Auckland Transport will ask the Howick Local Board on Thursday to back new traffic lights at what it calls Auckland’s seventh most dangerous intersection.
“Another crazy idea from Auckland Transport,” Pakuranga MP Simeon Brown wrote in a Facebook post on 4 May, carrying a video filmed at the intersection.
“They want to put yet another set of traffic lights on Pakuranga Road, just a few hundred metres from the existing lights at Bucklands Beach Road.”
“It appears all Auckland Transport wants on Pakuranga Road is more traffic lights, more congestion and to slow traffic down.”
The ranking comes from Auckland Transport’s own Road Safety High Risk Intersection Programme, which lists the sites it considers most likely to produce a serious crash.
Fourteen crashes were recorded at the Pakuranga Road, Hutchinsons Road and Aberfeldy Avenue intersection between 2020 and 2024, four causing serious injuries and six causing minor injuries.
Turning vehicles were involved in 79 per cent of them, six involved pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists, and a further serious injury crash was recorded in 2025.
Staff watching the intersection counted almost 60 people, including 10 unaccompanied children, crossing Pakuranga Road away from the signals over a four-hour weekday period.
The proposal would signalise the intersection, add pedestrian crossings on all three legs, widen footpaths, move two bus stops and remove six parking spaces.
Brown directed his followers to Auckland Transport’s submission form in the first comment on the post.
Auckland Transport’s own consultation report, in the papers for Thursday’s workshop, charts what happened next.
Daily contributions to the survey were close to zero until 4 May, then reached 131 on the day Brown posted and 132 the following day, the busiest of the whole consultation.
The chart is annotated with two red lines, marked “MP Simeon Brown’s first video posted” and “MP Simeon Brown’s reminder video posted”.
Brown hosted a public meeting with Auckland Transport on Saturday 23 May.
“There was a good turnout from locals who wanted to understand more about the project, including what alternatives had been explored,” Howick Local Board member Damian Light wrote on his blog.
Of the 654 responses, 20 per cent supported the proposal and 29.1 per cent supported it with concerns, while 333 respondents, 50.9 per cent, fell into the category Auckland Transport defines as expressing clear opposition.
The most common concern, from 77.1 per cent of respondents, was that lights would worsen peak-hour congestion on Pakuranga Road.
Nearly half, 48.1 per cent, said the new signals sat too close to the existing lights at Bucklands Beach Road and Aviemore Drive, between 150 and 300 metres away.
Auckland Transport is recommending the project proceed anyway.
Modelling puts the cost of the lights at up to 30 seconds of extra travel time for westbound traffic in the morning peak, and the agency expects the upgrade to prevent about one death or serious injury a year.
Auckland Transport modelled the alternative Brown proposed, banning right turns rather than installing lights, and rejected it.
Its report says the bans would push turning traffic into Angelo Avenue and other residential streets, force a bus service to be removed or re-routed, and add up to a minute of delay to the worst-affected movement at the Bucklands Beach Road lights.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand expressed concern that queues could block fire appliances leaving the Howick fire station, and has asked for emergency vehicle signal pre-emption to be built in.
The papers warn the Board that if the work does not go ahead, “we would lose funding for the project, and it is unlikely we would re-investigate the intersection for improvements in the near future”.
If the project proceeds further, construction is expected in early 2027.
