A surprise underpass closing led to mayhem, frustration and danger for non-motorist commuters.

There’s an underpass on Auckland’s cycle superhighway where it intersects Te Atatu Road. Only made possible through relentless lobbying by bike advocates, this underpass is a wonderful bit of infrastructure allowing people on bikes to glide safely beneath the traffic, neither interfering with the other. Riding past the artwork in the underpass feels like the future – a future where active transport is valued at least equally with motor vehicles.

When I say “an” underpass I really mean “an”. Just the one. The other intersections on the 15km-long SH16 shared path are less futuristic. Lincoln Road is a particularly heinous case, requiring anyone walking or biking to press (and then wait for) four separate beg buttons to cross no fewer than nine lanes of busy overbridge and off-ramps.

If the Te Atatu cycleway underpass is a glimpse of what’s possible, Lincoln Road is the meagre compromise we inevitably end up with, and nothing illustrates this better than when the underpass was suddenly closed overnight.

The underpass was badly damaged during construction work for a half-arsed “interim” bus interchange, being built rapidly to support public transport use in this critical decade of climate action. The entire east side of the interchange is closed to non-motorised traffic while it’s being built.

Actually, it’s not even an interchange but more a set of disconnected bus stops hundreds of metres apart, the best we can hope for because 10 years ago (in the previous critical decade of climate change) local nimbys forced the cancellation of a proper bus station, citing such perils as “kids hanging out”. People will use this “interchange” to more efficiently board buses that will sit in traffic jams on a motorway that was entirely rebuilt without adding a bus lane, because Steven Joyce or some shit.

So yeah, underpass smashed by Auckland doing Auckland things. And lo, a pleasant Monday morning, with the underpass unexpectedly closed and construction blocking other options, traffic continued to glide effortlessly overhead while people on foot and bike milled about on the periphery, confused and trying to work out how to undertake the simple task of crossing the road.

Despite Auckland Transport’s oft-cited Vision Zero “ethics-based transport safety approach”, traffic “management” was severely lacking. Detour signs – literally hand-written on the back of other traffic management signs – faced the wrong direction, forcing people to backtrack. Barriers blocked entry to every practical way to cross under or over the intersection that didn’t involve using a motor vehicle.

The bravest bike-folk picked their way through stop-start traffic to cross five uncontrolled lanes, while others managed to find a signalised crossing 250m up the road, where they could wait several minutes for the traffic-prioritised phasing to deign to let them cross briefly.

You’d struggle to find a better example of the disdain for non-motorists held by Auckland Transport, Waka Kotahi, Fulton Hogan and anyone else tasked with making things go brrrm brrrm without delay. There was no one on-site to help commuters understand where to go, or god forbid some stop-go people to help pedestrians cross the road.

It’s moments like this that really remind me where we part-time motorists sit in the grand hierarchy of road users. Watching commuters and school kids gingerly pick their way past moving trucks and double-cab utes, I phoned and messaged Auckland Transport, who “lodged a case number”. I contemplated calling the police, but decided to complete my trip to work, praying no one would get injured.

Cycling home hours later, there were no improvements to the situation. I stopped to talk to a disinterested chap in hi-viz (after he hung up his phone call) and suggested they might want to get a few more people to help with directions, because commuters were still taking risks by crossing the busy road without any signals.

His response? “They’re being lazy, they should just go down to the traffic lights”.

Yeah those lazy fuckers, am I right? Cycling all the way to the city and back, a cool 30km, and yet not even bothering to use psychic powers to work out the un-signed cryptic detour, instead throwing themselves recklessly across five lanes of uncontrolled traffic purely because the only detectable safe crossing had evaporated overnight.

Indolent layabouts the lot of them.

I suppose I can empathise with him, stuck out there in the weather at short notice because bloody cyclists can’t even read a hand-written sign. Thing is, people on bikes need signage that’s as clear and legible as people in cars. Signage that differentiates between bikes and pedestrians. It’s a worry that Fulton Hogan’s employees don’t know this, and shows a lack of attention to the needs of people who travel through here every day.

Once construction on the interchange is finished, this will include all the kinds of people who catch the bus, or who AT hopes will catch the bus, and who’ll be transferring from one bus to another in the middle of motorway mayhem. Parents with kids. Elderly or disabled people who move slowly. Students trying to get to class on time. If they too struggle with wayfinding and safety, will they be called “lazy”?

Our broken underpass is a perfect definition of transport in Auckland today: baseline cluelessness about what non-motorists actually need, never bothering to put in even the minimal effort required to help people now at risk because the token example of safe infrastructure got destroyed by a half-assed, nimby-compromised public transport “improvement” project making up for decades of lost time and stupid planning. Meanwhile, cars are our monarchy, with road workers effectively doffing their caps as cars pass, careful to never impede the multiple lanes gliding by oblivious to the mayhem below them.

Vision Zero my arse.