Moving cycling up a gear
Wellington residents created a ‘‘guerrilla’’ cycleway in days. Auckland cyclists claimed several lanes of the harbour bridge one Sunday. Yet councils seem to struggle to get permanent projects off the ground, as Olivia Wannan reports.
Green transport campaigners are nothing if not resilient: The first public proposal for cycling access across the Auckland Harbour Bridge came in 1976 – a plan to hang a bike pathway under the harbour overpass. Although plenty of Aucklanders backed the idea, the plan languished.
Three years later, a group of 37 students protested the bridge’s bike ban by cycling across it, in a graduation stunt. Incredibly, authorities tried to run the students off the road using a tow truck, injuring two.
And 45 years later, thousands recreated the ride, during a Sunday morning protest in May. This time, authorities redirected car traffic to protect the activists.
It was only a few days after another machine sabotaged a green transport project: a disgruntled resident used a forklift to shift makeshift planter boxes in Onehunga that blocked car access from a busy road to quieter suburban streets.
Vandals had already spray-painted angry messages such as ‘‘We don’t want’’ and ‘‘Road 4 cars’’ on the boxes.
The council had thought, by keeping most cars on the main roads, local residents making short journeys would feel safer walking, scooting and cycling (also freeing up lanes for drivers who have no other choice).
Active travellers are the happiest. To prevent catastrophic climate change, we must get out of our cars: vehicles contribute about 18 per cent of our greenhouse emissions every year.
Plenty of Onehunga residents were delighted by their quieter streets. But with temperatures rising, the local board ended the trial prematurely.
Advocates are used to these disappointments.
Bike Auckland chair Barb Cuthbert thought she would never have to arrange another bridge campaign, after seeing thentransport minister Phil Twyford pledge in 2018 to fully fund the SkyPath, as the harbour bridge’s walking and cycling path came to be known.
‘‘Waka Kotahi took over the project and produced an outstanding design. It was so exciting.’’
But, earlier this year, Waka Kotahi (the transport agency) found the bridge could not handle the extra weight.
With no bike path connecting its two shores, Auckland is a global outlier, Cuthbert says. Cyclists are not prepared to wait any longer – they are calling on the agency to ‘‘liberate’’ one lane of the harbour bridge for a three-month trial during the quieter summer period.
‘‘We have got massive uptake of cycling, massive uptake of e-bikes, now we have e-scooters and we have got ferries that simply can’t cope with that at peak hours.’’
Following protests, Transport Minister Michael Wood unveiled plans for a brandnew cycling and pedestrian bridge, with an opening date of 2027. In the meantime, he wants to explore opening a lane of the existing bridge to cyclists on Sundays.
Few green activists are satisfied with the pace of progress, however. University of Otago public health researcher Caroline Shaw has calculated the capital builds about 2.1 kilometres of cycleway a year, on average. At that rate, it will take 134 years to complete a system that would rival the great European cycling cities, such as the German city of Mu¨ nster.
Wellington City Council recently had a stoush with residents, who repeatedly constructed a pop-up bike lane in Berhampore, forcing the council to dismantle it. The council later approved $226 million towards cycleways.
But even ideas that require no cash, steel or concrete can stall. Living Streets campaigner Ellen Blake has been asking Wellington City Council for the pedestrian crossings at traffic lights to be extended and more frequent – for a decade.
‘‘You will wait a long time to get across. Then when you do get your little shot at getting across, you will get six seconds of green signal ... People with little kids, you are still getting off the footpath and the light is flashing red at you,’’ she says. ‘‘We should reallocate the time on our major public spaces, the road and footpath ... People would feel happier about crossing the road.’’
So far, crickets.
The Let’s Get Wellington Moving transport
programme has proposed pedestrians get the green light more frequently in traffic light cycles at several major intersections. But, other than that, Wellington City Council is sticking by its timings, which are typically set by Australasian standards.
Blake says, until recently, cycling took a lot more of the spotlight than walking and public transport. But she is cheered by the Climate Change Commission’s notice of all three. In its draft advice, it expects to see the country boost walking by 25 per cent, cycling by 95 per cent and public transport trips by 120 per cent by 2030.
Active transport campaigners think the commission is not being ambitious enough. But whatever the final target is, it will get things moving.
‘‘That is a really big step up,’’ Blake says.
After a target and a timeframe, the next priority is leadership, Shaw says.
‘‘The UK minister of transport was in the select committee this year saying: I want half of all trips in urban areas to be walking and cycling by 2030. I would love it if our minister of transport came out and said something like that. Leading from the top,’’ Shaw adds.
The transport agency says projects – such as the Ngauranga to Petone cycleway – are being fast-tracked.
But ministerial support and open coffers are not enough, Shaw says. ‘‘Waka Kotahi has not actually been able to spend its cycling and walking budgets for the past
few years. There is some money, there is some ambition, but there is an inability to get it happening on the ground.’’
Hamish Mackie, of Mackie Research, says local politicians need to be on board. ‘‘You want to see mayors jumping up and down.’’
As events in Onehunga show, a few irate car-centric members of the public can be a significant barrier.
One way to gently win residents over is by trialling new measures, especially for people nervous about a cycleway by their driveway or businesses unsure how fewer car parks will affect their bottom line.
But the Onehunga project was an eightweek trial and opponents refused to wait until it had ended to voice their fury at the temporary boxes.
Similar projects in the UK experienced vandalism and public outrage but officials stuck to their guns until the pedestrian and cycle friendly streets had become the new status quo.
Researcher Holly Walker, at the Helen Clark Foundation think-tank, says councils need direction from central government, so they can partner with communities rather than being cast as the bad guy.
‘‘The local board was left in a really untenable position, trying to manage what is an inevitable initial public reaction. People are always going to find it challenging.’’
She suggests a law giving councils the power and a set structure to promote walking and cycling measures – though trials would last 18 months. With input from mana whenua, and local disability rights and transport experts, the semi-permanent infrastructure would go in first.
Issues could be raised in the first six months, with tweaks made. Then the whole system would be left for another year, so people could give walking and cycling a go.
Walker says the Onehunga vandalism is an extreme reaction. But she is confident the residents, as a whole, would eventually grow to love it, if the trial had continued for a decent length of time.
‘‘There is strong evidence from surveys and community consultation of a shift in attitudes.’’
Mackie wants politicians and community leaders to talk up the benefits – from the greenhouse gas we will save to the mental wellbeing boost we will get by stretching our legs. ‘‘Most people think a road is just something you just drive along … that is probably because of how we have built them for the last 80 years or so. So understandably if we say: now we have got to carve bits of it up and put a cycleway along it, it seems a bit weird to the average person,’’ Mackie says.
The projects do not advertise that they are saving lives and emissions.
Often three-quarters of a community support green transport proposals, if surveyed, Mackie says. But the opponents get headlines. ‘‘They end up with a bit too much power.’’
Many drivers feel they deserve to hold the reins – by paying fuel taxes, they are a major source of transport funds, the argument goes.
However, transport campaigner Heidi O’Callahan says it is far more complicated than that. Whether they drive or not, ratepayers pay half the costs to maintain local roads. All taxpayers will finance the $4 billion set to be spent on roads in the NZ Upgrade programme.
Then there are the wider costs of driving, starting with the 320 people killed on the roads last year. Deaths and injuries from crashes cost us about $5b each year. Roughly 400 die from the air pollution spewed out of exhaust pipes. Driving makes us inactive and this also makes us sick – adding another $614 million in costs. All before we consider climate change.
‘‘Any danger that is imposed on society because of an activity should be borne by the person partaking,’’ O’Callahan says. ‘‘Basically, we have been investing in that one mode without protecting everybody else to enable the other modes to even continue.’’
She notes everyone in the country walks, cycles or uses public transport, in addition to driving. So why do so many of us centralise driving when we react to new projects?
‘‘I think many people do not enjoy driving and they do not want it any longer than it has to be,’’ she says. ‘‘If people were offered a nicer framework to think about change in, then I think it would be easier.’’