A while back someone reminded me that Auckland Transport and NZTA have been collecting cycle count data from the new Grafton Gully and Beach Road cycleways. As they’re Auckland’s first high-quality separated cycleways in the city centre, I figured that it would be good to take a look at how they’re going.
After a few emails to the good people at Cycle Action Auckland and Auckland Transport’s walking and cycling team, we got ahold of daily cycle count data from 1 November 2014 to 25 May 2015. Matt’s subsequently received a lot more cycle counter data, so there will be a follow-up post looking at some other sites around the city.
But for now, here’s a graph of cycle use on Grafton Gully. The black line is a two-week moving average to show the trend in usage:
And here are cycle counts for the Beach Road cycleway, again with a two-week moving average to show the trend:
What should we make of these figures?
First, the cycleways seem to be beating their forecasts. From what I’ve heard, the business case for the cycleways assumed that an average of 200 cyclists would use Grafton Gully in the first year. Actual use is well above that – in the first seven months, there was an average of 257 cyclists per day on Grafton Gully.
That’s pretty consistent with what I predicted after reviewing some research on uptake on new infrastructure networks:
There’s likely to be a period of steady if not spectacular growth in demand as new projects come online, but under NZTA and AT’s current investment plans there will be gaps in the network for a number of years. At a certain point, though, the gaps between safe cycle infrastructure will be filled in, enabling rapid growth in demand as cycling becomes safe and useful for many more trips.
Given that AT has recently committed to a more ambitious investment programme for cycling, I’m hopeful that we can reach that tipping point faster.
A second point is that cycle counts move around quite a bit from month to month and day to day. Cycle counts hit a low in late December, when many people were out of town. And over the last two months they’ve dropped a bit from their high levels in January-March, as people cycle less in the winter.
Interestingly, daily cycle counts fall considerably on the weekends – notice the regular spikes downward on the graphs above. This suggests to me that the cycleways are mainly being used for work and education trips, rather than for leisure or sport.
That’s an encouraging sign. It’s good that cycleway investments are being used for practical, everyday purposes. They’re not just playthings for lycra-clad “weekend warriors”. And, when people commute in to work or uni on the cycleways, rather than on the road, it means fewer cars on the road and/or fewer bikes in the bus lanes. For example, when I bike in to town, I tend to cycle downhill on Symonds St and come back up Grafton Gully – it just feels safer to not battle the buses going uphill. (And healthier on the lungs…)
On the other hand, the lower levels of weekend usage suggest that people may not be doing much quaxing up and down Grafton Gully. The city centre is humming on fine weekends, but perhaps there’s not as much demand to cycle in? However, this year’s Open Streets day – Sunday 12 April – was one of the most popular days for the cycleways, with 418 bicycles counted on Beach Road and 428 on Grafton Gully. So perhaps the lesson is: give people a reason to come by bike, and they will!
Matt is going to follow up with another post looking at the other cycle counters, so if you have any sharp ideas about how to analyse or present the data please leave them in the comments.
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Haven’t been able to look at the data yet myself – what is the directional split for north-south on the Grafton Gully Cycleway? More downhil than uphill? Or do people do what you said – prefer to be off-road on the slower uphill?
Actually, not sure the counters included directionality (but the manual cycle counts we did for AT a few weeks ago did, so that will be a nother data set to add into the mix soon).
Thanks for the helpful comments Max – I had thought about correlating ridership with weather but haven’t had the time. Glad you have already had a go!
The data we received didn’t split out travel by direction. Also, it seems to only measure cyclists, not pedestrians, but I’m not totally certain about that.
I am working on a large set of manual pedestrian and cycle counts right now for Nelson / Pitt / Kroad area, with lots of finegrained data, including turn counts at a dozen intersections. Once AT is happy to release data, will be very interesting for people to pore over. Has been done as part of the “before” study ahead of the Nelson Street cycleways.
The section of the GG cycleway from Whitaker downhill also has a lot of walkers, are they counted?
Where’s the count point? I’ve just got back to my Whitaker Pl office from visiting a customer on the other side of the Gully, biked the cycleway between Whitaker and Grafton Rd only, would that have got counted above and/or does that count as Quaxing (in work clothes, going to meetings with customers)?
I think quaxing requires purchase, doesn’t it? What you did may have “only” been “cycling for transport”. Not as pithy a term, I guess…
Generally, the counters have separate ped/cycle sensors (except in a few cases where they are cycle-only).
Hm, what if it’s for business, and/or delivering a purchase, or a service? (ICT/MSP equipment and support)
I think then it’s utility cycling 😉
Ah 🙂
I’d say quaxing requires some kind of exchange (which could something for nothing, or non-commercial, or arranged at another time), and/or physically carrying stuff (which could be a small thing), and non-car travel (preferably transit or bike). The more factors you tick, the more likely you are quaxing — it is a spectrum.
Also noting that rain can be a big factor day-to-day. I looked at this two years ago:
http://caa.org.nz/raining-on-your-parade/
Sounds like a request to add another line of data…daily precipitation….
From my daily commute in the winter I note it’s the Lycra (or those dressed in appropriate gear ie the hard core) crowd that are the ones left.
The hipsters are too soft for the cold or melt in the rain perhaps?
These might just be the same people, dressed differently. If it’s sunny out I tend to bike in jeans and a normal top. But if it’s wet I generally wear running shorts and a water-repellant jacket and change at my destination.
Can’t judge a book by its cover and all that…
I must admit that I am one of those who bike down it, but prefer to bike back up Symonds Street.
The main reason for this isn’t the steepness (though that counts when I’m feeling lethargic) but the remoteness on dark winters’ nights when I’m biking home (usually between 7 and 9pm).
I’m a big bloke who should theoretically be able to take care of himself, but I still prefer the more populated Symonds Street when biking home in the dark.
Admittedly haven’t biked in the past 4 weeks before today (started again today) due to extenuating circumstances, but when I ride home from work it’s via GG, which is really well lit. Feels safe to me.
Feels safer than Symonds to me.
I do the same, but mostly because of laziness. I find Symonds St a lot less intimidating at 6.30-ish pm than in the morning, so the easier gradient calls to me. I go up GG instead if the roads are slippery or I’m going home during the peak. GG’s well lit and I feel pretty safe, so it’s just a steepness-vs-traffic calculation.
“…This suggests to me that the cycleways are mainly being used for work and education trips, rather than for leisure or sport…”
Though a die hard minority still seem to think that well used but badly lit dual purpose cycleways offer an excellent place for their high speed peloton to train at 6.30am in the morning.
Given those numbers, how realistic are the skypath projected patronage figures of +2,000 (paying) trips per day, 7 days a week?
I would say very realistic or even pessimistic. You only have to look at the sheer volume of bikes on the Devonport and Bayswater ferries to see how many people want to cycle across the harbour.
Some of those will be on the Devonport peninsula and won’t use the bridge but many are coming from further north and the bridge will be a faster and cheaper option. And that is not even accounting for all the people who will see the Skypath as a better option than driving from places like Birkenhead and Northcote.
The Skypath will exceed all projections – I guarantee it.
I’ve seen Fullers figures of about max of 20 bikes on the peak hour Ferries. That is a long, long way from 130 per hour, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week that Skypath is predicting.
I support Skypath, just not the way the financials are being manipulated. Either it’s profitable and the the private sector can pay for it or it’s not and we discuss openly whether it’s a good investment for the council to make.
I wouldnt look to the ferries for any direct comparison. I will be selling my motorbike once skypath is built, but would not bother with biking via ferry.
You realise that 2000 per day is all users, not just cyclists, and that many who park at the ferry would probably ride, and those 200 or so at Devonport would be 400 trips.
Barbs from Cycle Action Auckland doesn’t think Skypath patronage figures are correct – IN fact she scoffed at them and said ‘NEVER’
Wrong. she said that 8,000 users from the Northern side would never mean 8000 cars coming into Northcote Point.
From NW cycleway gets an average is about 900 per day and that has a lot of alternative routes nearby whereas Skypath is a funnel so 2000 per day seems about right. It also has the benefit of being a tourist attraction which the other cycleways don’t
NW cycleway is free too.
And SkyPath’s patrongae predictions are some, what, 80% recreational & tourist users, most on foot, not commuters. We just chewed that over for 6 days during the hearing… 🙂
It’s a totally different proposition than the GG Cycleway or the Northwestern. One is a transport facility, the other is a people attraction AND a transport facility.
Only cycling nerds like me make their family & visiting friends cycle on the Northwestern Cycleway – but a lot more Aucklanders will take their family & friends to do a walk or cycle on our bridge…
Quite, the best comparison is Sydney.
Skypath figures for Year 1 are 60% of Sydney figures in a city 1/3rd of the population . And the Sydney one is free!
The Skypath numbers sadly don’t pass a basic sanity check.
The Sydney bridge sees 1,000,000 cycle trips a year despite the path involving 55 steps. Skypath is projected to see 800,000 total trips a year including all pedestrians and cyclists. It doesn’t pass a sanity test if you lie about the comparison figures.
This is pretty good, considering that it isn’t yet fully connected with the rest of the network.
It’s interesting to see that high plateau in March and the drop afterwards. Uni students biking in during March (avoiding March Madness?) then switching back to the bus as the weather gets dodgy? The drop between March and the beginning of winter is less than I would have expected, though.
Previous interview counts showed that Uni students make up less of a share of cyclists than I would have expected (I think at NW Cycleway / Upper Queen Street, it was less than 15%). But for that too, we will soon have much better data.
I work at the north end of uni and Grafton Gully is awesome for me, but my feeling is that a lot of students prefer Symonds St as a more direct route to the rest of campus. I see heaps of students walking on GG and the bridge up to Whitaker Pl, though. It can get pretty packed between five to and five past the hour during semester. Looking forward to seeing the data!
Shame people haven’t got the idea that cycling in winter can be a joy! I have just started commuting from home (bottom of Anzac Ave) to work (Victoria Street), then to daycare (Off Newton Road) and home, so taking the GG and then Beach Road all the way almost to my door, with my 18 month old on the front. Her face gets cold after whizzing down there, but we do ride, in winter coats, gloves and raincoats if necessary, in almost all weather and it’s no problem at all. I love the blast of refreshing air, and I really feel like we get to experiment the passing seasons.
If you see us going past in GG, smile and say hi. The little one just loves saying hello. We’re on the ebike with the monkeylectric lights and red panniers.
I’ve been surprised how many are still cycling this winter. I was not riding the NW / GG combo in previous years, but there are definitely a sense of more people willing to keep going this year. Hopefully another aspect of good infrastructure – one less aspect impacting on your journey means one more reason to get on the bike in the morning even if it _seems_ like poor weather outside. Most of the time it is never as bad as it seems from inside the house….
That’s awesome. I will be sure to wave to you and your wee passenger if I see you.
Have to agree. While I haven’t done it in a while, cycling on fine, clear but cold day is a real pleasure. Very invigorating, even at a gentle pace. You don’t sweat either!
Love the linked explanation of quaxing – Dick may have inadvertently sparked the quaxing revolution!
Which reminds me. Take a look at the Countdown on Victoria Street.
It doesn’t have parking, not a single space. Yet it’s somehow full of people all the time.
The map shows Beaumont Street south of Fanshawe as an existing cycleway. Does anybody know the status of that? It’s right outside my front door and I’ve never seen it.
I would assume they’re including the path in Vic Park as a completed cycle way? Bit of a push, but Beaumont Street in Wynyard is also included and that has a very lousy shared path and no actual connection to the Waterfront shared path. Whole thing was canned due to businesses complaining about a loss of car parking, and claims on here by posters that a cycleway would destroy all the marine businesses and result in dozens of vegan cafes opening up instead……
They could do with a few more vegan cafes down in Wynyard Quarter.
Indeed, could do with some more in Auckland full stop.
I queried this with Auckland Transport. Apparently when the footpath was upgraded alongside the new skatepark it was intended to become a shared path and got registered on AT’s asset database as “complete” even though the signage didn’t get installed. I understand this is going to get sorted very soon along with the rest of Beaumont St and the connection to the Westhaven promenade.
Is there any ‘before’ data for Beach Road? i.e. how many cyclists where there before the cycleway was built?
Not to my knowledge. I believe they only installed the automatic cycle counters as part of the project. Someone else – Max? – might know if any formal cycle counts were undertaken beforehand.
There were manual cycle counts on two days (a Thursday and a Saturday) before the paths went in. AT probably will be okay with releasing that data once the follow-up count 1 year later are in.
Peter,
>> ‘And, when people commute in to work or uni on the cycleways, rather than on the road, it means fewer cars on the road and/or fewer bikes in the bus lanes. For example, when I bike in to town, I tend to cycle downhill on Symonds St and come back up Grafton Gully – it just feels safer to not battle the buses going uphill. (And healthier on the lungs…)’
That is an interesting observation, given that when Grafton Gully was publicly proposed, I feared that indeed it could function as an opportunity cost to improving Symonds St. If you’re right — and counts on Symonds St may indicate it — then it seems to have come true.
Having “fewer bikes in the bus lanes” sounds good, but it comes at the cost of having fewer bikes on Symonds St itself. Clearly, the optimal outcome would be to have fewer bikes in the bus lanes while having more bikes in protected tracks on Symonds St.
However, if you conclude that the best outcome is actually to have fewer bikes in the bus lanes by shifting them down the gully, then you must be suggesting that Symonds St cannot or will not be improved for cycling. This would be a terrible shame, as Symonds St is inherently an important street for people to access and to connect into the rest of the street grid, including by bicycle, and for multimodal public transit integration.
The salient point here is that given the objective facts of the gully path’s inferior grid connectivity, frontage exposure and topography, every decision to ride there instead of Symonds St is a mark against the deplorable design of the street. It must be fixed — and the gully path cannot be considered a good, general-purpose alternative but rather a misguided, least-bad option for now.
(Interestingly, one argument a cycling advocate offered against my opportuntiy cost hypothesis was that Grafton Gully would act as a bicycle fountain, flooding the local streets — including Symonds — with so many riders that a stronger demand-based case could be built. Make of that what you will.)
>> ‘This suggests to me that the cycleways are mainly being used for work and education trips, rather than for leisure or sport … people may not be doing much quaxing up and down Grafton Gully’
The geometry of the route simply doesn’t foster short, local trip-making, trip chaining, multimodal PT integration, or opportunistic or defensive detours. It’s all about planned, intentional, linear, directed travel, with a significant minimum threshold of distance before it becomes worthwhile. (This minimum is artificially deflated due to alternatives such as Symonds St being worse than necessary.) So no surprise there little quaxing.
The environment down there isn’t terribly pleasant near motorway traffic; the path feels narrow as it is bi-directional; it occasionally gets very fast; it occasionally gets interrupted by long/awkward signal crossings; there are no sticky places to linger in; and it is generally shared with pedestrians. So it often makes for a poor social riding experience, whether as a couple or family with children or in a bunch. Thus, it’s also no surprise there is relatively little leisure and recreational use.
The answer, of course, is to make a liveable, walkable, bikeable street environment that can accommodate 8-to-80 use, high street grid connectivity, and public transit; and not to tuck away trails in gullies between motorway and bush.
I agree with all your points and in an ideal world we would have had protected cycle lanes up and down Symonds Street, it’s where I’d rather ride and GG hasn’t to date been a route I’ve taken to get anywhere. However, as it stood money was there for this to be built and it’s good that NZTA spent the money on this rather than being gobbled up in the budget of another urban motorway. I don’t think its absence would have accelerated any plans for changes to Symonds Street. In fact, I doubt we’ll see anything happen to Symonds Street until trams are put through later this decade (that proposal at the very least would have delayed any moves), until then a bypass that works for some people is better than nothing at all in my opinion.
BBC,
>> “a bypass that works for some people is better than nothing at all in my opinion”
This is the rub. Supposedly we face a choice between something unspecified and nothing at all. Supposedly we don’t have a choice of something that’s good enough (i.e. meets a minimum standard or specification of community need), nevermind something that’s good, or even something that’s great (you know, like the world’s most liveable city might have). I say this is not true. We can demand better treatments where it matters, such as on Symonds St. We can organise, advocate, campaign, lobby and press for it. You might question whether that approach will produce anything; but we know avoiding it ensures it won’t happen, we know that it has worked for other outcomes (such as the CRL in the public transit sphere), and anyway there is only one way to find out: by genuinely trying. That we advocates, campaigners, enthusiasts and whatnot haven’t collectively prioritized a proper grid of bikeable streets is a problem — after Auckland Transport and Council’s and NZTA’s failings — but it is one we can solve ourselves.
>> “it’s good that NZTA spent the money on this rather than being gobbled up in the budget of another urban motorway”
NZTA could have spent the money in any number of ways that would have been better than on either another urban motorway or the gully path. If NZTA was really serious about walking and cycling improvements, they would spend those millions not on parallel paths alongside the motorway, but rather on dozens of paths across the motorway corridor. The biggest physical externality of the motorway corridor is its severance. The least NZTA can do is to bridge it with walking and cycling links, to heal the broken street grids on either side, permitting more short, local, frequent, utilitarian trips by a more diverse range of people. This is a question of geometry, not unlike what we see in public transport networks (i.e. frequent grids).
Besides the motorway corridor, NZTA is very well capable of co-funding projects on any part of the transport network. Their money could easily have leveraged AT’s investment in street upgrades, such as on Dominion Rd, among many others.
>> “in an ideal world we would have had protected cycle lanes up and down Symonds Street”
In an ideal world, we would have had a pre-existing bike network, largely along streets, ubiquitously connecting every front door to every other front door, as well as parks, mountains, beaches and natural spaces.
Without the counterfactual, in an ideal world, we would have a serious plan to implement excellent bike infrastructure across all our streets within a matter of years, not decades, to be rolled out in sections of optimal grids starting today. It would aim to bring neighbourhood after neighbourhood “online”, over a period of a year or two each, taking a complete streets approach to every street within. It would have measurable mode share goals, in excess of Dutch or Danish levels.
In a more realistic world, we would at least aim to build separated infrastructure on major arterials such as Symonds St, over a decade or so. We would not seek to relegate bike traffic from in-between front doors, to a garden path by the motorway. Expecting that Symonds St — just one street out of thousands — should have a minimum decent standard of cycle treatment, is far from ideal. It’s very much a pragmatic and incremental target.
BBC,
>> ‘I don’t think [Grafton Gully’s] absence would have accelerated any plans for changes to Symonds Street’
Note that in the City Centre package of AT’s cycle network proposal, there are a number of East-West routes identified across the CBD but only two North-South routes. The first North-South route on the Western side of the CBD is Nelson St (good), plus the Nelson St off-ramp (questionable), and/or Pitt St (great). But the seond North-South route on the Eastern side is Grafton Gully and not Symonds Street. This is despite the criteria for the Urban Cycling Fund requiring “Connected networks”, “Cycle facilities on primary corridors”, “An increase in utility cycling journeys” and “Innovative, high quality infrastructure”.
In other words, Symonds St has been overlooked as a cycling corridor in a connected, bikeable street grid because there is a red herring nearby that makes it seem redundant. Funds are limited, so prioritization matters. The fact that Symonds St wasn’t set up as a priority — out of deference to Grafton Gully — is why it has missed out on this funding opportunity.
The loss of Symonds St is geometrically even worse because the gully path does not even intersect with the East-West corridor of K’Rd/Grafton Bridge, despite the misleading map. Whole categories of short, direct trips become longer and convoluted as a result.
You’re watching opportunity cost unfold in slow motion.
I’m not sure I agree that Symonds St is missing out because of GG. In my view AT have put it in the too-hard basket primarily because of the bus volumes, and because they’re scared to make the reductions in parking and SOV lanes that would be necessary to accommodate both buses and bikes. GG does give them a figleaf for continuing to do nothing, but in the absence of GG we’d still be sharing with the buses, or at most they’d have done something as ridiculous and ineffective as the Dominion Rd parallel routes.
It would also help if the university wasn’t so hostile to cycling. They’d need to cooperate in order to do anything about that narrow stretch between Wellesley and Alfred St.
Chris,
Yes, you’re right that there is a risk of nothing happening on Symonds St regardless of Grafton Gully — that was not my contention. The trouble is that with Grafton Gully, we can be sure that nothing will happen on Symonds St for as long as its “fig leaf” function is in play — as can be seen in AT’s UCF proposal. The best thing to do now that it exists is to show how and why it is not an acceptable general-purpose alternative to Symonds St, so that change can happen after all, even if it is not guaranteed (because nothing good ever is, with AT).
You’re also right that Symonds St poses technical and political challenges, but then so does any other street or non-street worth building. Even Grafton Gully presented engineering and political difficulties. Symonds St is not unique in that respect, so the mere fact that AT is scared to make changes should not deter us. If Symonds St is too hard, then what hope does any other street have?
Consider that Symonds St has a high bicycle ridership already, despite the conditions, so a demand-based case is already strong; it is geometrically well-endowed with frontage and grid connections; its ridgeline topography is near optimal (hence its long history as a travel route); its heavy PT use only provides arguments for better cycling infrastructure, from safety to multimodal integration (even the Tramways Union would agree); it has relatively little car parking already, but what there is can be converted to bike lanes; it is very, very wide; it is an Auckland asset, but one that is poorly treated. I could go on, but the point is it’s ripe for the picking.
I used GG as a few times as a novelty, but it doesn’t go where I want to go—I’ll keep playing Symonds St roulette (like a lot of other cyclists).
Replies have run out of nesting, so this is for Non-motorist @ 6.30pm
I’m not arguing against the need for bike-enabling Symonds St, far from it – I think it’s crucial, for all the reasons you describe. I guess I’m less pessimistic, or less convinced of how much difference a figleaf makes. If we successfully argue that people on bikes deserve a permeable grid like everyone else, the fact of having one north-south route won’t obviate the need for other north-south routes to different places. AT should be able to understand the principle that bypass routes don’t replace local roads, much like cars get to choose between Symonds St and the motorway depending on their needs. And in the meantime, I’m glad to have a safe route to uni, even if it’s not as convenient as it could be.
Chris,
>> “I guess I’m less pessimistic, or less convinced of how much difference a figleaf makes. If we successfully argue that people on bikes deserve a permeable grid like everyone else, the fact of having one north-south route won’t obviate the need for other north-south routes to different places.”
Of course it objectively won’t obviate the need to improve Symonds St, but it has already obviated Symonds St from the cycle network after at least two opportunities to get it right (i.e. the original Gully funds, and now the UCF funding proposal). I expect this will continue.
>> “AT should be able to understand the principle that bypass routes don’t replace local roads”
We already know that AT/NZTA favour convoluted cycle routes, as has happened around Dominion Rd quietways recently, Carlton Gore (in relation to Khyber Pass), and for a longer time along the Northwestern path and other instances. Their overarching cycle network plan proposes a functional-hierarchical classification that accounts for nothing like frontage exposure, grid connectivity, directness, local catchments, PT integration, etc. So it’s hard to imagine that AT/NZTA will spontaneously discover the right priorities, and we’re not helping them by overstating the utility of these subpar network components.
>> “much like cars get to choose between Symonds St and the motorway depending on their needs”
This cuts to the heart of the misunderstanding, I think.
This kind of decision matrix suits car travel given that motorway-shaped journeys across motorway-like distances bears utility to most drivers, due to inherent properties of automobiles (velocity spread; sensitivity to cross-traffic; following distances; travel range), of auto-oriented land use (parking supply; dendritic street geometry), and of transport economics (income-adjusted velocity; fuel prices; subsidies).
This analogy does not translate well to urban bicycle travel, which has optimal utility for most people for comparatively short, local trips directly between (multiple) front doors, and integration with public transit for longer journey legs. Mass bicycle use in cities requires compact urban form, with a dense grid of routes that has high exposure to frontage, and a high frequency of intersections.
To illustrate with just two aspects:
* Cars go from 15km/h on a quiet street, to consistently 100km/h on a motorway bypass, whereas bikes go from 15km/h on a quiet street to maybe briefly 30km/h on a “bypass”. The difference should be obvious. One consequence, for example: using the Marchetti constant of commute time, it’s clear that the payoffs (such as lower housing costs) for travelling along a motorway by car should be far greater than when travelling by bike.
* Cars are highly sensitive to cross-traffic — they struggle with perpendicular streams of traffic merging together. The basis of a motorway is to eliminate this possibility. Meanwhile, bicycles, like pedestrians, thrive in cross-traffic, smoothly merging without controlled intersections or gateways. This means that bicycles (in car-free spaces) can enjoy the utility of high intersection density (putitng more places within reach of a short trip) without the disutility of cross-traffic.
So the motorway mentality of bypasses, ramps, and dendritic “links” — typified by Grafton Gully — are exactly missing the point of mass urban cycling.
Even if that abbreviated argument doesn’t convince you, consider that motorway bypasses are generally built as an optimization after the fact, around existing congestion found on local streets that already accommodate motor vehicles at capacity. To contrast: what are we bypassing on Symonds St? We have hardly overcongested it with bikes, and indeed we cannot even say that the street properly accommodates them to begin with. If we were genuinely applying a “bypass” justification, we should begin by saturating the local area with on-street bike infrastructure, then wait until demand grows to exceed supply, and finally add a gully path to take excess traffic if no other option is available.
You could say that Symonds St is at capacity for bikes, but it just so happens to have a low limit. That’s unacceptable because we should have much higher ambitions for a street that is an underrated asset in the network, where all people should have quality access, starting with walking, cycling and transit.
You could say that the gully bypass may eventually be needed anyway, so why not accept it now? Firstly, we don’t know that it will be needed, or that better options will not exist — that’s a tough call to make so far in advance, working off such a low base of cycling modeshare. Secondly, even if we suppose it will be needed, it’s about priorities. We’re going to need all sorts of infrastructure in Auckland — some would argue that will include urban motorways, so should we build them anyway too? The point of strategy and advocacy is to identify what to do and what not to do, when, in what order, based on what information, and all with limited resources.
i would like to know. To gather the information for your servey, what method do you use to assimilate data from Grafton Gully. Is it a manual calculation or controlled by computer etc…does someone stand down there or a cable is run across the path?
For a short-term cycle count, it’s relatively straightforward to use custom rubber tubes connected to a counter (e.g. MetroCounts). The tubes need to be softer than your average road ones because bikes are lighter.
For permanent counters, inductive loops of wire in the ground are often used; essentially a glorified metal detector. There are a number of good technologies out there, e.g. EcoCounter. There are also other clever systems that can use infrared beams, etc – often important when trying to separate out pedestrian and cycle count numbers on the same path.
You can of course also just have a person stationed on site to count (still useful for complex intersections) but of course you can’t have them stationed there 24/7.
There are both permanent loop counters, as well as before/after manual counts.
BIKELASH, This item is of interest, How to talk to others about cycling:
.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/two-experts-on-the-words-and-images-that-defuse-anti-bike-sentiments?utm_source=Sightline Institute&utm_medium=web-email&utm_campaign=Sightline News Selections
Between Grafton Gully and Beach rd cycleway theres a street(Churchill st cycle way on footpath ) which is closed off to through traffic ,all its used for is parking pay & display ,The new street light lamps are over the road, did someone fit them the wrong way around ? at night theres no cars there, but we still use the cycleway at night.Its an easy fix with steel octipoles just lift the top section off turn it 180 deg and put it back on. Max do you know who could fix it ?
I thought the exact same thing tonight Marty. There’s also quite a lot of the street lamps at the bottom of the GG path which are out of order. A whole row of them at the last bit before Alten Rd. Have been meaning to work out where to report it.
Hi Claire
Report such issues here:
https://at.govt.nz/about-us/contact-us/report-a-problem/