A few cycle issues crossed my radar over the course of the day, so I’ll bundle them up into a quick post.
[tweet https://twitter.com/IBCycleWay/status/580863846862159872]There’s lots of time for feedback on the Wellington City Council LTP (as well as others), and the cycling network is currently the most talked about idea on the LTP dashboard. It’s great to see so many comments coming through and we hope that it translates into results.
There were three ciclovia events in February and March around the Miramar Peninsula, up from a single outing in 2014. The long-term goal is to close the road to cars between Shelly Bay and Scorching Bay every Sunday and leave it free for people on foot, skates, scooters, bikes, etc.
[tweet https://twitter.com/nmjyoung/status/580935668131504130]Councillor Young has been tweeting a bunch about a lack of cycle parking areas around the central city, which is definitely true. Personally, I’d rather see work on protected cycle lanes and continue with improvisational parking, but we’ll certainly need both eventually.
As for the prototype in the tweet, I’m unconvinced. Trying to put a second bike on the opposite side would leave it hanging out into the road. In the Bond St example, it’s not a problem, but could cause trouble as a general solution. If we’re looking at single parks, it works well enough, but we should be looking at a range of parking densities. We should be able to fit around 10 bikes in the space of a single car park, so why not trade a few of our car parks for a few multi-bike parks?
I could easily see a bike park like this as part of a protected cycleway network.
Update 27/03/2015: In my haste last night, I forgot one of the more important bits. Wellington City Council has a news brief about the Bikes in Schools project. We’ve had a generation of paranoid parents taking their kids off the streets and driving them to school every day. Not only does this cause all sorts of extra congestion and safety concerns around schools, but it’s removed a portion of daily activity from children’s’ lives. A successful program to bring biking back to younger kids is worth celebrating.
Sustainable Wellington Transport 
I ran the rockpooling for Ciclovia. It was a great event. Having walked around when there was traffic, to search for good pools, and walked the bit that wasn’t closed on the days, I can tell you that it wasn’t fun. There’s little shoulder and the traffic is a real pain. Whereas walking the closed part was fun even on the less clement days. We need these spaces for walkers as well as cyclists of course.
We also need cycle parking that doesn’t result in bikes intruding into footpath space. I had to walk around a bike last night that had been parked to a traffic sign, had fallen over, and was taking up half the footpath. With no suitable parking provided, cyclists have to resort to that sort of unsatisfactory option which puts their bike at risk and is a problem for pedestrians. When Living Streets sought cycle parking as a requirement in the district plan for the sorts of big retail businesses that have carparks, the business community opposed it. Sad really. As you say, you can get a lot of bikes in a carpark, and the research shows that cyclists spend just as much as car owners.
By: Paula on March 27, 2015
at 5:27 pm