The photo shows a formalised merge or a give way to the traffic in already in the lane you are intending to enter. Its Road Code stuff and entirely routine.

Exactly how a cyclist should proceed may be open to interpretation depending upon how far any through traffic (including cyclists) is from the curb: if a metre and a half I say go for it after signalling the manoeuver fully aware of one’s surroundings of course. If not, give way as usual. I specifically mention other cyclists as I have had cyclists pull out from a footpath (usually after "cheating" a red light) right in front of me on the road without paying attention no signalling at all too many times. Fortunately I have been paying sufficient attention and no collision has occurred.

The intersection (if that is what it is) is a little ambiguous as to the driveway. The last thing I would want anyone using the driveway is to assume that they have priority. Anyone wishing to pull into the driveway ought to give way to through traffic which I trust should include merging cyclists? Or is is technically a case of give way to the right for merging traffic in such a situation not yet having reached the through lane? In any case anyone leaving the driveway MUST stop at the footpath before crossing it. That ought to give them ample opportunity to see any cycle traffic passing through and which should have right of way. Should – as if.

I don’t know what the separated cycleway was designed to avoid but I cannot but recommend keeping to the roadway and taking the lane at all times – at least up to one’s level of confidence. Ambiguity as in this instance along with all to willfully ignorant motorists almost always makes this the safer option in my opinion.

New subdivisions including those "way out west" are not designed with cyclists explicitly in mind even as they are more approximately total (dare I say New Urbanist?) developments offering a range of facilities and dwelling sizes. Cars still come first by some considerable distance over all other design and human factors, however, as if not being able to drive straight through everywhere and right up to wherever one wants to go is a fate worse than death.

Designing development for cyclists – indeed people – is at best a holistic affair and not a simple matter of tacking this and that theoretically good feature on in an arbitrary manner and without full cognisance of, and reference to context. Form follows function in urban design as much as it does in architecture, I proffer. A misplaced, mal-designed or less than accessible cycleway is no longer a cycleway but an out of context design feature, for example. The photos provided show too much of this.

Not that I ride through any new suburban development all that often, but overall they are an improvement over the older style facility-less modernist subdivisions built when the car first became the god of the masses and fossil fuels were an infinite resource. For one and for cyclists more specifically the streets are generally not as wide and therefore not quite as life negating or a wannabe motor speedway. For two they tend to pleasingly asphalty and smooth whereas the older school macadam streets are too often unpleasingly rough for a cyclist.

It is true that new subdivisions never start with speed limits less than 50kmph, even though the way the roads are often designed and actually used – as long, narrow, double-sided car parks with one viable moving lane – veritably demand that drivers default to 30kmph. You know, driving to the conditions? As if. It may even be counterproductive to have an official speed limit of 30kmph lest it work as some sort of perverse incentive to speed egregiously as it appears to have done in the new central city 30kmph zone (the existence of which is threatening the entire rebuild and the future of civilisation as we know it, no less). I write with tongue in cheek, but only a very little.

I prefer white lines demarcating adequate width without pinch points on well designed roads when the speed limit gets up; or unambiguously designed roads with or without white lines for cyclists for travel at 30kmph or less where one can readily (all due confidence present) take the lane even if not going the speed limit. Traffic calming features and through roads for cyclists and pedestrians (and skateboards and scooters and wheelchairs…) but not motorists can play a part here over overtly separated cycling surfaces. Separate cycle paths are especially good for children, however.

Another good point about roundabouts. I always use the roadway to negotiate them: never any peripheral pathways supposedly designed with me in mind but which are effectively designed to be a cyclist negating inconvenience. Cyclist know thy place: get off the road. The busier the road the more negating they are. It would be nice if some of the roundabout approach lanes were wider like at Sockburn, however, but there’s no harm slowly taking the lane in a queue of traffic when required but for the extra dose of toxic fumes. The southern approach to this roundabout is as good an example of an after thought disaster as I can think of and does require that one has their wits fully intact, by the way.

Sorry for the double post – the earlier comment didn’t show up until I posted the second one, in spite refreshing the page.