Island Life: Still not over it
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CHEQUE!
/me has been reading too many American writers recently.
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I want a city that takes cycling from the cyclists (spandex wearers) and gives it back to the people (wearing normal clothes and going at a reasonable pace).
A mate and I were talking about this on the wkend. He is quite involved in advocating for walking and cycling. He noted that many of the cycle people were... abrasive. I told him the problem was the selection pressures on the cycling population. Because cycling is seen as somewhat risky and eccentric, regular cyclists have more risk-takers and eccentrics among their number... make cycling in the city safe and normal, and lo, they will have lobbyists as fat and respectable as any AA spokesperson.
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I want a city that takes cycling from the cyclists (spandex wearers) and gives it back to the people (wearing normal clothes and going at a reasonable pace).
What's "a reasonable pace"? I wear semi-normal clothes (sports clothing, but not spandex), and easily hit 40-45km/h on the flat. If I push it I can do 50, and getting to 60 on a moderate downhill isn't much of a stretch. Am I somehow unworthy because I can nearly keep pace with cars? Or do I get a pass because I don't feel the need to clad myself in lycra?
People have some really strange ideas about what is and isn't "fair" for cyclists. If I want to commute by bike, which I haven't done since I did my shoulder (largely because the weather's been so shit, but also because I'm a bit gun-shy now), why should I have to dawdle just to keep you happy? I want to get off the road as quickly as possible, rather than spending extended periods of time inhaling diesel particulate spewed forth by buses that were past their use-by dates 10 years ago.
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While I am usually so out of step with the wishes/desires/feelings of my fellow citizens that I have often thought about changing my name to 'mr square peg', it seems blindingly obvious to me that people really hate breaking their journey.
Add in the additional step of a van, ferry or whatever, and people will find another, easier, option.
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Trucks smash the road up real fast, and are de facto subsidised by other users.
Yeah, but the general populace are happy with that. Were you living under a rock on the day of the truckie protest? </rant>
If I, as a cyclist, were to receive a true accounting based on costs of providing roading, I'd get a hefty check, while the trucking companies would go broke.
Well, as an erstwhile cyclist, now train user, I'm in an even better position :P
You're right, of course. Cyclists do less damage to the roads than the weather does, never mind motor vehicles. But heaven forbid that we encourage people to use bicycles. That'd just hinder SUVs and other worthwhile forms of personal transport. -
It has to be the right type of cycle lane too - the complete ass-up that North Shore made of that Lake Rd cycle lane has probably left a very bad taste in a few mouths.
That page you linked to George shows how it should be done - I really like the one abutting the footpath with half a kerb down to the road, and half a kerb up to the footpath -
They are worried that the 'build it and they will come' idea may not apply given history.
Regarding 'build it and they will come', the same council is dumping $51 million into a bridge across the Viaduct Harbour ($16 million over budget already and highly likely to rise) for the expressed purpose of representing "harbour context and distant views".
Is a piddling less bridge across the Viaduct more or less likely to provide for "harbour context and distant views" than public access to the Auckland Harbour Bridge? They both cost the same.
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He is quite involved in advocating for walking and cycling. He noted that many of the cycle people were... abrasive.
I'm working with a local politician here, we've found the same thing. He's a top class triathlete, but has lived in Amsterdam for years, so stands on both sides of divide. It seems to a universal problem, the narrow mindedness and aggressive defence of their territory. Like you note, it would be like having the AA run by motorsports enthusiasts. They have their place, but they shouldn't monopolise the discourse.
why should I have to dawdle just to keep you happy?
I don't want to dictate what speed you ride at. I just want an infrastructure that allows everyone to feel comfortable; you, me, and my housemate who will never go above 15kph in her life. I want bicycle advocacy and to be done with the ordinary masses in mind, nay, at the forefront. Like these people.
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Why don't cyclists stop whining ("$40 million bridge cycleway, or nothing!") and get off their boney toned asses and organise the van shuttle themselves? Then the rest of us can see, yes, there are hundreds of cyclists who would use this service every day, even in the rain, and it will be worth it.
Another solution is to bring back the bike hooks they used to have on the back of buses. People used to hang their bikes and their prams on them, you just needed to let the driver know.
A better idea (since P freaks will be waiting at intersections to grab said bikes hanging on busbacks) is to just get a bus, strip out the seats (like those ones that take you to a plane on the tarmac) and have it run a loop service from one side of the bridge to the other. You could even use an electric bus so your green sensibilities are not compromised.
How hard can it be?
The car ferry analogy earlier was a good one. We don't build bridges just because a dozen cars use the car ferry.
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Rik,
I am an Auckland cyclist who agrees wholeheartedly with the notion that we should have a pedestrian and cycling access across the harbour bridge.
And yet I also drive a shiny black SUV....
Hey, maybe that means I am a cyclist that will get listened to for once? I'll call the council and Transit right now as they're bound to listen to one of "their own"!
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The car ferry analogy earlier was a good one. We don't build bridges just because a dozen cars use the car ferry.
Ha ha well i was hoping you'd interpret it the other way - people will go a long way out of their way to avoid faffing about with a ferry/cycle van. Anecdotally.
What I'd like to see is some serious thought put into an integrated transport plan for Auckland, showing people how to cycle or walk across town without being run over. At the moment the maps show incoherent little bits of bus/cycle lanes here and there.
He noted that many of the cycle people were... abrasive.
I know, and it doesn't really help the cause. But road cycling is so bloody dangerous, that it's only the abrasive/aggressive cyclists who persist. You won't see "regular" people cycling every day until it is made safe.
The request may be good intentioned, but public bodies need to allocate scarce resources effectively and efficiently, and this project has an existing track record which puts it clearly in the "high risk of squandered money" category
I can totally see your point, and you make it well. But the council also needs to think about what kind of city they want to create. I guess they must be happy with the current mess.
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the same council is dumping $51 million into a bridge across the Viaduct Harbour ($16 million over budget already and highly likely to rise) for the expressed purpose of representing "harbour context and distant views".
Yeah, and I'm opposed to that bridge too. It's a complete waste of f@#king money and a testament to the PC wooley headed thinking that makes up our council bureaucratic thinking.
And more ratepayers would be upset by these plans if they knew who will be using this bridge. Buses and pedestrians. Yes, that's all. It will be closed to all traffic (emergency vehicles excepted) except buses and pedestrians. What BS. What a waste of money.
But back to the Harbour Bridge: do any cyclists care to comment on my modified shuttle bus idea, posted above?
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showing people how to cycle or walk across town without being run over.
Or running over pedestrians. The Bot Gardens in Wellington have recently started enforcing (or at least reinforcing) their no biking through the gardens rule. They've always notionally been banned, but all cyclists ignored the bike buster signs painted on the ground (one even stopped on top of one sign to moan about me & my dog (who was on a lead)).
To be fair, most were very careful about pedestrians, but I've seen at least one idiot scatter a group of old age pensioners (and my dog) as he came around a bend at high speed.
I do have some sympathy for the responsible bike riders, there is no cycle access now into the city from the Karori direction that doesn't involve taking your life in your hands among the suburban SUVs & buses through the very narrow hill streets.
We ought to be encouraging them to either share paths responsibly with pedestrians, or finding them some dedicated cycle router in & out of the CBD.
Mind you, cycling around wellington is not for the faint of heart in more ways than one.
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Oh, ok, NOW I'm galvanised. And I'm worried I have too much to offer here... nevertheless!
I've ridden a bike as (variously) a long-distance commuter / dawdling drunkard / bike messenger / dad taking 2-y-o to playground / bmx street freestyler, in a truckload of cities from Auckland to Tokyo to Singapore to London and back, including all sorts of other urbanised spaces like outskirt Hanoi and the French Riviera.
I have ALWAYS wanted to be able to, and still would LOVE to ride over/under the Harbour Bridge, and keenly remember the difficult to find, unreliable, confusing and flow-breaking Bridge Van as being really not usable (car ferry vs bridge is a useful comparison).
A bus with hooks that did loops would be cool -- an INTEGRATED bus that wasn't some kind of "cyclists are pariahs" ghettoising signal would be even better.
You see, it's not about "getting across the harbour" -- ferries are more fun for the theatre of the journey -- and I wouldn't use it every day by any means, but knowing it was there, and that the city cared about moving ahead with transport options beyond cars, would do more for my desire to stay here than would John Key's lower taxes. Adding the 'Bridge crossing is, as David implies, more about vision and being a great city and less about pandering to te few.
Anyway. Cycling in Auckland has way more problems than a lack of Harbour Bridge crossing:
Auckland weather is too random. Three showers from a sunny sky on the way from Westmere to Parnell? Bah!
There are loads of hills and ridges. Shots of thousands of everyday people riding around Copenhagen or Amsterdam on granny bikes *do not* apply to Auckland. Try the shortest distance from Westmere to Parnell, either direction: Richmond up to Ponsonby; Franklin Rd to Vic Park; Victoria St over Nelson down to Queen up to Waterloo Quadrant down to Stanley up to Parnell Rd - what a rollercoaster!
Auckland is a young suburban city built around the car. Suburban distances between private dwellings and local amenities are car distances, not people on foot distances. Comparisons with old village based Tokyo / London do not apply.
There are a dumpload of drivers who are really are angry, and undereducated about how to co-exist with bikes. I've told friends new to the idea that they should not start riding now if they haven't been riding for 15 years and are prepared to do battle. Adding badly designed and sited cycle lanes only makes it worse. (That's a very nanny-state thing to do: ride on this green bit and you will be protected by a forcefield. Um, no.)
And the comment about natural selection of cyclists down to only the craziest, most defensive, most scuttling-cockroach-minded of the lot is spot on. I am one, I fear!
Hm. Rant most definitely not over. Damn. Agitated now...
PS: As a teenager in South Auckland me and my mates used the New Mangere Bridge cycleway most weekends. It was a sewer: glass, graffiti, human poo, burnt mattresses. But it was fun, and it worked, and it was easy, and the old bridge was an alternative. Certainly no waiting half an hour for the looping bus...
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Cripes, that got long!
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Greg said:
Auckland weather is too random.
Yes, but it should be more tolerable (ie a little more stable) , from now until next June, than it has been the last two godforsaken months. I hope.
There are loads of hills and ridges. Shots of thousands of everyday people riding around Copenhagen or Amsterdam on granny bikes *do not* apply to Auckland.
The biggest surprise for me in getting back on a bike after many years was to discover that things had changed mightily since I rode my old 10-speed. 27 gears! Holy shit! No hill on this isthmus scares me. Although I haven't tried the Bullock Track.
Suburban distances between private dwellings and local amenities are car distances
No good for a family outing to Titirangi, true. But many of the trips I make are shorter than that and entirely viable. Get enough of a crowd of cyclists perpetually present on the streets, and you will get a completely different dynamic, which is the sort of thing I had in mind in the 'vision' you imputed to me.
And John said:
do any cyclists care to comment on my modified shuttle bus idea, posted above?
The proposition to get cyclists to start up a van scheme seems a cumbersome and indirect method to get us to prove our good faith and our number. Change the setting and more people will come out, is what I'm saying.
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Interesting, the NZ Herald views section generally seems to back the cycleway
Totally off-topic, I reckon the new NZ passports look cool. Rick Barker's craggy face, not so much -
Greg, most of your objections about Auckland are also true of the northern European countries and cities that have 20-40% rates of cycling, or at least were until the cities consciously addressed them.
The weather we can't do much about, but it doesn't stop high rates of cycling in rainy (and colder) cycling mecca Denmark.
The flat country = bike country thing is a myth too.
Many cities built around the car have successfully started moving to integrate cycling into the infrastructure, so that's not a good reason not to.
Angry and aggressive drivers can be dealt with by keeping them away from cyclists, where they can't do any harm. Green lines on the road are a very half-hearted response to the issue. A "nanny state" would build proper segregated lanes.
I almost never used the Mangere Bridge cycle/pedestrian path, despite crossing the harbour daily for years, because it was unsafe, very dirty, required going uphill, and had a large risk of punctures. I'm partly opposed to an Auckland Harbour Bridge path because I can see the same very easily happening there.
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Greg said:
PS: As a teenager in South Auckland me and my mates used the New Mangere Bridge cycleway most weekends. It was a sewer: glass, graffiti, human poo, burnt mattresses. But it was fun, and it worked, and it was easy, and the old bridge was an alternative. Certainly no waiting half an hour for the looping bus...
I have very vague recollections of it being underneath the 'new' Mangere Bridge (aka the SH20 crossing, aka the bridge which is shown partially complete in 'Goodbye Pork Pie'). Is that correct? Is it still there?
I haven't thought about that for about 20 years!
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I should note that the Manukau Harbour has the lovely old bridge, with fresh air and beautiful views and friendly old fishermen, so there really isn't much reason not to use it!
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Cyclists do have votes but do they pay road tax
This is one of my bugbears: the notion that since cyclists don't pay "road tax", they don't deserve to be on the roads. There is no such thing as road tax. There's a vehicle registration fee, which is the annual charge to register a vehicle. That's completely different.
Main road funding comes from a central fund administered by Land Transport NZ, and funded directly by the central government. So you're paying for those in direct taxes. Most local roads are maintained by the local council. So you're paying for these through your rates (paid by property owners - so you're either paying them directly or as part of your rent).
Also worth pointing out that, contrary to what a lot of people think, petrol taxes are not sent directly off for transport funding - they go into the central government funds, from which the government gives LTNZ, Ministry of Works etc the funding to do stuff.
There is no such thing as road tax. As a cyclist, I'm paying just as much as anyone else to support the cost of roads. In fact, as Stephen pointed out, I'm paying more relatively speaking, as I'm causing much less damage to the roads. And I'm freeing up traffic space on the roads. Is it too much to ask that someone spends a few bob on infrastructure to help me out?
Disclaimer: committed Wellingtonian commuter cyclist, but I do take the car when it's my turn to pick the kids up from creche.
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Hear hear for the old Mangere Bridge!
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A mate and I were talking about this on the wkend. He is quite involved in advocating for walking and cycling. He noted that many of the cycle people were... abrasive.
This is a fair point, cycling in Auckland is naturally selective for abrasiveness.
There are loads of hills and ridges. Shots of thousands of everyday people riding around Copenhagen or Amsterdam on granny bikes *do not* apply to Auckland. Try the shortest distance from Westmere to Parnell, either direction: Richmond up to Ponsonby; Franklin Rd to Vic Park; Victoria St over Nelson down to Queen up to Waterloo Quadrant down to Stanley up to Parnell Rd - what a rollercoaster!
But the most popular walking, jogging, roller-blading and cycling of weekend warriors (the slightly fit) is done on Tamaki Drive and round into the Viaduct - because it is flat, scenic and there are an abundance of waterholes along the way. I am reliably informed that shoreBoys (& shoreGirls) roam between Takapuna and Devonport for similar reasons. Link the 2 over the bridge and we can extend the enjoyment of these people.
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Apropos terrain: yeah, it's not suitable for Dutch grannies.
However, a few decades ago, the terrain was just the same, yet all the kids rode bikes.
Everyone who's seen the ghostly streets at school holiday time knows that the bulk of the traffic (and the danger to cyclists) in the AM is parents dropping off children. If we could just focus on making it safe for kids to bike in the morning that would be a huge win for everyone, not least car commuters.
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And apropos hills: the new Wellington city council cycle strategy document tells me that Wellington has more cycle usage than Auckland. Hills are one factor, but only one.
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