Island Life.

I’m now living on an Island.

I haven’t gone to live overseas, I’m not sitting at a table on the sand with the occasional wave reaching my bare feet as a waiter brings me coffee and tropical fruit. If I could Koh Samui in Thailand would be my choice. That would be nice I could write beneath the trees glancing up occasionally at the hawkers who know me well enough not to try and sell me anything, but who smile and wave.

No, not that Island sadly.

I haven’t moved across the harbour to the island paradise of Waiheke, grumbling about all the tourists as I queue with my keep cup for a coffee.

Nope, not that island either.

The island I live on is called Te Atatū, in English “The Dawn”. Last week it was not an island, but rather a peninsula.

We have not become an island due to the effects of Cyclone Gabrielle, although that has of course isolated many elsewhere. We are not early victims of sea levels rising due to climate change. Millions of dollars were spent raising the motorway leading to our suburb, which used to flood during very high tides, delaying that prospect.

No the reason my suburb has transformed from a peninsula into an island is more mundane. It is due to two little words that do not inspire confidence in the inhabitants of our lovely Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland Transport.

Our suburb is like a number of others in this city, Point Chev, Bucklands Beach, Devonport. It is well defined compared to many suburbs which are just urban sprawl in all directions, making it hard for people other than Real Estate agents to know where one suburb ends and another begins. Like those other suburbs, this is due to being largely surrounded by water, with pretty much one road in and one road out.

Our main road is highly originally called Te Atatu Rd. It has two lanes in either direction, a middle lane in between for people turning right, and a footpath on either side. The footpath on the city side is shared by cyclists and walkers. Although there is fairly sparse foot or cycle traffic on this path the road is being ripped up to put in a new path.

During rush hour long queues were already an issue for the community. All of the traffic departing was funnelled through the same two lanes whether it be going West, South, or East towards the city. You can imagine the result of all that traffic now merging into a single lane.

The entire length of the Peninsula is a traffic jam leaving in the morning, and not only has that gotten far worse but we now have bad traffic jams leaving in the afternoons and weekends as well. I’m not talking about a bit of a queue, I’m talking a 3 km/hr crawl that means if you leave at the wrong time it can take you the best part of an hour just to get to the Motorway to start your trip.

People are losing the plot. Yesterday morning I had to go to the chemist, being aware of congestion I went through back roads and came back, against the traffic, on the main road to the village.

All good you would think. Well it was until I came face to face with someone driving on the wrong side of the road. So frustrated with just sitting there that they had given up and taken to the right hand side of the road! Fortunately I was going slowly.

Now I’d like to make a couple of things clear.

1. I fully support cycling initiatives, the more we get people out of cars, particularly into non polluting alternatives, the better.

2. I fully accept that there will be times when we are inconvenienced by infrastructure upgrades, and we just have to suck it up for the longer term benefit.

This suburb has seen the population increase due to a move to higher density housing. That growth has not been accompanied by improvements in infrastructure. Te Atatū is just one example of this increase in population, without necessary transport and other services being added, that is happening all over Auckland, and no doubt in many other places around Aotearoa.

Change is needed but of all the changes that could be made to provide transport is this really the one, a third path along the main road?

Te Atatu Peninsula is quite a flat suburb, as is much of the route into the city. It would be ideal for trains or trams. If the dredging wasn’t prohibitively expensive it could also lend itself to ferry services.

As local resident Ben highlights though in his comment and video below, cycling is a big part of the solution.

“You know it’s bad when even people on bikes feel sorry for drivers on a beautiful sunny day. Hopefully council make some changes soon.

In the mean time, hmu if you want any tips on ebikes, cycle routes, or even a test ride*. Our suburb is incredibly well set up for bikes. Super flat and really well connected to safe routes.

*I don’t sell bikes, but I love them :)”

@aotearoa_benCome on @Auckland Council this is pretty dumb. #traffic #bikelife #bikeakl

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Not only can people see a lot of inconvenience for little reward in return. They can also see Auckland Transport seemingly making no effort to minimise impacts on the people that live here.

No attempt to do the work at a time when disruption would be lowest. Heck they could use road cones, they certainly seem to have a lot of those, to turn the middle turning lane into a second lane meaning the same throughput. Minimising disruption does not appear to be something they have thought of.

Of course the local Facebook page is going off with people understandably upset at this disruption. Coupled with the fact that no one seems accountable or answerable, I guess that is why we have council elections. One smart arse (me) made the following unhelpful suggestion “Maybe if we upgrade the tennis courts Wayne Brown will want to use them and we'll be given roads. I'm kidding, I'm sure he couldn't find Te Atatu on a map.”

The page admin had an even less useful suggestion to the community when some one asked who we should notify with complaints:

I replied saying “Probably not a good idea to call the police over scheduled roadworks. As frustrating as they are flooding the police with calls wasting their time is not going to help.” I received the following friendly reply:

Personally I’d have thought most people would understand that traffic congestion mentioned by the police did not mean delays from road works. I’m not entirely sure what people imagine would happen. That the cops would turn up and start handcuffing the guys with the spades?

I didn’t take Libby up on her helpful suggestion. For some reason I found myself distracted, thinking about things like labels inside clothing telling people not to iron the item while wearing it.

There were some helpful replies, like this one from resident Zimena:

So apparently these roadworks are scheduled to finish at the end of the week, which will be good if it happens. Either way they have a new project next week, closing the road that runs between the main road and our little cul de sac. So yay, next week we’ll get to do a tiki tour around the top of the Peninsula before even joining the queue to leave our suburb.

I wouldn’t mind if they were building a train line. I fully support cycling infrastructure and other moves that encourage people to use e-bikes. But I would love to be able to walk to the high street and get on a train directly to the city, or Westgate, or even the airport. You know, in case I wanted to take a trip to an actual island.