A cultural shift away from the car

Two major figures in the urban planning world have praised the development Wellington has made away from car dependency.

However, they said a cultural needed for more change to occur.

The 2 Walk & Cycle conference at Tākina featured talks from former New York City transportation commissioner Janette SadikKhan, who from 2007 to 2013 served under mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Sadik-Khan developed initiatives including the expansion of cycleways, bus priority infrastructure, and the pedestrianisation of parts of Broadway from Times Square south towards the Flatiron Building.

Upon landing, she was picked up from Wellington Airport by a convoy of bicycles and was impressed by the proliferation of cycleways along the waterfront.

“One of the biggest challenges is the culture challenge,” she said.

“A different perspective, I think, is hard to get people used to because their streets have basically worked the same way for 75 years.”

Despite 85% of New Yorkers primarily getting around without a private vehicle, one million vehicles enter and exit the dense Manhattan Island from outer suburbs.

Sadik Khan said that in New York, much like Wellington, there was pushback to the changes, particularly with closing off parts of Broadway.

She said people predicted “carmageddon”, but said the road had underperformed for decades and was a cause of congestion, rather than a solution.

The project caused local real estate values to triple, an improvement in retail sales, fewer dangerous injuries, and a traffic movement increase of 2%.

“I’ve been very enthusiastic and very inspired. And I think there have been some really good plans for Wellington. You know, and it’s very exciting.

“You’re not going to really wish people on to bikes or buses, you actually have to show them a safe way to get around.

“We put big new cycle lanes over our East shift was

River bridges which were critical connectivity points for the city, but tough to do. Once we did that, people started to see ‘oh, I can literally get there from here and I can feel safe doing so’.”

The conference also featured Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona director Salvador Rueda – the man behind the city’s ‘superblocks’.

These were blocks of the city’s grid system that were grouped together into one, with small streets blocked off to private vehicles and pedestrianised.

The city also has a strong automotive industry, with SEAT’s second largest manufacturing plant calling the city home for over 60 years. The city also hosts the Spanish leg of Formula One.

Cars are not only a culture, they are a livelihood for thousands of people in Barcelona.

Rueda said despite the powerful automotive sector, the idea of turning “streets into squares” proved popular, with a 60% increase in economic activity within those area.

He said the aim was to move from 37 superblocks to more than 500.

“It’s not a traffic problem, it is not an economic problem because the investment that we need to implement these 500 superblocks is only €300 million (NZ$538m) – which is nothing.

“Children playing in the street is impossible. We can only think about changing the usage of the streets [when] we change the culture.”

“A different perspective, I think, is hard to get people used to because their streets have basically worked the same way for 75 years.” Janette Sadik-Khan Former New York City transportation commissioner