And in the meantime there are thousands of bike riders using this wonderful new facility every week – and heaps of scooter riders. And nary any lycra to be seen, just everyday folk doing an everyday thing like getting from A to B safely on a pushbike.
And the traffic is not getting held up because people get used to things and make changes – that’s what humans have been doing for thousands of years.
And life goes on.
And the sky did not fall on chicken little’s head because some of the tarmac was repurposed.

P.S. as an added bonus narrowing the lanes along Rolleston Ave has socialised vehicle drivers into complying with the existing 30kph speed limit. The previously overly wide road before encouraged them to break the law by exceeding the posted speed limit. This newly civilised behaviour makes the area so much nicer to be in: a coffee or wine outside the Lumiere cinema is a lovely way of finishing up the week.

Im not sure what you are counting Robert. I have lived near Park Tce for 20 years and have never seen congestion like I have with the traffic changes around this mess. Change it back to NORMAL commuter conditions asap.The road is for all. If you don’t like sharing the road ,ride on the footpath provided .It has served the people of ChCh well.

Council staff estimated the cost of widening the path north of Armagh St as between $230 K and $250 K . Our mayor reckoned that $50K would have fixed it easily – at the same time accusing council staff of ‘ running amok ‘.

Widening would have required the removal of the Solidarity Grid art installation and considerable work along one section of the riverbank. Post quake, a lot of damage to the bank area required fixing. Do we need more asphalt in the vicinity of the river ? The stolen lane is working very well.

Better to spend that money on a safer crossing to allow pedestrians and cyclists access onto Salisbury St and then some more dollars creating the post quake promised cycle lane along Salisbury St to link to the Avon Ōtākaro path to New Brighton from Barbadoes St. Another important section of the network would then be completed.

The only problem with “extending” (presumably you mean widening) the existing pathway north of Armagh is the time and cost to do this. Converting a traffic lane to a cycleway took 2-3 weeks at minimal cost. Widening the existing path (particularly with the various ground constraints along the way) would be considerably more costly and take months (winter is not an ideal time to do work like that either). And you would still have the problem of a somewhat wider shared path at a time when industry best practice is trying to move away from them in busier areas.

I may have a reasonably balanced view as I don’t believe that I fall into any one camp, being a regular cyclist (20 plus times a week), Motorist (10 plus times a week) and pedestrian (currently daily) along the sections in question. Any shared use requires tolerance and consideration, along with a general awareness on how you are impacting on others.

Cyclists, typically solo, tend to be most aware of their presence and mostly go out of their way not to inconvenience others. The shared use speed demons are typically E-bikes and E-scooters, as opposed to the “acoustic” versions. Pedestrians (walkers and runners) are typically the least aware of there presence and will randomly use shared use pathways as if they were the only users. It is common for these users to line up across the entire shared use pathway, effectively blocking it for others. I agree that these users still have a right to walk/run with friends and converse.

The cycleway section from Cashel St to Armagh St makes perfect sense as this was the busiest section of shared use pathway. Additionally I have witnessed many car door versus cyclist incidents in this section where cyclists were using the road. The cycleway section between Armagh St and the footbridge makes no sense when considering the room available to extend the existing footpath.

Kilmore St is a major one way system moving traffic from east to west with multiple lanes hence pointless to restrict it to one lane for a few hundred meters. Any RH turning traffic completely blocks the single lane on Park Tce. At peak times, traffic will que on Kilmore back to Montreal with it taking several sets of lights to get through (all idling traffic). Already I see motorist taking Montreal St and then cutting through on a side street.

Extending the cycleway all the way to Harper Ave only serves to arrive at the most problematic and dangerous point which is the 1m available to turn at the bridge. It’s not uncommon to see motorist mount the footpath at this point.

My recommendation would be to retain the section from Cashel St to Armagh St bridge, extend the footway to the pedestrian bridge and divert cyclists across the river. This option will meet the needs of all parties.

As an aside, the most frustrating users of Hagley park are the cyclists who insist on running 10,000 plus lumen lights, effectively blinding anyone approaching outside of daylight hours. You only need a small front and rear pilot light to be seen by others and park lighting is by and large adequate to see by.

Lets all remember to be tolerant, considerate and aware of how we are impacting on others.

Lefty

Even more mysterious is what happened to our promised Salisbury Street separated cycleway. It’s now 4 years post proposed completion date.

https://ccc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/The-Council/HYS/2016/october/AAC-Salisbury-Kilmore-Pre-consultation-booklet.pdf

Thanks Robert. I couldn’t find any information about why they decided to stop it at the Salisbury St intersection though.

This may answer some of your questions.

https://simonbritten.com/2023/06/23/full-copy-june-2023-rolleston-avenue-park-terrace-cycleway-memo-to-the-waipapa-community-board/