National ‘bike-lash’
Lobbying for our cycleways
The Asia-Pacific Cycle Congress in Christchurch is like a glimpse inside cycling’s war-room. The packed afternoon session in October is just getting under way and the topic is ‘‘bike-lash’’, the angry response of a car-driving public to the idea of dedicated cycle paths – and how best to neutralise it.
Yes, it turns out there really is an official campaign to take back road space from a nation of motorists and push people towards a greener, healthier, mode of transport.
For three days, several hundred transport bureaucrats, council representatives and cycling advocates are shut away in a central city hotel conference room to discuss their tactics and share tales from the trenches.
It is billed as an international conference. But the delegates and speakers are mostly Kiwi.
There seems little Asian presence – perhaps its countries know all they need to about promoting cycling as a mode of transport?
There is an easy-to-spot squad of strapping Dutch experts, here to share all the changes they have been making since the 1960s.
Australians are thin on the ground, apparently reflecting the fact there is little political interest in engineering a cycling revolution across the Tasman.
And while there is a good sprinkling of Americans and Canadians, more than a few are employed as consultants on New Zealand cycleway projects.
But the New Zealand contingent is large and triumphant. Finally it seems to be having its day. Speaker after speaker reports on projects that may have struggled early – and even still are suffering setbacks – yet now have picked up general momentum.
Christchurch City Council’s Cr Phil Clearwater starts with a quick account of the compromises that have needed to be made while rolling out an entire new postquake, city-wide, cycle network.
Clearwater says the earthquakes created the opportunity for a ‘‘big bang’’ approach.
But it was only in 2015 – once decision-making power had been devolved to an infrastructure committee stacked with cyclesupporting councillors – that action clicked into gear.
Clearwater says there has been the predictable bike-lash, particularly shopkeepers fighting the loss of kerbside parking. Business groups have gone as far as commissioning their own transport studies.
Yet despite being forced into many small changes and some costly modifications, the committee has been powering on, Clearwater says. ‘‘We’ve had to do a few swerves at times, but we’re still pedalling,’’ he concludes to a warm burst of applause.
The story is similar from Auckland’s Pippa Coom, chair of the Waitemata¯ Local Board and former Bike Auckland activist.
Coom says Auckland’s supercity shake-up was the opportunity the bike lobby seized. In Len Brown, Auckland had a sympathetic mayor.
Some earlier efforts had fizzled. Just marking a simple painted cycle lane along Takapuna’s commuter-choked Lake Rd in 2007 became a legendary local political battle.
But now – impossible to believe, she agrees – Auckland is in the middle of a $200 million investment in 52km of dedicated cycleways. ‘‘There’s been a radical realignment of our cycling universe.’’
The cycle routes are being done with love – rainbow-coloured bridges and beautifully lit-up sections of path.
When the Waterview Tunnel motorway opened this year, a Waterview bike route running through the reserve land alongside was automatic.
Coom says bike-lash remains a fact. Right now, construction has started on three paths through her neighbourhood of Grey Lynn and she is getting the hate mail.
Coom flashes up some screenshots to read out the tweets.
‘‘Pippa, you’re a liar. The consultation is fake. You have led a radical change of our neighbourhood based on your own obsessive philosophies. You’re the high priestess of car-hating. You’re a cycle zealot.’’
Coom shrugs. More applause. One of Auckland’s political advantages is that the cycleways are an Auckland Transport-run programme and so less susceptible to ratepayer pressure, she says.
It might be a year behind with the building. Critical links, like the Harbour Bridge SkyPath, still need finalising. But overall, the plans remain safely in place, Coom says.
Hamish Mackie, a transport consultant, speaks movingly about another piece of Auckland’s puzzle, a large-scale roading experiment in Ma¯ ngere.
Why spend public money on cycle paths and walkways, he asks? Well, last year Ma¯ ngere opened its first neighbourhood ‘‘drop-in’’ kidney dialysis unit.
Some 35 machines were installed in a community facility as if it were a local branch of a library, such is the explosion in obesity and diabetes.
‘‘There’s surely got to be a more proactive way of supporting people’s health than putting in dialysis units everywhere,’’ Mackie says.
Wellington City Council’s Cr Sarah Free then reports on the capital’s own saga of the Island Bay cycle path and the lessons learned.
Free says a single broad road, The Parade, connects the seaside suburb to the city. In 2015, a decision to remove some parking and create a dedicated bike lane produced an unexpectedly strong public backlash.
The council built it, but then was forced back to the drawing board by an inquiry.
It seemed another blow to the cycling lobby – confirmation that most people view protected cycle infrastructure as bureaucratic overkill.
However, Free says the reality was locals just felt the council had swooped in and messed with ‘‘their’’ road.
The Parade was central to the identity of Island Bay, with its familiar pattern of shopping and parking. ‘‘And we had changed it hugely.’’
Indeed, Free admits the council had tried hard not to spend too much money, so the result was confusing and ugly.
Now it is sitting down to consult on a multimillion general upgrade to the village centre. The cycleway is part of a larger beautification project.
Free says even though the noise has been intense, residents still want a cycleway. ‘‘They just want a better cycleway than what we managed to deliver the first time.’’
Behind the cycle trail boom
That various cycleway projects have been causing local grumblings is not news.
But the surprise is to realise how much it has been happening everywhere at once. And under the watch of a National-led government.
Motorists are hardly clamouring for a change. Cycling seems such a quintessentially green issue. So you would expect any central government support for bike infrastructure to have been rather token.
However, it turns out the current rush of cycleways is directly due to a major funding decision three years ago.
Patrick Morgan, of the Wellington-based lobby group Cycling Action Network, says the political mood began to shift in 2009 with Prime Minister John Key’s cycle trail initiative.
Everyone was loving Otago’s rail trail, says Morgan. And in the wake of the global financial crisis, an emergency jobs summit identified a country-wide network of bike rides as the way to generate tourism and boost rural employment.
‘‘It turned out to be a real vote winner.’’ National’s pollsters identified an issue that clicked with old and young.
Then in 2013 there was a highly publicised spate of cycling deaths. A cycling safety panel was formed that delivered a set of roadimprovement recommendations in 2014.
This prompted the announcement of a $100m Urban Cycleways Fund – a new 2-for-1 deal that galvanised local councils, Morgan says.
The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) was already budgeted to spend $100m between 2015 and 2017. With that doubled by the fund, it meant that for every dollar spent on cycleways by a city council, central government was promising to contribute another two.
‘‘But they had to take advantage while it was available.’’ So Auckland rushed in with a $200m cycle network building programme. Christchurch is spending its $150m total, Wellington another big chunk.
Morgan says smaller cities, like Dunedin, Nelson and Napier, have been getting started too. That explains why there is so much action all at once.
And there was some government self-interest at work as well.
Representing Auckland Transport at the conference, walking and cycling manager Kathryn King says with the supercity’s billion-dollar rail investments being delayed, bike routes were seen as one way to relieve the traffic congestion in the meantime.
‘‘If we’ve got full buses and full roads, and it’s another decade before we get the rapid transit we need, then cycle infrastructure is a cost-effective way to manage the pressure.’’
So there are reasons for a big spend-up at the moment. But, Morgan adds, it could also be short-lived.
He says National found the urban cycleways programme did resonate with voters. Former Transport Minister Simon Bridges famously turned down a motorway opening to attend a cycleway one.
‘‘However, in this year’s Budget, Finance Minister Steven Joyce over-ruled Bridges about extending the urban cycleway fund for another three years.’’
Morgan says the hope, of course, is a Labour-led coalition will overturn that decision. An NZTA business case sits waiting on Transport Minister Phil Twyford’s desk.
But the risk is the funding might dip and – having brought forward their cycling investments to take advantage of a windfall – city councils might then go quiet again for the next few years.
‘‘They frontloaded their budgets. So that momentum could just as quickly be lost.’’
Planning for the future
As session follows session at the congress, it doesn’t feel like New Zealand’s push towards cycleways is likely to fade fast. Instead it becomes clear just how much has been invested over the past few years in building up the institutional capacity to keep it going.
NZTA’s cycling delivery manager, Claire Pascoe, talks about the research going in to help make cycling’s case.
She says NZTA has spent money on new guidelines for cycleway design, created electricbike policies, collected a public database of cycleway case studies, and had even been investigating the psychology of bike-lash.
‘‘We found out from our perceptions and attitudes research that people want to ride – 75 per cent of Kiwis from urban areas said they would like to ride if it were safe.’’
Pascoe says the car lobby’s argument is that sacrificing road space for cycle paths wastes public money as there are hardly any cyclists around to use them. But NZTA has the data to show there is a pent-up demand, she says. New Zealand’s current roads just make ordinary people too nervous to take their chances.
‘‘When we start talking about why we’re building these networks, it’s really important to remember you might not see people out there at the moment. But that’s the point.’’
Other speakers continue the theme. Urban cycling will happen as cities are redesigned to make cycling look a normal choice, says Jo Clendon, of cycling advocate Bikes Welcome.
Hutt-based Clendon spends her time selling businesses on the idea they should have bike racks right by their street entrance.
At the moment, she says, cyclists feel like weirdos or subversives when they arrive and there is nowhere obvious to park their wheels. ‘‘Bike parking is like subliminal marketing. It does send a message that biking is a normal thing to do.’’
Tyler Golly, a transport engineer for Canadian firm Stantec Consulting, which has been helping design Auckland’s cycleways, says New Zealand does stand out in taking a national-level approach.
‘‘The benefit is there’s earmarked funding coming from central government. In many other countries, it’s left up to city authorities.’’
Golly says as the congress has been hearing, some of the early cycleway projects have taken a public battering. But now New Zealand is into its second wave, having learnt more about why cycleways can upset communities.
Most city and suburban streets have probably seen little significant change for many decades. It is too expensive. And so councils have just left the layouts alone. ‘‘It’s probably been a few generations since anyone touched these roads. People are used to them as they are.’’
So what Island Bay and the other first projects underestimated was how big an intrusion a new bike route feels.
Golly says that, as in Island Bay, the pressure was to save public money and so communities did not feel they were getting a neighbourhood upgrade. All they saw was the inconvenience of lost car parking and a year of construction work.
NZTA’s Pascoe agrees this has been a crucial part of the learning process. And it has prompted a rethink within the agency.
She says the mission is no longer just to install a bike path. Planners have to consider the whole streetscape package, including the footpaths, the traffic calming, the landscaping.
Her own job title has changed to being the lead adviser for multimodal transport to reflect this.
So NZTA is not on a crusade to force Kiwis out of their cars by squeezing the roads, squeezing the car parking, says Pascoe.
However, the roads of New Zealand are designed for an era when the car was the default. The roads of the future need to give the public a full range of transport choices.
‘‘A multimodal project is not a cycling project, it’s not a bus project, it’s not a pedestrian project, it’s not an urban design project.’’ Tick all of the above, she says.
And with a decent cycleway costing $3m per km to lay, it needs to be that kind of long-term investment, she says.
So while it is hard to imagine ordinary Kiwis starting to leave the car at home, who knows? Spend enough on good infrastructure and the habits of a lifetime may begin to change.
"Bike parking is like subliminal marketing. It does send a message that biking is a normal thing to do.’’
Cycling advocate Jo Clendon