Flashback Friday: Outside the new bus interchange – what’s it like for cycling?

Recently I did some research on travel mode shift and safety and bus transport came out as the safest road transport mode. That’s probably cold comfort (literally…) for many of the occupants of the bus crashes near Tekapo yesterday; thankfully the outcome wasn’t more tragic. Nearly nine years ago though, a bigger concern vexing some people in Christchurch was the potential risk of running a cycleway right next to our new Bus Interchange, as discussed in this blogpost from Dec 2015. Fortunately I’m pleased to note that no cycle vs bus incidents have been recorded around the Interchange since its opening…

A little while back I showed you some of the great facilities inside the new central city bus interchange, such as covered bike parking and easy access to buses. Now I’d like to show you some of the facilities immediately outside the interchange – some of which have gained a bit of notoriety (even before they were built…).

One of the more contentious decisions made by the City Council in the lead-up to last Xmas was the decision to approve a cycleway on the north side of Tuam St as part of the planned central city transport changes. The main sticking point was where the cycleway (and footpath) crosses over the main entrance for buses into the new bus interchange. All manner of world-ending calamities were predicted by some parties.

The decision to place the cycleway here was not taken lightly; I personally attended a number of meetings and saw various emails and reports that grappled with this over about 2-3 months. A number of different options were considered:

• Left-hand (north) side of Tuam St (the option chosen): This has the advantage of linking more intuitively with other cycleways and intersections along the way (drivers expect to see cyclists on their left), but does mean of course that the route crosses the bus interchange entrance and also the Justice Precinct entrance.

• Right-hand (south) side of Tuam St: While this would avoid crossing the busier entrances mentioned above, there are actually a lot more private accessways that would need to be crossed on this side of the street. There are also some tricky questions about how things would work at each intersection, especially for turning traffic; not very intuitive.

• Down the middle of Tuam/StAsaph blocks (the South Frame): It is likely that there will be shared walking/cycling routes through here and, for many, that may be a very pleasant way to get through town. However, those trying to get from A to B reasonably efficiently on their bike would probably be frustrated by both tangling with pedestrians along this route and the lack of signalised crossings at each of the main roads crossed (the blocks are too short to add extra signals in between the main cross-road intersections).

• Along Lichfield St instead: While this route would now be quieter from through-traffic, and links better to the cycling route along the Avon River, there will actually be quite a lot of traffic accessing parking buildings along here. At the eastern end, the route could also be blocked by the proposed new stadium.

• Contra-flow facility along St Asaph St: The biggest challenge would be fitting in a wider two-way cycleway here without losing even more parking; as it is, the proposed westbound St Asaph St cycleway is causing a few headaches for the amount of parking it is removing. Providing adequate traffic signal phasing in the contra-flow direction would also be tricky, and there would be a lot of accessways to cross, where “wrong-way” cycling would not be expected by crossing traffic.

Ultimately the final choice came down to issues of practicality for cycling and intuitive design for all road users along the route. To mitigate the (fairly small) potential risk at the bus interchange, additional traffic signals and warnings were also installed so that buses and bikes/ped’ns are separated. This also included the country’s first eye-level bike signals to highlight when you need to stop (although it does seem overkill to have four sets of cycle signals all showing the same thing in close proximity to each other). Yellow LED in-ground flashing lights were also installed in the cycleway approaching the bus interchange entrance, although I haven’t always noticed these to be operating. Mind you, it could have been worse; at one point serious investigation was given to introducing barrier gates that would automatically close in front of the walking and cycling paths…

For all of this attention to risk management, it is useful to consider that in 10 years of the old Lichfield St Bus Exchange (which had no signal protections and such-like) there had been zero reported bus-bike (or bus-pedestrian) crashes at the entrances/exits – in fact, there hadn’t been a bus-bike crash in the whole city…

Anyway, on the ground there are now all manner of protective features to minimise any conflict, and I’m not aware of any reported incident to date. But the biggest problem to date has been the relatively unresponsive traffic signal phasing that doesn’t seem to actually determine when buses or bikes are approaching the entrance crossing (surely they can put detectors for both, back at the Colombo St intersection?). As a result, more often than not, I’ve come to this crossing with a red signal in front of me but no approaching buses. And like many others I’ve witnessed, after a check behind, I’ve just gone through anyway.

A similarly frustrating issue is being seen at the Colombo/Tuam intersection as well. Initially cyclists (and pedestrians) on Tuam St get a protected green signal with through-traffic while left-turning traffic is held back – great for safety…

After a period of time, the cycle signal goes red to allow left-turners to move. If there are no left-turners however (and at the moment that is quite often), then it is rather frustrating to wait here (especially if I actually want to use the hook-turn box to turn right; I’m now going to have to wait for more than a whole signal cycle in both directions before I can exit the intersection. The main traffic signals on Tuam are synchronised for a “green wave” for traffic along the street; on a bike though that seems to mean that every time I’m approaching this intersection from Durham St I can see the green cycle signal in front of me but it goes red before I get there…

It’s not just Tuam St where the signal timings are causing frustration. On Colombo St, with its nifty kerbed cycleways, a right-turn phase has been added to allow northbound buses to get into Tuam St efficiently without waiting for gaps in southbound traffic. Fair enough, but when there’s no-one actually using it, it’s rather annoying to see northbound traffic going through while you’re still stuck on a red southbound. Not surprisingly, again compliance with signals is not always high…

In summary, while there are some very nice cycleway treatments on both Tuam and Colombo Sts outside the bus interchange, their practical use is currently being affected by some very non-responsive traffic signal timings. This is leading to quite a bit of non-compliance of red signals by people biking; maybe one day someone will misjudge that and there will be a problem…

What do you think about the bus interchange cycleways? Is it a big risk?