Biketober has finished and we can all breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate a job well done; thanks to all the many people who helped to make it happen! Now back to more “mundane” matters of biking around our fair city…
The NZ Bike Expo was part of Biketober, so I had a couple of occasions to bike over to Wigram Skies to help volunteer during the expo weekend. The route to the Wigram Airforce Museum venue takes you from the Little River Link along Skyhawk Rd and Corsair Drive. It starts off nicely enough with some on-road cycle lanes, but then rather curiously turns into this odd “boulevard”-style street:
As with much of the subdivision, the street makes use of indented car parking (like where the van is parked). However, still some cars insist on parking in the roadway in between these parking bays (and technically there’s nothing specifically telling them not to). From a cycling perspective however, you can see the problem when some moving traffic shows up as well – where do I bike?
The solution seems fairly obvious: mark some cycle lanes along the road. As you can see, there is plenty of width to do so while retaining an adequate traffic lane. With the indented car parking, there is also the advantage that you are not really removing any legitimate parking to achieve it.
There is a lot of focus currently on rolling out our flagship Major Cycle Routes. I do wonder though whether we could also still be retro-fitting simple no-fuss cycle lane treatments like this where the opportunity is available and not likely to generate much concern.
Can you think of other places where marking a cycle lane would be easy to do?
Some previous thinking on this topic too: http://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/2016/05/04/where-could-we-easily-add-cycle-lanes/
I haven’t measured the width, but Northwood Blvd seems an obvious choice, with an extended connection to the CNC shared path access point on Radcliffe Road and at some point the Northern line. The Community Board would probably not be a big fan, though. As a recent arrival to Christchurch, I find it amazing that car-centric roads like Northwood Blvd or Corsair Drive were still build at a time when the 50s were long over.
Actually, according to Google Maps measuring tool, Northwood Blvd is 5.5m. So seems like there’d be room for a cycle lane. There is also not a single good reason not to make it one that is not separated with some low-tech like poles or planter pots. No one parks there, and there is plenty of room. It would really be interesting to build some low-tech path (compacted gravel surface) between Main North Road and the CNC shared path, connect that to a separated bike lane that is trialed on Northwood Blvd, and see how many people cycle from Northwood to Papanui or even the CBD.