This is a sort of ‘Photo of the Day’ post to follow Matt’s one this morning: The day in question being last Friday 30th of Jan. Thankfully I was able to get back to the city from work in the South Island just in time to ride to the Ministerial Cycleways Announcement on the abandoned CMJ off-ramp. See here for how promising is the repurposing of this symbol of urban motorway-era overbuild into something useful.
As I observed in the post linked to above it’s surprisingly pleasant on the ramp, you’re largely above the traffic. Here’s a pic with a photo-op on bikes for Transport Minister Simon Bridges, Mayor Len Brown, and AT Chair Lester Levy going on in the distance.
And the backdrop? Three current and three soon-to-be apartment buildings. Left to right; Urba on Howe street, a new build, two existing blocks, the old Telecom office about to be converted, another 80/90s office building of considerable ordinariness under conversion, and another existing one. Hundreds of new dwellings in easy walk or ride to K Rd, Ponsonby, and of course the city.
I had a good chat with new transport minister Bridges, to be continued, he was very relaxed and out of a suit unlike his poor officials [background]. Those elegant cuffed wrists holding the phone belong to city Urban Design Champion Ludo Campbell-Reid who will be very important in making sure that NZTA’s traffic engineers don’t get away with insisting on some sort of massive cage along the sides of this route out of panic about what humans might do in their motorway corridor.
A balance between ensuring safety and creating a great environment is key here. It is important that the physical detail of this conversion treat riding and walking as normal activities that do not require the kind of defensive constructions that hurtling along in tin boxes at 100 kph do. It is already a fun and secure place to ride and walk. And even though its as close as we are likely to get to an elevated Highline in Auckland I don’t think it needs to be fussily guilded. I like experiencing the tough motorway engineering on foot or bike; there’s something a little transgressive about it. Sightlines need to be clear and the width is great, and practical for reducing conflicts on a shared path. For the route see Matt’s previous post.
The only cost of any consequence is a short bridge at the southern end of the ramp opposite South St connecting through to the bottom of East Street then up to K Rd in one direction, and Canada St, and the Grafton Gully and North Western cycleways in the other. Yay. The architects of the Pt Resolution Bridge [now called Monk MacKenzie along with structural engineers Novare Design] are on the design team so we have high hopes for a beautiful structure here.
Breaking! Just got the ok on Twitter from NZTA to share these:
Stunning. But interestingly only views from the motorway users’ perspective, and no one appearing to be using it… hopefully there are some equally developed views for above. You can see the bridge sweeps past South St to link with Canada St and the bottom of East St. Therefore directly to the Grafton Gully and Northwestern Cycleways more than to K Rd.
Talking of beautiful pedestrian/cycling bridges after the function I rode on to see the new one between the Grafton Gully cycleway and the path between Elam/Whitaker Pl and Symonds St:
And what a lovely sensuous and sinewy thing it is too. Structural engineering practice Novare were the lead designers.
From there I headed down to the city via O’Connell St. Of course it would be much better if there was also a route through the Wellesley St underpass. There is available space at the northern end which is currently only occupied by desultory planting. This would mean that pedestrians and riders wouldn’t have to go up and across Symonds St to get to and the from the city and the cycleway. It is hard to imagine how this connection isn’t a priority for AT/AC?
O’Connell St is insanely improved; fantastic work by AC + AT. A huge success; peopled, busy, new sales being made and life being lived on the street. Previously it was just parking and vehicles circulating looking for parking. Still needs a tweak to reduce the rat-running, a good start would be to review the street pattern to the south [uphill], I propose reversing the one-way to up hill rather than down, as it currently funnels vehicles into O’Connell. Reversing this pattern would retain the same level of vehicle access to the surrounding buildings but direct movement towards the streets with higher vehicle priority. The aim should be for only delivery or emergency vehicles with destinations actually on O’Connell to be there. How it was:
From there I went to check out Waterfront Auckland’s new [not yet officially opened] boardwalk. Fantastic:
Wide, elegant, graceful: great work WA. Another of those projects that makes you wonder what took us so long….?
And obviously, in the words of the Grandfather of Soul James Brown; it’s now time to “Take It To the Bridge”
After all who can disagree with Brown, especially about what’s cool.
In fact all the good things in this post make me feel very optimistic about the progress on the great task of fixing our potentially great city after decades of damage and neglect through the auto-age. So much so that I have to also agree with Brown here on the Ed Sullivan show in 1966 , so about Auckland’s progress:
“I Feel Good!”
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That boardwalk is so spectacular it almost looks like a render… there are people walking and cycling casually in the sun.
Auckland has so much potential, and we’re just beginning to open it up. I believe that this will be looked back as a decade in which Auckland changed. Just how much, we’ll find out.
Ditto for the O’Connell Street pic: it looks like a wildly optimistic artist’s impression, but it’s actually *real*.
Remember; nature imitates art…..
The clue is that in neither photo can you see an Audi. That is how you know it is not a render.
rofl
The before and after shot of O’Connell is identical to the now and to be shot of High St.
The guy holding that back is mad.
What’s amazing about the Westhaven promenade is that even though it is yet to open it seems people have just materialised to use it and saw a few photos over the weekend of it being well used by walkers and cyclists alike
Build it and they will come ??
Yup; we get the city we make. We have a choice. For too long the lie that we have no choice but to built an auto-topia has held sway in the minds of politicians and technicians alike. Busting that open is the key project of this blog.
As it is clear that whatever we build will be used and work, why not built better life enhancing higher value infrastructure? Especially as we have more than enough of the other thing and it’s not going away. This is an argument about what to build next.
This is a turning point.
A mate ran along the new promenade on Sat, thought it was fantastic. Would be even better if it went somewhere, but being along the waterfront unimpeded by large red fences is magic.
Well it obviously goes to the Bridge… that’s where it has go to and across…..
We walked the promenade on Friday night after it opened at about 10pm and it had lots of other ppl walking and cycling, jogging etc. And it didn’t even go anywhere! Very surprising.
Lets build a flyover at the basin reserve. Im going to get envious if the current trends continue.
Whilst AT goes about building new walkways what about the incomplete ones they own?
Try out the Hobson Bay walkway, it’s a shocker! If you start at the Parnell end you find it goes for a bit and then you are back on a steep suburban street. If you manage to find where it next begins (a block away) and there is no signage to guide you, you will find it ends in the foreshore mud! And if you are brave enough to go through that in the vain hope you’ll join the dots the next exit or escape in this case, a steep flight of stairs to another suburban street, is closed due to structural issues, that is it is rotten in places.Although signage tells the brave explorer this there seems to be no inclination to sort it out. And even if you could use those stairs they are like climbing the side of a ship!. Similarly from the Orakei Rd end it goes around the cliffs before ending at the foot of another steep road. What is going on?
The Hobson Bay walkway could be really great if complete but it looks like Auckland Transport got bored with it and moved on and started something else.
Completing the Hobson walkway was not without challenges including consents. Still, the Orakei Local Board has it on their radar screen and the missing links are also exactly the kind of connections that the GI-Tamaki path should catalyse. Cycle Action and others are working to make sure these get delivered.. there was overwhelming support for improved connectivity including walking loops for initial (eastern) stages of the path and I would expect the same here.
so true. I once trusted the signs and went all the way to the Parnell baths where i had to climb up the cliff and jump a fence to make it back to civilization because in the meanwhile the tide came up and I wouldn’t have been able to go back without getting wet. Not cool.
Cool so when we getting a city-wide bike share with stations along these routes and near train stations?
When we give bike share an exemption from the helmet law so it doesn’t fail abysmally like in Brisbane and Melbourne.
Spain and Israel recently scrapped their helmet laws for exactly that reason. Dallas, Texas also changed its law to ensure its bike share scheme was a success.
Note not a single person has been killed in the US using a bike share bicycle. Despite the chaos all the naysayers predicted for New York.
http://caa.org.nz/general-news/madrids-new-electric-bike-scheme/
Yes, see here: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/01/27/is-it-time-to-wave-goodbye-to-melbourne-bike-share/
And this today on the anti-evidence brigade in Australia:
https://theconversation.com/politics-trumps-hard-headed-reason-on-bicycle-helmets-20973
This is the model for how the Tamaki Drive to Orakei walkway should be/look like I think.
I know the Orakei Local Board did a great job on the Orakei Basin walkway, but as the public has shown it has to be they’ll use it if you build it.
So the Hobson Bay (seaward side) walkway needs to be “high, wide and handsome” like this is to cope and to attract visitors.
My only concern was with the Waterfront Walkway was those “seats” sitting in the edge of the deck, don’t appear to have any safety reflectors on the end (they’ve got a round circular discs there, but when I looked it looked like rusty steel and didn’t reflect), so there is a danger of walking or cycling into them in the dark. However, I’ve not actually cycled there at night so maybe the lighting is ok to see them, but its an obvious safety point I noticed.
No problems in the day.
In any case, its a fantastic addition – sad it didn’t open a week earlier for the Auckland Anniversary weekend though as it looked plenty ready to open when I was there then.
Does anyone know – was this opening held up for some ministerial or Mayoral opening ceremony by any chance?
Oh and why did it take so long? Well seems to me to be the same vested interests that want SkyPath to go away too.
All very good; small rumbles that, hopefully, will avalanche. While the Elam/Whittaker Place bridge is impressive both as a piece of engineering and as an aesthetic object I don’t understand why they’ve been unable to remove all the pest plant privet that frames the site. It’s muscling out the remaining indigenous flora (which can deal with the exotic oak canopy) and really detracting from the overall positive image of the Grafton cycleway initiative. One wonder whether it’s a NZTA issue or a problem with the inept University of Auckland maintenance regime?
Privet is growing out of control all around Orakei Basin too, and taking over the surrounding hillsides, again at the expense of native flora.
In the context of building the cycling and walking network.. IIRC, some locals who were dead set against the Orakei Boardwalk tried to stop it by arguing that some of the privet trees along the route should not be removed, on the pretext that a pair of shags were nesting in them, and that the privet was part of the character of the Basin.
It was really all about not having people anywhere near their precious water frontage. Which doesn’t belong to them of course. The shags moved to another tree. The NIMBYs are still there AFAIK.
As are the diesel trains, motorboats, waterskiers and jetskis, funny what some NIMBYs get upset about while ignoring the elephants in the room eh?
Funny, yes.. as in
unusual, especially in such a way as to arouse suspicion “there was something funny going on”
synonyms: strange, peculiar, odd, queer, weird, bizarre, freakish
😉
Yep reminded me of certain trolls who also want to protect “their” waterfront rights while they totally ignore the truck sized elephants above their front yards too.
That sensuous and sinewy bridge by Novare.. we need something like that (only wider) at tree top height across the Purewa valley on the GI-Tamaki path
Its a long bridge that one to get across the valley, (over 100+ m to cross from memory the NZTA guy told me at the open day), and some grade too, maybe they’ll do something like the Nelson St on ramp bridge?
That would be so cool.
Given the budget on that GI to Meadowbank path they’re obviously planning building something expensive like a bridge somewhere along the route.
Yes, 100+ m with a gradient.. exactly what’s needed.
It also needs to look really good, like the on ramp bridge or Pt Res. What I like about Whitaker Place is how well it works in context with the bush area next to Grafton Gully. Curves may help with gradient or course. Purewa is about as good an area of native bush that you’ll find in the isthmus and I hope it gets a bridge that fits the bill.
The waterfront looks gorgeous. But can we also get a post on some of the other bits of Auckland. The bits that haven’t been done and have been left in a state of unacceptable disrepair. I think both sides of the story are needed before we go into the next elections. The good, the bad and the ugly.
I’m keen on seeing that, for the reasons stated.
Please feel free to provide a guest post of issues you have. It’s hard for us to cover all issues so more voices are welcome
Sensuous, sinewy, scenic etc. are all fine qualities.
What’s missing in these designs are two of the most scare quantities in our bike network: frontage and intersections. Exposure to front doors of buildings is a measure of the relevance of a network to actual, meaningful origins and destinations; of how easy a path is to encounter, to get on or off; of how inviting it is. The density of intersections tells us how many multitudes of trips, needs and desires in an area are supported by the same network (a grid — actually, semi-lattice — which enables an cacophony of arbitrary journeys and serendipitous collisions).
Our celebrated progress seems aimed at extending the linear kilometres of cycle-designated pavement via the paths of least frontage despite there being better options, and only (partially) bike-enabling so many intersections per route as there are motorway ramps. The network geometry resembles a motorway or subway map — planned at the wrong scale and altitude for the humble pedalled machine. If this constraint doesn’t seem intentional, consider those projects that should have provided counterexamples but didn’t: most recently, on Beaumont St, a separated cycle track was reduced to a shared path (i.e. nothing) and appears to have created a net increase in on-street car parking (i.e. worse than nothing).
My suggestion: at first, fewer bicycle wormholes by the motorway (or railway), and more properly bike-enabled streets and junctions. If Government wants to get involved in streets of national significance, they could begin by funding and persuading the local bodies in Auckland to tame Queen St; to actually solve the Dominion Rd cycling conundrum (hint: not quietways, but not full bike tracks either); to bike-enable Symonds St, K’Rd and Ponsonby Rd, etc.
Hear, hear
Yes I agree.
The overriding impression given by the map of planned cycleways around the CBD, such as Nelson St is that everything skirts around the central spine, ignoring the great big massive street running all the way down the middle that actually has stuff on it. Instead it’s all about great impressive looking flowing bridges and paths that go a long way around.
Are there any usage figures for the Grafton cycleway yet? I walked over Grafton bridge recently at peak commuting time, and all the way across had my eye on the cycleway. Not one person used it in the time it took me to cross the bridge.
I suspect the light rail plan AT has proposed might give a cycleway down Queen St a good nudge
Yep, I ride the cycleway from Waterview to the Uni every day and I can tell you it’s well patronised and usage is growing. I don’t think that many people actually know about it yet sadly and some dummies worry about how to find it once they get onto the NW cycle route. They need to know it’s well sign-posted and a blast to ride
The crazy Newton Rd / Ian McKinnon diversion is confusing for many people I believe. Add in the poor wayfinding along the remainder of the NW cycleway, it’s a surprise as many use it as they do. 🙂
Indeed, I have begun to feel uneasy about the push for a separate, self-contained, off-street cycle network.
In our present framework of auto-dominated streets, I agree it is necessary. But I do not see it as a desirable long-term answer. That surely has to be to reclaim ALL the streets from auto-dominance, to tame and scale back the motor-monster such that cycling along city streets no longer has to be some sort of extreme sport.
Such a change can only come about by serious investment in separate-right-of-way public transport (principally rail) to take the traffic burden and the need-for-speed away from urban streets.
To forsee forever the need for a dedicated warren of cycle viaducts and underpasses is to forsee forever the basic problem of auto-overdependence remaining.
The ideal is not an Auckland full of cycleways threaded between motorways, but an Auckland that no longer needs cycleways or motorways. IMHO.
Dave B (Wellington),
>> The ideal is not an Auckland full of cycleways threaded between motorways, but an Auckland that no longer needs cycleways or motorways.
I’d add some caveats to that statement:
1) Off-road paths can optimise travel time or carry excess traffic, so we will eventually them too, when cycling becomes popular (but not until the streets are genuinely full).
2) Especially in Auckland, short off-road bridges/tunnels across the motorway can heal severance (already done so in some suburbs, but not CMJ yet).
3) Scenic/recreational paths have unique value in themselves, and we wil need them in an ideal world (but not as the primary strategic focus today).
Otherwise, agreed. Key points regarding identifying auto-overdependence (even as it permeates bike planning), and shifting to transit instead.
Yes. The known properties of world class urban cycling infrastructure are of two distinct typologies: off-road and on-street
When the context is a road, and motorways are roads monomaniacally and on steroids then ‘off-road’ is the rule, ie full grade separation. But when the context is a city street then yes, full-frontage, on the street, suited and booted, is the thing.
I have no issue with getting the off road routes in first. Not least because NZTA has money, crazy money in fact, most of which is being wasted on monuments to last century thinking, aka the RoNS, but even a decimal point of this waste makes for glorious off-road, highly engineered, grade separate, TE 101 thinking, cycleways. These will give Auckland a great spine from which to build the on-street amenity. Well when AT/AC gets their funding priorities sorted.
So for now, with NZTA money, on their designation, and ‘motorways for another mode’ culture, I’m excited and not of a mind to complain. And in true kiwi style they’re giving us some pretty eccentric kit, which I love; both these routes; Grafton Gully, and now CMJ/Nelson St, are pretty wacky and will make international press, especially the later, now just wait for SkyPath… This really is a time to celebrate. This represents a cultural change in our institutions.
Patrick,
Framing the context as a corridor (road or city street) is partly the problem. Consider instead a “neighbourhood” or “area”. Then we can determine what mix of on-street and off-road paths will best serve it, in all directions, to all origins/destinations. With this approach, it should be evident that a “spine” is not required (and possibly not even useful); instead, each area should become a viable, incrementally growing, island of cycling opportunity. These can be linked by (much shorter) corridors afterwards, but will more likely expand and coalesce into a unified network. These bike-enabled neighbourhoods/suburbs/areas are what Auckland needs first and foremost — it will enable those short, local trips by everyday users, PT node integration, and eventually support even longer trips from door to door.
The “spine-first” approach is fraught with difficulty. It requires up-front investment with not as much return, yields a linear (rather than geometric) utility per kilometre, takes longer to build and become relevant to every marginal user with diminishing returns, and on and on. Probably the worst thing will be its legacy in shaping those tree-like outcrops of on-street development, and therefore urban form itself. They local extensions will be oriented towards the blessed regional cycleway (and transitively, the motorway), and not towards the local context (i.e. front doors, centres, PT nodes, schools). Just look at Beach Rd for an example.
Now, because it is recognisably cycling infrastructure, any dollar spent is inherently an economic positive; but it remains the least economic strategy of all plausible cycling strategies — hence, I think, not worth celebration.
The only justification I can see for this slow-motion concrete spill is that NZTA is somehow constrained to only doing so much. Maybe it’s the GPS, the NLTF, or NZTA’s motorway corridor boundary. We can’t accept that it’s a corridor boundary issue, because NZTA routinely spends bags of money outside it, for one reason or another. It’s not the NLTF because NZTA can co-fund with AT or whomever, as the GPS allows. It can’t be the GPS because as you rightly pointed out, cycling investment (I think even at its fullest useful amount) would barely move the needle on the motorway machine’s fuel tank, so to speak.
The only remaining reason then is to take what we can get, because that’s all NZTA is willing to give. This is neither a cultural change within our institutions (as you said, “motorways for another mode”) nor in our relationship as the public with them (placating us is tradition).
(Note: SkyPath’s alignment is fine because it has nowhere better to go.)
I have high standards but you have an appetite for complaint that I just can’t match… is anything ever worth doing?
Patrick,
Is anything ever worth doing? Yes, as I’ve already mentioned. Here, elaborated, a 10-point agenda for Auckland cycling:
1) Initiate an “locality-first” cycling programme co-funded by NZTA and AT. Prioritise the CBD, fringe and a series of suburbs for bike-enabling. Within each area, extensively audit and intervene across a dense grid of streets (patched with a minority of greenways and off-road paths to complete the grid). Bike-enabling means a variety of detailed mechanisms, including but not limited to cycle tracks, cycle lanes, bike signals, bike refuges, etc; throw out Austroads and use CROW if needed. Much of it can be done cheaply — for example, not every road needs a cycle track, obviously, but perhaps all right turns should be predictable and convenient.
Unlike the arbitrary patchwork of token treatments we are given on streets today, the idea is to ensure a multitude of routes in all directions opens up to the community, for short, local trips, PT integration, school trips, etc. I propose a focused effort to cohesively unlock a variety of door-to-door trips in well-studied areas.
We are seeing elements of this trickle down in the Unitary Plan, some Local Board area plans (e.g. K’Rd), the Green Party’s school routes policy, etc. but not the Auckland Cycling Network (itself an “evolving” document) or whatever activity plan NZTA follows. I’d like the effort to become consolidated, given a name, and to declare its intention clearly. Think Congestion Free Network, but at an altitude suited to cycling catchments. It should be user-centric at the lowest level, and come with timelines and targets at the highest level. Implementations should be rolled out cheaply and in a hurry, with prototypes that can be formalised later.
In rare cases, there are whiffs of progress, but so far they have all disappointed. Beaumont St is so watered-down, you’d better bring swimming trunks if you want to cycle there. Carlton Gore Rd is finally moving again, but half the car parking (at the key retail frontage) is already baked into concrete and tarmac. Dominion Rd was meant to refocus on the quiet neighbourhood streets (great!) but then implemented a shared path in a linear geometry (not great!). Northcote proposed to introduce protected cycle tracks, but remained oblivious to local context, ignored intersections and bus stops, and again generally sought to draw a long line line on a map.
2) Specifically for the CBD, as one of the areas above, a public bike share system of a viable and useful scale. HOP on/off, AT-branded, no ads, no registration, no helmets, no bullshit.
There’s Nextbike. And then there’s bike share. Let’s do bike share. (Apologies to Nextbike, not their fault.)
Some of the fleet could be electric, too. Imagine that, as a way of getting masses of people to try them out.
3) Moratorium on new on-street car parking in the cycle areas identified above, followed by a sinking lid policy. Reduce by 2-5% per annum (Copenhagen-style).
No sign of this happening. Nearest thing to progress is the shared spaces. But also for off-street parking, some minimum parking requirements are being challenged in the UP, and market forces are shifting prices/supply.
4) Moratorium & sinking lid on all bollocks infrastructure, including but not limited to: slip lanes, missing pedestrian crossing legs, pedestrian overbridges, rail level crossings, on-street shared paths and the like.
Slip lanes are disappearing in the city centre (except when they aren’t, like on Symonds St/Khyber Pass Rd), but nowhere else. A slip lane is threatening the Pohutukawa Six. All these should be off the table except in extreme cases, and even then should come with an expiry date and upgrade plan.
5) Upgrade all train stations practically overnight with abundant — even excessive — sheltered bike parking. Preferably also secured, but that can follow later.
Also happening, but ever so slowly. AT should apply the Sadik-Khan approach of doing it cheaply first, iterating later.
6) A motorway severance remediation programme, NZTA funded, CMJ priority.
Every kilometre or so, there should be a human-friendly, bike-friendly, child-friendly motorway crossing, of a standard at least that of the yellow bridge in Westgate. Around the CBD, there’s scope for a few more lightweight bridges in addition to the existing road bridges.
Some of this is identified in the City Centre Masterplan (“gateways”) and NZTA does tackle severance on a spot basis (usually tied to a larger project). I’d suggest the intent should be separated into its own distinct package, which places primary value not on a widened motorway, but on the existing community assets on either side of a motorway (whatever its width).
7) SkyPath.
No-brainer. (Preferably not as a PPP, but still.)
8) A bike parking request hotline/app/campaign, with actual teeth. Each time you struggle to find a bike parking spot, log it, and Auckland Transport will fix it within 90 days or explain why not (with appeal).
There is a bike parking team at AT. Their job appears to be to make it as difficult as possible to have bike parking installed. If they were serious, it would be no-questions-asked, and fully funded up to a truly reasonable limit. We also saw this work out successfully with Ludo Campbell-Reid on O’Connell St via Twitter. This should be an easy, routine process, and not one that soaks up advocacy resources. The general goal is to flood the streets with an oversupply of bike parking, so as to induce demand.
9) Fully fleshed-out code of practice for temporary traffic management with regard to cycling.
Generally, road workers follow the book, and the book is full of road safety wisdom. Unfortunately, the book has a blind spot when it comes to accommodating bikes (although, ironically, it does a better job of identifying road risk than do the general standards and codes). I’d suggest emulating Dutch or Danish standards.
10) End diesel buses.
A faceful of diesel smog on every ride is doing little to “promote cycling”, despite the patronising share-the-road ads on the back of every other bus. Even with serious intervention in infrastructure, buses will remain a fact of life for people on bikes, especially for those in bike-friendly neighbourhoods (as their urban form tends to be PT-friendly too).
I’ll stop at ten, as that’s a neat number that implies some kind of methodical editing. Really, this is a grab-bag assortment, but if some substantial part of the list, or anything else favourable that I’ve left out, appeared as a high priority in an agenda somewhere, I’d be pleased. As noted, where bits and pieces have turned up in places, I have found hope, if not cause for celebration.
Before you accuse me of naivety or wishful thinking, remember you asked what would be worth doing, and this is my answer. I know well that in reality’s rough transit, the elegant simplicity of a vision in only one person’s head does not survive. But then, is anything ever worth planning?
Non-motorist – Vision is great and sorely needed at official levels.
The issue is when people bow out at the vision stage and don’t want to step up to give their time to move that vision from idea to reality. Anyone can come up with a vision but doing the hard yards in boring/frustrating meetings and presentations with the decision makers is where the real work is done.
It would be great to get less visionaries and more doers. That’s what will start change.
It isn’t sexy or fun but it is effective and the more hands on deck the better. Right now a very small group are doing 99% of the work while being sniped at from the sidelines by keyboard warriors.
Yes, a lovely list, and who could disagree?
goosoid,
Who do you think is bowing out at the vision stage? If nothing else, discussing it publicly and with the editors on an influential blog about Auckland transport is self-evidently “acting” upon it, and not keyboard-warring. I and others are presenting and submitting from this angle in other democratic venues, as well as reaching out and listening to the wider public (the ultimate decision-makers) in whatever ways we can. You can try to argue these efforts have been ineffective, but you can’t say that vision isn’t backed up by action.
There’s no doubt that a very small group is doing most of the work in the wider picture, but remember this could also be a sign of a concentration of power due to somebody minding the gates. (I’ve experienced explicit exclusion that supports this view, e.g. when AT unequally weights cycling-themed submissions on certain projects.)
Waterfront looks great.
However, i do Hope things dont get too city centre focussed. The other 99.9% of Auckland has been neglected long enough and deserves attention especially if you are an old Waitakere, North Shore or Manukau ratepayer!
The west is getting the Waterview Cycleway, upgrades to the Northwestern Cycleway, and hopefully, the connection to New Lynn along the rail line. The Shore is hopefully relatively soon getting SkyPath, and SeaPath to Takapuna, and Albany Highway’s copenhagen lanes are under construction this year and next. Manukau is currently getting three major cycleway projects running west east (such as Browns Road and Weymouth Road) though admittedly those are old-style painted lanes only. AMETI will build a protected cycleway between Panmure and Pakuranga in the coming years.
There are projects all over the city, but at the moment the focus is on the City Centre. To a degree, that will stay that way – ALL cycling cities tend to have the highest cycle percentages in the core, be they Copenhagen, or Portland, or Auckland. Not to say money should not be spend further out, but when you are talking tight money, the inner city projects tend to perform better. It’s a difficult balancing act for cycle advocates as well.
The big change in Auckland would be if we can get kids riding to school. At this time there is very little focus on this, even though, in many cases, the solutions are dead cheap, comparatively. Thats what drives serious mode share in the Netherlands. There are over 270,000 primary / secondary students in the Auckland region. If we achieved just a 10% average bike mode share, that is 27,000 trips per day.
Oops, I made a mistake. As all trips are counted, whether it be PT or vehicles, that is 54,000 trips per day including the return. 54,000 bike trips in one day based on a conservative 10% bike mode share for Auckland students.
By making an exemplar of the CBD cycling, it reinforces the message to AC/AT and the public that cycling has a place, and that also helps normalise it and therefore evangelises the need for build out of cycling elsewhere.
As Max says with SkyPath and Seapath in place and the Waterfront Promenade – then Auckland will have a facility that is world class for cycling and walking.
It will be a major tourist drawcard to walk or cycle these. I reckon Skypath will generate enough tourist traffic on it to pay itself in 5 years – just like the original harbour bridge traffic did.
So then we just take a leaf out the motorway builders book and keep pointing out how popular all the cycling facilities have become so we need to extend it to other parts of the city.
The other point is that each local area will have a lot of local cycling facilities/cycleways, and there will be some long distance linkages (like NW Cycleway, GI to Tamaki Drive, Panmure to AMETI cycleway, Manukau cycleways) but the trains and ferries will also provide a valuable linkage between them for cyclists and pedestrians too.
No need to cycle/walk everywhere to experience the facilities – use the trains/ferries to get to whether you want and then cycle the rest.
Realist, I appreciate the point about considering the whole region, but it is fair to point out that the City Centre and its immediate fringe is home to 23% of all jobs in the region, and is visited by over 150,000 Aucklanders each day, making some 300,000+ journeys to or from town.
If you were going to build something anywhere and you wanted it to be well used, then the City Centre is the place to do it.
Great good to see look forward to checking out.
Sigh. Well done, Auckland, you’re well on the way. Spare a thought for us here in Wellington – where a well-intentioned, but naive and clumsy approach to our first ever on-road cycleway has combined with some distasteful local and Council politics… and we’re looking at years’ more delay. http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=74906 Oh well… if we break the trend of decades and achieve any meaningful improvement for transport cycling, Wellingtonians simply won’t know what to do with themselves.
Here’s a thought that may be of help to those who are becoming impatient! http://gothamist.com/2013/11/25/guerilla_street_signs_in_park_slope.php#photo-1