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Ref: 15035 2 December, 2015

EnviroWaste Services Ltd Private Bag 92810 Penrose AUCKLAND Attention: Laurence Dolan Dear Laurence GREENMOUNT LANDFILL, 1 HARRIS ROAD, EAST TAMAKI TRAFFIC ENGINEERING ASSESSMENT As requested, we have prepared a brief traffic engineering assessment for the proposal to extend the filling operation at the Greenmount Landfill by 8 months through to the end of December 2016 and report as follows. 1. INTRODUCTION

The proposal involves amending the conditions of Resource Consent to allow the filling operation activity at the Greenmount Landfill to be extended by 8 months through to the end of December 2016. All other conditions would remain unchanged.

2. EXISTING TRAFFIC ENVIRONMENT 2.1 The Road Network

The site is located on the corner of Smales Road and Harris Road in East Tamaki with all vehicle access via Smales Road. Both Harris Road and Smales Road are classified as Regional Arterial Roads in the District Plan and have a traffic carrying function. Traffic flows on Smales Road are in the order of 22,500 vehicles per day with peak hour traffic flows of about 2,200 vehicles per hour (2013 traffic counts). The road network in the vicinity of the site is shown in Figure 1.

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Greenmount Landfill, 1 Harris Road Traffic Engineering Assessment Issue A

Ref: 1503503r-A

Source: http://maps.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/AucklandCouncilViewer/

Figure 1 – Smales Road Traffic Management In this location, Smales Road provides two westbound traffic lanes and a single eastbound traffic lane.

2.2 Traffic Safety Information from the New Zealand Transport Agency’s “Crash Analysis System” for the five year period, January 2010 to December 2014, indicates that a number of crashes have been reported in the general vicinity of the site. The most common crash location is the traffic signal controlled intersection of Smales Road and Harris Road (21) with further crashes reported at the intersection of Smales Road and Sir William Avenue (7).

One crash was reported at the vehicle access to the site and occurred in October 2013 on a Wednesday at 4pm. It involved a truck turning right into the site being hit by an eastbound van on Smales Road and did not result in any injuries. This is the only crash reported in the last 6 years at the vehicle access and of itself does not indicate a traffic safety problem at the existing vehicle access. Overall the reported crash history indicates that the vehicle access to the site operates in a safe manner for the levels of truck traffic that currently use it.

Subject site

Unused Entrance

Weighbridge

Site Entrance

Sir William Avenue

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Ref: 1503503r-A

3. TRAFFIC GENERATION

The Greenmount Closed Landfill site was originally a quarry before being used as a regional refuse disposal landfill. The refuse operation ceased in 2005 and since then the site has accepted imported fill material to cap and undertake re-contouring of the site for eventual public open space purposes, to be developed after 30 April 2016.

The existing Land Use Consent allows for the depositing of earth and re-contouring of the site through to 30 April 2016. It is intended that all additional imported fill be delivered to the site within the existing Consent timeframe.

In respect of traffic generation, an indication of daily truck movements over a one and a half year period from January 2013 is shown in Figure 2 based on weighbridge records for the current level of activity.

Figure 2 – Daily Filling Operation Trucks From the data provided, the daily weekday average number of trucks is about 190 with an 85th percentile value of 280 trucks per day.

Analysis of days where the truck movements achieved around 280 (85th percentile) gives an hourly profile of trucks arriving at the site associated with the filling operation as shown in Figure 3.

85%ile

Average

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Ref: 1503503r-A

Figure 3 – Existing Hourly Truck Movement Profile As indicated in Figure 3, the current hourly number of trucks is typically up to about 40 (80 truck movements) per hour truck between about 9am and 3pm.

It is anticipated that the on-going filling operation would have a similar overall hourly profile to that shown in Figure 3 and typical daily variation as indicated in Figure 2.

4. VEHICLE ACCESS

In considering vehicle access to a site, it is important that:

adequate sight distance is provided, and

the access is designed to ensure safe traffic movement.

4.1 Sight Distance Assessment The appropriate standard for sight distance is the Land Transport Safety Authority publication “Guidelines for Visibility at Driveways”. There are two components to the sight distance measurement. The first being the Sight Distance requirement and the second being the Lines of Clear Sight. The sight distance / lines of clear sight required is dependent upon the traffic generation of the proposal, the 85th percentile speed of vehicles on the frontage road and also the classification of the frontage road.

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Ref: 1503503r-A

Figure 4 provides an indication of the sight distances available from the vehicle access on Smales Road whilst Table 1 provides an assessment of the recommended and available sight distances for the vehicle crossing.

Sight distance to the west Sight distance to the east

Figure 4 – Smales Road Sight Distances The speed of vehicles approaching from the east has been assessed as 60km/hr whilst that from the west as 40km/hr due to the proximity of the traffic signal controlled intersection at Harris Road.

Table 1 – Smales Road Vehicle Access Sight Distance Assessment

Sight Distance

Direction Speed Recommended Sight Distance Available Sight Distance

To the east 60 km/hr 115 metres >180 metres

To the west 40 km/hr 70 metres >80 metres

Lines of Clear Sight

Direction Speed Recommended Sight Distance Available Sight Distance

To the east 60 km/hr 115 metres >180 metres

To the west 40 km/hr 70 metres >80 metres

As indicated in the table, there is more than sufficient sight distance available to exceed that required by the LTSA guideline in both directions and hence the sight distances available are considered to be acceptable.

4.2 Vehicle Access Design The vehicle access has a width of 8 metres at the property boundary as shown in Figure 5 and will not change as a result of the current proposal.

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Ref: 1503503r-A

Figure 5 – Smales Road Vehicle Access The vehicle access is considered to be suitable for the proposed continuing landfill operation.

5. TRAFFIC EFFECTS OF THE PROPOSAL

The traffic related impacts of the proposal centre on the impacts of the traffic generated by the trucks bringing the additional fill to the site until 30 December 2016. As indicated earlier, the current filling operation has an 85th percentile truck traffic generation of about 290 trucks per day (580 truck movements per day).

To manage the effects of the on-going fill operation, the applicant will retain the current truck limit condition of the current consent on daily truck movements of 300 trucks per day (600 truck movements per day).

The 600 truck movements per day limit is consistent with the amount of truck traffic generated by the filling activity over the last one and a half years and as such is reflected in current truck related effects on the road network.

In this respect it is noted that the crash records kept by the New Zealand Transport Agency does not indicate a traffic safety problem in the general vicinity of the site associated with the current operation of the filling activity. Thus, the current level of activity is not resulting in adverse traffic safety effects.

Given the above, it is considered that the traffic generated by site filling operations can be accommodated on the road network without compromising its function, capacity or safety.

6. CONCLUSIONS Based on the analyses described in this report, the following conclusions can be made in respect of time extension for the filling activity at 1 Harris Road in East Tamaki:

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Ref: 1503503r-A

The number of trucks per day will be limited to 300 which is consistent with the 85th percentile level of trucks numbers over the last one and half years generated by the site, although generally a lower level of truck traffic is generated on a daily basis. A condition is proposed to “cap” this daily number.

The traffic generated by the proposal can be accommodated on the road network with little or no effect.

Given the above and the preceding analysis, it is considered that the traffic related effects of the proposed importation of the additional fill material until 30 December 2016 can be accommodated on the road network without compromising its function, capacity or safety. On this basis, the traffic effects of the proposal are considered to be less than minor.

Bryce Hall [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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