Could we “Ghentify” Auckland? A report from Velo-city 2024

As the Belgian city of Ghent shows, becoming a bike-friendly city is about so much more than enabling more cycling – it’s actually about reallocating valuable public space, and making connections that improve quality of life. In today’s guest post, former Auckland Councillor Pippa Coom reports from Ghent, where she’s just attended this year’s Velo-city, the annual world cycling summit.…
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Parking up in the RLTP

Last week, the Council endorsed the Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP) following it being signed off by the Regional Transport Committee – essentially just the Auckland Transport board with a different hat on – this, despite the RLTP not aligning with the Council’s own climate action plan.…
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A speed limit is not a target, and yet…

This is a guest post from longtime supporter Mr Plod, whose previous contributions include a proposal that Hamilton become New Zealand’s capital city, and that we should switch which side of the road we drive on. A recent Newsroom article, “Back to school for the Govt’s new speed limit policy“, outlines how despite “a mountain of evidence that higher speeds lead to more traffic crashes, injuries and deaths,” our current coalition Government is planning changes “which would force councils to raise many urban 30kph speed limits to 50kph, as well as removing permanent low-speed zones around schools”.…
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Connecting the dots and filling the gaps in our bike network

This is a guest post by Shaun Baker on the importance of filling the gaps in our cycling networks. It originally appeared on his blog Multimodal Adventures, and is re-posted here with kind permission. In our towns and cities in Aotearoa New Zealand, there are areas in our cycling networks that have little to no cycling infrastructure installed between existing separated cycle routes.…
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A blanket of misinformation

Two old sayings have been on my mind lately. The first is: “The pen is mightier than the sword”, describing the power of language and communication to help or to harm. The other, which captures the speed with which falsehoods can become ingrained and hard to undo, is: “A lie can run halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”…
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