Committee backs construction priority for cycleways

The Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Committee has endorsed a staff proposal outlining the order the city’s 13 Major Cycle Routes will be built.

It recommends the Council adopt the priority order. If accepted, the first four Routes to be built are:
• Uni-Cycle: The link from Canterbury University to the Central City through Hagley Park.
• Papanui Parallel: Connecting Northlands and the Northern Rail Route to the Central City.
• Quarryman’s Trail: The link between Halswell, Hoon Hay and Somerfield to the Southern Lights route which connects the southern suburbs around Beckenham to the Central City.
• Rapanui Shag Rock Cycleway: From the Coastal Pathway at Ferrymead to the Central City.

The report to today’s Committee meeting also asks for the Major Cycle Routes to be designated as a metropolitan transport programme. If the Council agrees, decision-making responsibility will rest with the Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Committee.

Committee Chairman Phil Clearwater says there are several benefits of taking this approach.

“It is recognition the city-wide importance of the cycleways project and will ensure consistency of decisions and outcomes across the whole network.

“Staff have also been clear of the challenges of delivering the network in a timely manner and this will cut back the amount of time absorbed in the decision-making process.

“Many routes cut across different ward boundaries. While decisions will be made by the Committee, Community Boards will make recommendations to the committee,” Mr Clearwater added.

The Council’s Assets and Networks Manager Chris Gregory says staff assessed the routes for their strategic fit, high use potential, safety, economic support and travel time reliability.

“Essentially we are looking at which routes offer the greatest overall benefit and prioritising them for construction. We looked at how each route connects places of employment, education and community centres. Then we considered what our analysis shows for how people choose to travel and applied that to these areas, also considering how congestion might be reduced.

“Safety is an important consideration and the routes were compared for how they might reduce crash rates along with general safety improvements along the length of the route.”

Mr Clearwater says, “The degree to which the public see these new facilities as being safe is important as one of the biggest target user groups is the people who are interested in cycling but don’t consider it to be safe. The MCR network is a new and innovative approach to the provision of cycling facilities and will go a long way towards addressing that.”

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