All aboard the new ‘Orient Express’
Wellington’s second-most controversial cycleway has opened to acclaim.
The first stage of a cycleway around Oriental Bay – a $900,000 section between Freyberg and Herd streets – opened yesterday and it appears Wellington City Council has found a solution where few were disgruntled. Motorists have been given more car parks and the footpath now has space for cyclists and pedestrians.
Paul Barker, the council’s network improvements manager, said the proposal to put a cycleway around Oriental Bay was greeted with a level of controversy only beaten by the Island Bay cycleway but once people saw what was eventually planned and the work started, opposition all but fell away.
Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter was at the opening and believed the council had done a ‘‘great job’’ accommodating and separating all the different forms of transport.
The Oriental Bay cycleway runs between the road and pedestrian area of the footpath from Herd St to Freyberg pool. A line of trees separates cycles and pedestrians.
From Freyberg to most of the way around Oriental Bay, the existing footpath is wide enough to accommodate both foot and cycle traffic.