the citybound on-ramp begins, and then to cross in front of vehicles at the give way sign on the offramp. So far, I’ve had no troubles doing it, I’m really only impeding traffic for about 100m, which takes all of 15 seconds. This is one of the perfect examples of where breaking the rules is actually safer. I usually just cheat off at the lights by a few seconds. Then I’m not impeding traffic at all. I’ve reached the point where the traffic splits before the cars do, and I can hug the left from there on.
ETA: Oh, and when crossing in front of the Give Way, I make 100% certain of eye contact from the drivers. Lots of drivers consider the leftmost lane to essentially not have to Give Way, because it has its own lane, and traffic from the left would be essentially changing lanes, and thus not having right of way. They are wrong about this, but I'm not going to take a car on to prove that. So long as they can see you're asserting that you're a vehicle, they stop.
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to James Littlewood*,
Auckland Transport or NZTA or whoever it is, is well used to subjecting cyclists to stairs.
The moment I realized that they had done that, I took to entering the cycle path here. Which should really have been signed posted as the recommended route for cyclists.
That stairway entrance is seriously dangerous. It's not as long as a bike, so you can't ride onto it and dismount, without the back end of the bike sticking out onto the road. It's a narrow stairway, not actually wide enough to carry a bike down, certainly not wide enough to walk it down. The area is not wide enough for more than one person with a bike to even be in at all.
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Max Robitzsch,
We tried. We really did.
I believe you. I really do. It's such a huge project that I was never more than a little hopeful that the prioritization of the mighty auto would take pole position. The fact that it would help hundreds of cyclists every day would probably not stack up against the tens of thousands of motorists that would use that extra lane.
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s going to be quite a nice bridge, by the look of the artist’s impression.
I hope it is. Now that I can see where it comes out I can see a point in it. It's an alternate route of similar elevation changes to get to the corner of Rosebank Rd and Blockhouse Bay Rd. Alternate to the awful on-road mess that it currently is. Also providing hooks all the way through on the Unitec side.
I've been hoping that beside railway path was eventually going to open up - I've stealth cycled it a few times. Not strictly trespassing as far as I could tell, but so undeveloped that it actually felt like it.
With the connection to New Lynn, it's like actual cycling infrastructure!!
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Russell Brown,
So they built a cycleway that follows an underground tunnel...above ground? And in doing so had to build a huge bridge across a nature reserve???
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Russell Brown,
this is how the greenway connects to Great North Road.
Presumably it's also possible to just go onto the offramp as a vehicle, stop at the lights, and then turn with the traffic? I always ride on the road at that point anyway, because the cycle path ends at the lights under the bridge. Which is fine if you're going on the NW cycleway, but if you're going up Gt North Rd, you either go on the road, or you cross at the lights and then over the on-ramp, then you go up the bridge and down the other side, and then do a U-turn. Which would be safer, definitely. My fear on the road is not my right to be there, which is unassailable, but the safety of effectively crossing the on-ramp onto Gt North Rd with the traffic behind me coming at motorway speeds.
Haven't died yet, though. I just ride big, and get out of the way as soon as practical (almost immediately).
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Russell Brown,
Cool, so it's really a crossing over to Unitec? I couldn't tell from the map picture.
I wonder what the justification is - that looks like quite an expensive work.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
I'd think the taxi drivers are likely to be much more committed to their work, though, having made a much more significant investment. Uber drivers take it or leave it at whim if they're part timers doing it for pocket money, but some guy who has bought a taxi, signage, a meter, a camera, paid into some organization, paid their compliance, etc, is much more likely to be out on the road a lot more. Also, they still have the big advantage of being able to cruise for hire and park on taxi stands, and tout in the street for business.
So it's hard to say what the comparative numbers are. But I can say anecdotally that the Uber drivers are extremely busy. I'm sure you know this anyway, if you've done some of it. There's no waiting around touting on the side of the road, jockeying for the best spot on the rank. Just doesn't happen. You pull up nearby or just cruise slowly along, and you don't wait long for a ride when its busy. Passengers know they have to find you, they get really good at it.
So 1 Uber driver can probably significantly disrupt the work of several taxis.
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Hard News: Waterview: The giant up the road, in reply to Russell Brown,
Same. It’s impossible not to be impressed by how it’s been executed.
It's also quite something to do a drive through practically every day of this enormous and long project. My boys have seen a suburb transform into a gigantic public work. We comment daily on the latest addition. Good practice for training the eldest's eyes.
I still feel the slight twinge that in all of this work, the ability to have one tiny little bit of lane dedicated to bicycles that don't want to go up to Pt Chev, cross a very busy road and then back down again through a golf course was somehow lost. They built lanes for trucks to access the works about 6 times during the process and every time my heart would leap! Could this be the bike lane? But no, it's pretty clear now that the concrete cliff where that lane would go is final. Biking infrastructure has essentially remained unchanged on the south side (where the cycleway is). This is a pity because it was not good infrastructure in the first place. Up to the area and going out of it were pretty good, but the connection through is not. It seems that won't be changing.
Interesting that there's to be a new bridge crossing Oakley Creek. Nice for people out for a walk anyway - on a bike that's one hell of a climb if the crossing is down near the creek. Will be very interested to see what becomes of it.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
The app shows you some of the cars in a neighborhood around the pin. We don't know if that's all of them that would show at that level on the map. The density of them varies from location to location and from time to time so we can't make assumptions about the way that it spreads out. We can't query the entire map of any large city because there's just too many areas to get the detail on. We can't see drivers who are currently carrying passengers. We can't see anyone who has turned the app off temporarily, perhaps waiting for a surge.
In short, I don't think you can put any level of confidence on that claim. You've got no way of validating if it's correct. It's a pure guess. Who can say if it's a good guess? I suggest Uber can, but no one else.
What we do know is how many drivers have signed up, roughly. Before April, Uber claimed it was about 2000. After then, NZTA has sent 2400 letters out to Uber drivers signing up under their non-compliance regime based on the background check. So we're in the territory of 4000 drivers. We don't know how often they work, what the average hours worked are, where they work, when they work. It's a fair guess that they mostly work the busiest times, but there's always people working somewhere.
We also don't know much about churn. Lots of drivers just stop working once they discover that it's not viable. For a great many, it's a stop gap for other work, and they get a real job and move on. Others rove in and out as their other casual work goes up and down. But the numbers? Even Uber probably doesn't know. They don't ask about other employment.