Safer cycling on track as work starts on 15km of new routes
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Four key projects in the development of Christchurch’s cycleway network will kick off in the next two months, adding more than 15 kilometres to the network in the next year.
“It is exciting,” Christchurch City Council Manager of Planning and Delivery (Transport) Lynette Ellis said. “We are really creating options for people to consider alternative ways to travel. It’s the people that aren’t already on bikes, who might have been worried about safety, or put off by access that we are targeting with these networks."
The 13 cycleways are forecast to cost more than $156 million to construct and are aimed at making cycling in Christchurch safer and more appealing.
Construction has just finished on parts of the Unicycle route through Hagley Park and to Christchurch Boys High School, and a raft of work is about to start on other cycleways that Mrs Ellis says aim to draw people out of cars, and onto bikes. “This year we are working on 9 of the 13 cycleways routes. We are about to start construction of Little River (the Little River end), the Papanui Parallel, Little River (the Addington end), and the first stage of the Rapanui/Shag Rock cycleway.”
Route design and public consultation will also get underway on the Northern Line cycleway and the Heathcote Expressway.
The council will also be working with schools and businesses to encourage them to make use of the cycleways and to provide safe, secure cycle parking facilities.
Mrs Ellis said the cycleways aim to help achieve the NZ Transport Agency target of 10 million more cycle trips annually in New Zealand by 2019. “We’re offering people a genuine choice that feels safer for them. I do think it will get people out of cars and onto bikes. For example, a family in Redwood might actually see biking to Northlands Mall as a viable option if there is a safe cycleway."
“We’ve got an opportunity to change the mind-set of our next generation and they want it. One of the most powerful deputations during the Papanui Parallel process was from two Papanui High School students just saying what a difference it would make to their lives.”
Mrs Ellis said the cycleway design guidelines have been reviewed since the projects first kicked off, and the cycleway network development was an ever evolving process.
“The Government is behind this and it feels like we have a complete, one team approach. We’re providing very real options. The beauty of what Christchurch has chosen to do is a network based approach. Instead of doing patches here and there, we are connecting the whole city to the central city."
“Christchurch is seen as one of the cities really moving forward with this. We are seen as the city that is going to deliver and have been successful in bringing the Asia Pacific Cycling Convention to Christchurch next year – it’s the first time it has ever been held out of Queensland – and I think that is an indication of how our work is being viewed across Australasia.”