Following the success of the previous cycling-related “What If Wednesday” events held by the University of Canterbury, another interesting event is coming up in a couple of weeks. Two years ago, Geography Professor Simon Kingham posed the question “what if cycling was safer than driving?”, and explored the true risks (or not) cycling in New Zealand. This time, he ponders the question “what if it was safe to cycle in Christchurch?”.
As I alluded to last week, I suspect the title is a bit misleading; it’s already actually quite safe to cycle in our city. But the perception of this is certainly not always there, and no doubt there will be many more people hopping on their bikes as the Council’s Major Cycleways programme gets into full swing.
Simon’s presentation though is more interested in considering what would the city actually be like if/when we did get lots more people cycling: How many extra people would cycle in Christchurch? What knock-on effects (good or bad) would there be of an increase in cycling? Who would most benefit from a safe cycling city? It’s an interesting scenario to ponder as we try aiming to develop into a world-leading cycle city.
What If Wednesday events are free public seminars that anyone can come along and attend. However, because of limited space, you do need to register ahead of time for the event (and there’s currently still over 100 “tickets” for this seminar). The seminar is in Lecture Theatre C3 and starts at 7.00pm on Wed 11th June. If you don’t manage to get along to it, the seminars are also videoed so that you can watch them later via Youtube (e.g. here are the last two WiW cycling seminars from Glen Koorey, Aug 2013, and Simon Kingham, Sep 2012).
Book your place now for this interesting event!
If you missed this event (or want to review it), you can now see the video of the seminar at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WicSQ3ctPTU&list=PL1D0DE06F56864BA4&index=2