Cycleway figures in doubt
AT report shows demand may have been overestimated
Auckland Transport may have used exaggerated figures to receive taxpayer dollars for four cycleways in the city, says an internal AT report. “The cycle demand was overestimated in all the four business cases” for the Quay St, Nelson St, Grafton Gully and Beach Rd cycleways, says an AT report, obtained by the Herald.
The City Centre Cycle Network: Post Implementation Review report looked at the number of cyclist figures used in the business cases to receive funding from the Government’s Urban Cycleways Programme against the actual performance.
Two projects — Nelson St and Grafton Gully — went over budget, performed worse than expected and may not have been economically viable, said the report.
The business case for Nelson St predicted 986 cyclists would use the cycleway daily, but in January last year the count was 333 when the report was written. Figures from AT at the end of September this year show 448 cyclists a day using it.
Grafton Gully differences were also significant, said the report. The business case forecast 975 cyclists and the January 2017 count was 292.
The AT report said a 647 figure for cycle trips on a Nelson St precycleway came from an “unknown report” and the consultants doing the business case, Beca, “commented the estimate was very high, but ultimately stuck with this estimate”.
The Quay St and Beach Rd cycleways did not have such a big difference between forecast and actual numbers, and Quay St now has more cyclists than forecast.
The report said possible reasons for the differences included exaggerated data to give a favourable costbenefit analysis, inappropriate forecast methodology, cycleways not being up to standard and people not being aware of the facilities.
Cycling demand was not living up to expectations, said the report, but it noted the CBD cycle network was still to be completed.
AT walking, cycling and road safety manager Kathryn King said the report was a “work in progress” document that was never finalised, though the issues it raised had been followed up to improve business processes for the 2018-2021 cycling programme.
She said traffic modelling for the first tranche of projects arrived at cycling numbers that seemed too high in the early years when compared with actual cycle counts.
King said most cycle projects require estimates for a 40-year investment using variables that can be hard to predict into the future.
“The reality is that we are developing a whole-of-city network.”
The NZ Transport Agency said it had not seen the AT report.