If you’re a regular viewer of CTV (Canterbury Television) you may have seen the News team recently do a series on transport options around Christchurch. CTV reporters followed various City Councillors on their commutes around the city using different modes, and discussed the pros and cons of each. This included reporter Marcus Gibbs biking home one day with City Councillor Phil Clearwater, which you can now see on YouTube:
Overall the article is a nice positive piece about the many advantages of cycling, including the exercise, low cost, and connection with your surroundings. It is particularly instructive that the biking duo had to keep stopping to wait for their cameraman’s car to catch up! Cr Clearwater mentioned the comfort provided for regular riders by the existing cycle lanes along much of his journey to Cashmere, as well as mentioning the improved Major Cycleways to come. I’m not sure whether I entirely agree however with his idea of putting a line down the middle of widened footpaths as “inventive” cycleway provision – it might work in some places, but would likely provide a false sense of security at others.
Cycle safety was alluded to with the mention of one cycling accident a week on average in Christchurch (and more recently slightly higher numbers were reported in the media). Of course, this always has to be seen in the context of how much cycling happens – the 50,000 cycle trips each day in Christchurch was mentioned. Meanwhile in Christchurch we also suffer from other motor vehicle injury crashes at an average of two per day… Cr Clearwater expects to see the safety stats improve with the development of the Major Cycleways, and I’d agree.
Do you think cycling was portrayed well in this article?
Here’s another interesting video viewpoint about cycling around Christchurch – http://thewireless.co.nz/themes/risk/getting-home-cycling-christchurch-s-dark-streets
Thanks for your sharing Lenny. Not sure about the $ 70 million government contribution towards cycling in the link though. Is CERA spending this amount on cycleways (would love this) or is this a reference to $ 69 million cycleways funded by the council? In any case: Credit where credit is due!
Yes, I thought the same thing about that little factoid. No doubt NZTA will end up contributing a subsidy for some of the Major Cycleways, but the programme was initially driven solely by City Council who budgeted to pay for the lot if necessary.
Pity that the Councillor talks so much about the safety aspects of cycling while the advantages like being faster and cheaper (as well as fun) are afterthoughts.
But overall great to see support from local body officials for cycling.