The following is an op-ed I wrote which ran in The Post on November 20th.
On a sunny winter day in June, I attended “Party on the Path”, celebrating the opening of the Point Chevalier to Westmere project. Thousands of people blissfully wheeled and walked the three-kilometre route, enjoying the festivities. Elders with mobility devices, teens on scooters, family groups.
And kids. So many kids! Some trailing their parents, some pedalling ahead, others as free as a bird without an adult in sight.
The project delivered a full rebuild of Meola Road, new bus stops, smoother footpaths, safer crossings, more trees, and dedicated cycleways that now safely link two adjacent villages. The results are a roaring success. Shops and cafes along the route already need more bike parking.
This local win echoes the quiet boom of cycling around the city. You may be surprised to learn, for example, that at morning peak, as many people now bike into Auckland’s city centre as arrive by ferry.
City centre access by mode in the morning peak, March 2020 to July 2024
Even so, the city’s cycleway network remains a work in progress, with many gaps – including long-planned (and long-delayed) links from the new paths of Pt Chevalier connecting along the Great North Road ridge into the city.
Imagine if random stretches of city streets were left unbuilt for years, or decades? If large chunks of any urban drive involved gravel roads, dirt tracks, or missing bridges? You’d think twice about how and where you got around.
This is the ridiculous reality for cycling, and it artificially suppresses thousands of daily trips people would otherwise happily make by bike.
The thing is, we don’t build cycleways just for those who already ride. We build them for those who currently don’t feel safe to ride, including most kids, many women, older people and disabled people, and families.
And when we do build cycleways, the same phenomenon that fills new roads with congestion comes into play: induced demand.
Induced demand tells us that the better and more convenient you make something, the more people will want to use it. So, if you improve the infrastructure for a given way of getting around, more people will travel that way, because it makes more sense for them.
But when it comes to driving, there’s a glaring anomaly. The more people who drive, the worse things are for everyone. If you try to solve congestion by increasing road capacity – say by adding yet another lane – any improvements are ephemeral, and you end up with worse congestion than ever.
Way back in 1955, the great American Urbanist Lewis Mumford quipped that ‘adding car lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity’. Ironically, that very same year, the 1955 Master Transportation Plan set Auckland on the path that’s since funnelled billions into road projects, while congestion and productivity have steadily gotten worse.
The good news is that more recently, especially since the formation of the Super City in 2010, our largest city has slowly increased investment in public transport and active transport. But there’s a lot to catch up on.
As the bike network rolls out in fits and starts around Tāmaki Makaurau, it sometimes meets with resistance. Any change naturally raises questions. But a tiny minority, including certain politicians, love to exploit this uncertainty, using it to beat up opposition and prevent any change whatsoever.
These reactive opponents like to claim that because most people currently drive, we just need to make driving ‘easier’ by adding more lanes and building more roads. They wilfully ignore the decades of research (and local experience!) that shows this just leads to more driving, which worsens both congestion and quality of life.
The flip side of “induced demand” is that when you invest in alternative ways to get around, people will gladly switch. Safe cycleways let more of us bike to where we need to go – work, school, shops, social visits – which saves money (bikes are far cheaper than cars), is great for our health, and is fun!
Safe cycleways also dramatically empower parents and kids – giving kids independent access to school, the dairy, their mates’ places and so much more, and freeing parents from chauffeur duties, saving hours of productive (or leisure) time.
And safe cycleways turn out to be great for drivers. When people can swap short car trips for a quick journey by bike, there are fewer cars on the road at rush hour, freeing up space for those who need to drive whether for reasons of work, accessibility, or sheer convenience.
Of course, the same goes for bus lanes, better public transport, more walkable streets. The more options people have, the more they’ll use the one that works best for their needs. And for many trips in a city, that won’t always be a car. What’s not to like about freedom of choice?
Meola Road looking east at golden hour – mid December 2024
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Really disappointing how low the train mode share is on that graph.
But really, cycling is great. I’ve had it as my main commute method since 2016. Have rode about 50,000kms in this time. Huge health and money benefits.
To be fair the trains (especially the Western ones) have had a hammering over the past few years. Even when operating services are often ‘erratic’.
When commute I mostly hybrid, bike to train, train to Grafton, bike to Victoria Park area. I guess that helps the bike and train counts!
I realise I’m biased as a confident on-road cyclist, but the best value-for-money upgrades you could give cycling in Auckland is making one of the central isthmus bus lanes 24 hours. Likely Dominion Rd, but Mt Eden Rd would work as well.
Useless for kids and the nervous unfortunately (so it only makes sense because it’d be so cheap), but makes for a significantly less stressful and dangerous ride for those on ebikes and road bikes (and it mostly benefits buses anyway)
Agree. Also need to do something about Mt Albert / Mt Smart, a central isthmus crosstown is almost non-existent.
100%. The lack of bike priority on Mt Albert/Mt Smart pisses me off to no end.
Quality separated bike ways are great when the road is too hostile to share.
But you can quickly and cheaply create a well connected walking and cycling network by physically slowing cars on residential streets, where at the moment even drivers are scared to park their vehicles.
You have to talk car, which means somewhat savage speed tables, chicanes, roundabouts, bollards, narrower roadways, street trees and protected bays for on-street parking. People need safe driving and parking, too.
Car no talk signage, time limits in itty bitty fonts and legalese; car talk smashy smashy timber, steel and concrete.
A lot of the cycle network is the low speed, low traffic streets where everyone can use them safely – if car drivers understand that’s what those streets are. The whole look and feel, including signs that are easy to read, whatever your first language, must be different from the whizz-along, get somewhere in a hurry streets that make up all but four minutes of your journey, which need protection for people on bikes, small wheels and feet.
I actually find residential streets pretty most scary at rush hour. Normally used by rat runners, speeding between speed bumps, and I have to keep pulling out into narrow roads to pass parked cars. It would be nice to use the main road instead, but often that’s just suicide.
The Dominion Road “parallel” cycle routes (as well as being as parallel as boiled spagnetti) are particularly hideous for aggressive rat running. I once had a nasty incident with an angry idiot who was covinced that my cycling in Kiwitea Street was depriving of his God-given freedom to drive slightly faster in his shitbox car.
This. The constant need to weave in and out of parked vehicles while been aggressively overtaken by vehicles travelling too fast for residential areas makes residential streets feel just as bad as arterial roads. AT have really not helped this with the blanket speed increases this year – in my area they replaced every 30km reminder sign throughout the suburb with a 50km one, so now there are a constant procession of signs (on telephone poles, beside speed bumps, either side of dips) encouraging motorists to try and hit 50km as they slalom their way down a road that is too narrow for two vehicles to pass safely between the parked cars…..
We’re worse off now than before the safer speeds were introduced in the first place.
“Of course, the same goes for bus lanes, better public transport, more walkable streets. The more options people have, the more they’ll use the one that works best for their needs. And for many trips in a city, that won’t always be a car. What’s not to like about freedom of choice?” Yes – Choices & Options for a Solution.
You’d think the current governemnt could see the virture of freedom of choice; this is one of the cornerstones of Conservatism. But noooooooooooooo! Choice Is WOKE!
“a work in progress, with many gaps”: I think that is partly due to them doing a little bit everywhere, instead of starting in the centre and working outwards. It would be like building random bus routes everywhere, instead of starting where the demand is highest.
I am probably biased, but there is virtually no cycle facility on the central isthmus, yet that seems like the most obvious place to start.
Agree but also think the planners need to create infrastructure that enables short trips -so last kms to transit or shops/town centres etc. Most of our existing infrastucture seems to enable longish commutes but very little that actively encourages short rides to shops, schools, round the corner. Even the upgrade to Henderson Train Station is not doing anything for those who could arrive on bikes ( “bike parking? we can add that later if there is demand”
Pt Chev – Gey Lynn – Westmere was the start in one place, deliver a connected network working out from the centre plan. This is just how far it’s got as yet.
You’ve basically described what the Auckland Cycling Programme Business Case is/was. Clearly showed that the best place for investment in cycling was the inner city and isthmus. Most density of jobs, education, and residential land uses.
As insider says, this is way the Grey Lynn/Inner West area was chosen first.
Just the ‘delivery arm’ of AT was amputated back in around say 2018/2019 and it all (west mostly all) just sort of just stopped.
To me there seems to be all sorts of random investments around that aren’t part of that strategy. For example $44.3 million for the New Lynn to Avondale path, and nothing that I have seen on the Central Isthmus.
The abolition of the Auckland Transport’s Walking and Cycling Team was a travesty. It led to four years of missed opportunity with a (relatively) pro-cycling central government, ejected a well-run team and squandered momentum on projects throughout Auckland.
Whether Shane Ellison was badly advised, naïve, or stupid, we will never know. Incredibly he was STILL defending abolishing the Cycling and Walking Team four years later.
https://www.metromag.co.nz/city-life/city-life-transport/the-trouble-with-auckland-transport
“He still defends it, arguing Covid-induced funding shortfalls are really responsible for cycling’s regression. But a council planner says getting rid of cycling ‘champions’ has been disastrous. “It’s half the reason for the mess that’s been the last five years,” he says. “It’s always difficult to do anything and so therefore you need passionate, dedicated teams to smash their way through overly difficult processes. And when you get rid of that team, that just makes it almost insurmountable to do the right thing.”
In the absence of those champions, AT sources say, conservatism reigns, especially in upper management…
I had almost wiped Ellison from my memory. It would be generous to say he was a failure.
Great article. There sure needs to be more cycling infrastructure. Other cities Have implemented kilometres of infrastructure quickly and cheaply and then you can always go back and make more quality where the demand is highest or where cheap doesn’t work so well (safety etc).
100% Support.