Seven years ago when I was still working at university, we were fortunate to be visited by a colleague and cycling expert from the UK, Prof John Parkin (I was very pleased to be able to return the favour when …
Tag: Research
Flashback Friday: Coroner’s Cycling Inquest Hits Christchurch Soon
With all the growth in cycleways and cycling in Chch and New Zealand at the moment, it is pertinent to recall that a lot of the recent investment in cycling is due to the tragic events of nearly 10 years …
Flashback Friday: Cycle Lane Separators Revisited
Long before Christchurch looked seriously at using more physically separated cycleways, a simple improvement was to provide some low-cost separators on existing painted cycle lanes. Research was even undertaken to assess its effects and this post, originally from Apr 2013…
Flashback Friday – Is Cycling Safe?
Seven years ago, we had one of those unfortunate situations when suddenly there were two cycle deaths in close proximity. They are thankfully rare but they do get many people questioning the relative safety of cycling. This article, originally posted …
Flashback Friday: Are you “Interested but Concerned”?
One of the more useful concepts in modern cycle planning first came to NZ by way of a US cycle planner keynoting a NZ walking/cycling conference. It might seem odd that we would pick up a cycling lesson from car-centric …
Flashback Friday: Going our separate ways…
They might be rather commonplace now around Christchurch, but seven years ago there weren’t too many separated cycleways of any form (Tennyson St being the notable exception). But trials were starting of simple forms of separator like posts and low-rise …
Flashback Friday: Should we have cycle helmet legislation? NOT the same question as “should we wear helmets”!
Like Voldemort, cycle helmets in New Zealand are almost a topic you dare not speak by name, unless you want to see some fireworks in social media and a lot of energy expended for relatively little gain it seems. We’ve …
Do closer average passes mean less safe cycling?
A recent news article (and similar variants) has been doing the rounds recently and sparked a lot of social media comment. The article reports on some recent research from Australia that measured the space given by motorists passing people …
Sensibel: More testers needed
What’s cycling like in Christchurch? Some of you may remember the introduction last year to Sensibel, a new way of capturing information about people’s cycling experiences (good or bad). Now, more help is still needed to collect more information.…
New Directional Cycle Signal Surveys
If you’ve cycled around the central city, you may have seen the new directional cycle signals at the High / Madras / St Asaph and Antigua / St Asaph intersections. These allow different cycling movements to be controlled separately. Even …
What did you think of Biketober? Fill in the survey!
Biketober is over and now we’re in the month of… Bikevember? Whatever, we hope that you enjoyed the chance to take part in over 80 biking events in Christchurch last month. Maybe you attended heaps of things (and went nuts …
Guest Post: Is cycling just for Rich People?
There’s a brand new blogsite, Talking Transport, dedicated to all things transport around Christchurch. We’re looking forward to seeing some really interesting conversations there! Here’s a recent article posted there by website creator Chris:
My colleague came back from …
Guest Post – Sensibel: What’s your experience of cycling?
Hamish McNair tells us about an interesting project that you can be part of:
Sensibel promotes more efficient communication between you (the user) and decision makers responsible for cycle infrastructure. This is achieved by giving people who cycle the opportunity …
Support and Usage of Cycling still high in Chch
Tram Tracks, Cycle Signals – Two local cycling surveys to do
There are a couple of public surveys on cycling topics currently out for Christchurch residents to fill in. See below for the details:
{Disclosure: my company is involved in doing the analysis for both surveys}
Survey on cycling tram-track incidents
…Are Major Cycleways working? First surveys
There’s been a lot of discussion by the public and the media over the past couple of years about the value of the Major Cycle Routes programme. That’s perhaps to be expected; $160-odd million is a lot of money for …
How dangerous is cycling in New Zealand?
Auckland researchers Michael Chieng, Hakkan Lai and Alistair Woodward have compared the risk of cycling with other common activities and found it to be relatively safe, so ask the good question ‘why is it perceived to be so dangerous’? The …
Mythbusting: “Hardly anyone cycles”
Getting cycleways over the line in Christchurch (and the rest of New Zealand) has always been a difficult task, with various concerns about cost, car-parking, traffic restrictions, potential conflicts, you name it. It’s interesting to note though how often we …
New cycling research causes a flurry
Three interesting research reports about cycling have just been publicly released by the NZ Transport Agency and already they’re causing a bit of a stir around cycling circles (and elsewhere…). We previously alluded to these pieces of work being underway, …
Cycling Road Rules getting a shake-up
Many of the current road transport regulations in place in New Zealand were drafted really only with motor vehicles in mind; trying to apply them to cycles as well doesn’t always make sense. New developments in cycling network design also …