ONE SIZE DOESN'T FIT ALL - RECONCILING OVERLAPPING TRANSPORT NETWORKS IN A CONSTRAINED URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Similar to most urban areas, Auckland has a constrained arterial road network that is often over capacity and under pressure from multiple transport modes, including private vehicles, buses, freight, cycling and walking. As additional growth occurs, the demand for travel will only increase along these corridors and further exacerbate current capacity constraints. Historically, Auckland Transport has relied upon corridor management plans as one of the main tools to resolve these multimodal conflicts and establish a strategic direction for arterial roads throughout the region. While a valuable tool, the corridor management plan process often struggles to deliver acceptable recommendations for all transport networks. For example, bus priority is often recommended at the expense of providing cycle facilities. A smarter network-based approach has been trialled by Auckland Transport to reconcile the multimodal priorities for its arterial road network. This involves a multi-step, consistent and repeatable process of testing whether multiple modal priorities (i.e., freight, buses, cycling, etc.) can share the same corridor either through potential widening or other measures to optimise the corridor space. If it is not possible to accommodate all transport networks in the same arterial route, alternative routing options are explored as a means of developing network plans that deliver the desired operational outcomes and are achievable.