Someone asked the question the other day about what is happening to the South Express railway crossing near Old Blenheim Rd, which is currently still a tight maze layout. As with a number of crossing upgrades in Christchurch (e.g. the planned improvements further north on the Northern Line) the short answer is: “we’re waiting on KiwiRail”. Unfortunately our rail network provider keeps a fairly tight shop on who is allowed to install crossings on their network (specialist design/equipment, safety requirements, etc) with the unfortunate result that they always seem to take a very long time… This was evidenced previously when the (now wonderful) automated gates at Matai St on the Uni-Cycle route were installed over 18 months after the cycleway approaching it was completed – as first posted in Jan 2016, before that it looked like this…
It’s great to see the new Matai St East cycleway, now mirroring the older cycleway on Matai St West. As you heard recently, already it looks like it is a popular route for cyclists. But perhaps the price of that popularity has been the recent erection of a new sign at the pinch-point in the middle…
It’s usually a sign of design failure when you’re requiring cyclists to dismount on a cycleway (at least they said ‘please’…). Personally I have a pet hate of these ridiculous maze crossings and strongly suspect that people are too busy trying to follow the circuitous path (and staying upright if on a bike) to be able to pay attention to any passing train. But supposedly it’s all in the name of level crossing safety (particularly when people unfortunately continue to get killed crossing tracks). Fortunately the plan is to replace this maze with an automatic barrier-controlled crossing; last I heard that might be about April. Which seems to make the decision to install this (presumably short-term) sign all the more curious…
What do you think of this crossing? Would you dismount going through here?
It’s a lot easier to get through than the crossing at Blenheim Road. And no, I don’t and won’t dismount unless absolutely forced to.
Cycleways are meant to make it easier for cyclists, not more difficult
No, I wouldn’t dismount.
Imagine the outcry if a sign was put up at an intesection requesting drivers to get out and push their vehicle through!