Cycle lanes: A case of crash and learn
David Seymour crashed his bicycle in Parnell a few days ago. He was leaving the Holy Trinity Cathedral’s Commonwealth service and didn’t see a car coming. Some muppet saw Seymour hit the ground and came over to tell him, “You know what, sometimes you get exactly what you deserve.”
I just want to say I think that’s appalling. Seymour has my sympathy. I’ve gone over the handlebars myself, just as he did, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Try a little kindness, eh?
But there was more to this incident than has been reported. Seymour didn’t know it, but according to Auckland Transport (AT) data he was the 22nd bike rider in recent years involved in a crash on that particular stretch of road.
He was lucky — he damaged his wrist but did no more serious damage — but others have come to much worse harm.
Talking to media afterwards, he made some revealing comments.
“I just didn’t see a car,” he said. “It wasn’t their fault, they had right of way. So I slammed on the brakes and realised I was going to cartwheel over, but I also realised I was still going to hit the car so I slammed on the brakes harder and over I went.”
He added that he did not think a bike lane would have helped because the problem was his own inattention.
Seymour seemed not to realise that his crash was extremely typical. Many studies report that inattention is a factor in about a third of road crashes. One scholarly study in Australia put the figure higher, at 57.6 per cent.
But a groundbreaking American study called the 100-Car Naturalistic Study put it even higher again. In this study, equipment was attached to 100 cars for a year, to record everything the drivers did. This meant the data wasn’t based on what drivers and witnesses said was happening, but on what drivers were actually doing when they crashed. And, importantly, when they nearly crashed.
The 100-Car Study was the most in-depth investigation of driver behaviour ever conducted. It found that 78 per cent of crashes and 65 per cent of near crashes had distraction or inattention as a contributing factor.
The fact is, David Seymour is not the only person who sometimes gets distracted on the road. We all do it. Understanding this is supposed to be the basis of road-safety planning.
It’s why we need safer roads, for all users. Safer design, including bike lanes and traffic-calming measures like pedestrian crossings. And rules that make the roads safer, like appropriate speed limits.
Parnell Rd, where Seymour crashed, is a busy arterial street and a lot of people in the area have bikes. AT has proposed a bike lane and the street is wide enough for one.
But the Parnell Town Centre safety improvement project has been blocked by local businesses. Some of them fear customers will be chased away.
Just this month, a man called Adam Rogers did a deep dive into this for the Business Insider website in America. He read “every study and report I could find that looked specifically at the economics of bike lanes since 1984 — 32 research articles, to be exact”.
One thing he discovered: “Survey after survey has shown that business owners overestimate how many of their customers drive to their stores.”
In a Los Angeles study, most shop owners thought most of their customers drove. “The actual number was 15 per cent.”
And the big discovery: Adding bike lanes at the expense of lanes for driving and on-road car parks does not undermine retailers. Commonly, they do better — in one Seattle example, they did four times better.
In New York in 2014, a major study looked at seven retail neighbourhoods that had been given better pedestrian access, more mass transit, traffic calming, landscaping and bike paths.
Compared with the overall business climate in each borough, sales in the bike-friendly areas soared: by 84 per cent in Brooklyn, 9 per cent in Manhattan and 32 per cent in the Bronx.
Businesses benefited in all types of communities, from “lower-income neighbourhoods with ‘Mom & Pop’ retail” to “glitzier areas with sky-high rents”.
Those changes to the streetscapes of New York were led by Janette Sadik-Khan, the Commissioner of Transportation under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As it happens, Sadik-Khan will be in Auckland this week, talking with Helen Clark at a free public event on Thursday evening.
One large study ran “three kinds of econometric analysis” over precincts in Portland, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Memphis.
“Across the country, again and again, the numbers told the same story,” says Rogers. “Sometimes nothing changed, but more often the areas near bike lanes wound up with more employees and more revenue.”
In general, the study found food and beverage did better than retail. But as one of the researchers told him, either “business activity remained pretty much constant”, or “certain types of businesses became much more prosperous”.
Rogers has some advice: “The most effective way to deal with opposition from local businesses is to just get the bike lanes built. Before-and-after surveys tend to show that in the long run, everyone winds up satisfied . . .”
The trouble is, thanks to the Government of which Seymour is a leading member, building bike lanes has just got a whole lot harder.
The new draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport will cut funding for cycleways in half, from $1 billion over three years to $510 million.
The impact will be worst in Auckland, because the regional fuel tax (RFT), which helped fund cycleways, has also been abolished. Minister of Transport Simeon Brown has instructed Auckland Council to spend the remaining $360m of RFT funds on a narrow range of projects, including the Eastern Busway.
The council has bridled at this, because it takes exception to being told how to spend the money. Especially, as councillor Julie Fairey said in a meeting this month, as the busway just happens to run through the electorates of the Transport Minister and the Prime Minister.
Fairey proposed that as the Government is so keen on the busway, it should be asked to fully fund it. Her motion passed 13-6 but, curiously, Mayor Wayne Brown abstained. Despite his fondness for demanding that Auckland should decide for Auckland, when push came to shove he said he preferred to “sit it out”.
At that same meeting, the council accepted a plan by Auckland Transport to conduct a “rapid review” of its spending programme in light of the RFT decision.
This means some projects not funded by the RFT may be stopped, to free up money for other projects that have lost their RFT funding but still have higher priority. A proposal with specifics is due asap.
What’s the Government really trying to do with transport in Auckland?
The GPS defines its strategic goal as “economic growth and productivity”, which should be good news for cyclists. The benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) for cycleways in Auckland, according to AT figures, range from 1.9 to 4.6. If it’s well over 1, it’s good.
In Wellington, the city council’s cycleway programme has a BCR of 2.1. A big cycleway in Dunedin had a BCR of 2.1.
On the other hand, the Mill Rd highway from Papakura to Drury, favoured in the GPS, was cancelled in 2021 because its cost had ballooned to a staggering $3.5b. Its last known BCR was a mere 0.5-1.1. But the Government wants it anyway.
It’s too much to hope, I suppose, that Seymour has any lessons from his crash to share with Simeon Brown.
Meanwhile, Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) continues to campaign against raised-table pedestrian crossings and has suckered the mayor into supporting it. What the hell? Fire trucks routinely take special care at pedestrian crossings, don’t they?
The thing that slows emergency vehicles is traffic. So where’s the Fenz campaign for priority bus lanes? Making public transport a genuinely viable alternative for tens of thousands more Aucklanders is the key to managing congestion. That means speeding up bus trips.
And as a special bonus, firefighters would be able to use those lanes. But they already know this, because they do it now on the Northern Busway, courtesy of the transport authorities.
But I guess it’s transportland. The place where the new GPS has made it official: Evidence-based research is whistling in the wind.
Building bike lanes has just got a whole lot harder.