Happy New Year! I’m currently enjoying a bit of a break before getting back to work (if you can call still writing CiC blogs a “break”…). Thought I’d start the new year with a positive story that I’m starting to see more often.
Many of us are are familiar with the cliché of seeing a roadworks sign in the cycle lane. It’s invariably annoying, often potentially dangerous, and in most cases could be easily fixed by relocating the sign somewhere else. Currently there has been some cabling work happening along SH76 (Brougham St), requiring some temporary traffic management along the corridor and side approaches. So it was that one evening, immediately south of Brougham St on Waltham Rd, I came across these signs…
This location is already a complex site, with two merging traffic lanes also dealing with traffic turning to the left and right – not really where I’d want to suddenly have to pop out from a cycle lane. I was all set to fire off a SnapSendSolve complaint about this silly placement. But the very next day, what did I see…
I don’t know whether someone else had complained, or the traffic mgmt supervisor had seen some sense. But the errant sign had now been relocated to the generous adjacent sealed berm. If I was being picky, it could be shuffled a little more to the right, but there’s still a fair amount of space left on the footpath even for mobility scooters, wheelchairs and the like. So it’s nice to see good examples of traffic management for cycling.
Hopefully we will continue to see further improvements on this front, thanks to a recent initiative that I was involved in peer reviewing. One of the positive outcomes of the tragic cycle fatality on the outskirts of Chch in 2019 was an undertaking by the relevant parties to develop better temporary traffic management guidance for dealing with people walking, cycling, wheeling, etc through roadwork sites. The resulting “good practice guide” will be available for use by the industry soon.
Have you come across examples of good temporary traffic management for cycling?
I was the one who complained so sadly the traffic management did not change it.
It was fixed very quickly from when I complained to when it was fixed which was nice to see!
Here is the snap send solve
https://me.snapsendsolve.com/report/4x300l
I dunno how they do it, but Snap Send Solve things are often fixed extremely fast.
Under 24 hours is not uncommon, and I’ve seen some large but low priority things done in a week.
Great to start 2024 on a positive note 🙂 I’ll keep an eye out for other examples of good temporary traffic management, although I more often than not see bad ones similar to the one you came across :/
Yes I agree sending a report on SnapSendSolve often results in a quick response, which is great! I guess Christchurch is so spread out that there is no way City Council workers would see everything that needs fixing, so they rely on us to point out problems to them!