I’d like to invite you to cast your mind way back to mid-2009… Spurred on by some concerns from nearby school children about cycling to school, consultation was undertaken on a proposal to add cycle lanes to Harewood Rd from the Bishopdale Roundabout to just before Nunweek Park. As part of this proposal was the reduction along this part of Harewood Rd from four traffic lanes to two. This then led to a special Hearings Panel on 2nd Nov 2009, which decided that they needed a bit more information on some aspects. A second Hearings Panel meeting on 24th Feb 2010 then recommended that the cycle lanes be approved. And quite some time later on 26th Aug 2010, the full Council agreed to getting this project underway. Nine days later on Sep 4th, a wee little earthquake brought things crashing to a halt…
This little history lesson serves to illustrate just how long the saga of cycling on Harewood Rd has actually been discussed. Sure, they might have only been painted cycle lanes, and they didn’t extend all the way from the airport to Papanui, but it illustrates the fact that Harewood Rd continues to be one of the least pleasant places to ride your bike – which is why relatively few people currently do it…
Fast forward a few years and the “Wheels to Wings” (W2W) cycleway was named amongst other Major Cycle Routes in 2013 as part of a city-wide cycle-friendly network. The initial plan to complete all 13 routes in five years was a tad optimistic. Seven other routes received initial Govt co-funding in 2015 and there was the hope that the remainder would be completed by 2022, although that timeline has since been progressively dragged further out.
Still, the Council did finally start consultation on a proposed W2W design in early 2021. However, (partly thanks to a bit of misinformation and bluster on the part of some elected members who should know better…) there was a fair bit of pushback and a redesigned proposal was put out for further consultation in Oct-Nov 2021 (to be fair, like many initial project proposals, there were further tweaks that probably were required of the original design).
Although this design received more support, yet another round of re-design was asked for. Just to muddy the waters further, a couple of retired traffic engineers (who I don’t recall having ever designed a separated cycleway before…) proposed an alternative design option, requiring a further safety audit and design review to consider the merits or otherwise of it.
And so it was that we found ourselves in another Hearings Panel to review the various submissions and designs. While the five-member Panel started deliberations on 16th Feb 2022, it took six disconnected days of hearings before finally on 13th April the Panel resolved to recommend the cycleway route but with yet further issues for staff and the design teams to address. And on 28th Jul 2022, Council finally voted to recommend that it be continued.
Yay! Surely we can get on and build the cycleway now? Especially with the previous Government’s additional climate-change funding helping out. Ah, but even then, there was the threat of which transport projects (including W2W) might have to get deferred to use the available funding. On 22nd Feb 2023, it seemed that Council was sufficiently swayed to include W2W in the projects approved for funding and implementation. But then barely a couple of weeks later, Cr Victoria Henstock (already very vocal in her opposition to the project) managed to get Council to vote not to commence construction of the route “…for a period of up to 12 months to allow staff and local Councillors to work further with the affected communities on previously identified design concerns as part of the detailed design process.” Sigh…
The seesawing continued when, once again, public feedback in the Annual Plan process in June 2023 seemed to put a bit more urgency on starting construction on W2W as soon as those issues were resolved. But that still didn’t seem to happen too quickly – and then we had an election and a change of Government…
As we have heard previously, our new Government has very little appetite for “frivolous” extras like cycleways, leaving most Councils with little in the way of subsidy for them. That suddenly makes it much harder to get any uncompleted cycleways like W2W over the line – and to think that we could have been starting to build the darn thing over a year ago…
So just what exactly is it that has made the W2W cycleway so “controversial”? (I wish media would stop throwing that into headlines any time a cycleway is mentioned…)
- A big one for many is the proposed reduction of traffic lanes from 4 to 2 for one third of the 4.5km route – to the average person that seems like a “loss” that will create even more congestion. But at most, these sections of road carry no more than 13,000-18,000 vehs/day (and you could imagine that might drop further if people take up cycling or shift to parallel routes like Sawyers Arms…). For comparison, two-lane Ferry Rd carries up to 24,000 vpd, Riccarton Rd carries up to 28,000 vpd – I could go on…
- Another commonly heard gripe was that on-street parking was going to be much reduced along the route. To their credit, the Council’s designers have made a few tweaks to find a few more spaces in places (esp. around some busy destinations), but the reality is that the reduction in parking is still relatively small and, more importantly, a quick check of Google Street View will show you how under-parked Harewood Rd currently is anyway.
- Another common thread is that this route is not justified because there are “hardly any people cycling there” at the moment (Council figures estimated it to be about 100-200 a day at various locations); there’s also a weird side objection about just how many people are actually going to cycle to the airport on this route (as if that’s the only target destination along it…). This inverted logic seems to completely ignore the concept of induced demand. Why aren’t people biking there at present? Because it’s not a pleasant cycling environment – I consider myself a reasonably confident rider and even I feel distinctly uncomfortable riding along Harewood Rd. Build a decent cycleway and, just like the others around the city, people will flock to them…
- The Bishopdale roundabout got a bit of flack on a couple of fronts; firstly the planned removal of trees in the central island to accommodate the cycle path, and also the complexity of the proposed signalised crossings on both ends. The tree issue was largely resolved, and hopefully coordinated signal phasing should make the route through this roundabout relatively seamless.
- The consultation feedback highlighted various other specific complaints and issues (e.g. access around driveways), but generally these have been addressed in subsequent redesign stages.
What’s made W2W seem “controversial” is councillors like Aaron Keown who claim that no-one wants the cycleway – ironic since he helped stoke the fires of dissent. Cr Keown’s initial focus on this corridor was actually to get an upgrade of just the Breens/Gardiners/Harewood intersection – certainly not a great intersection but not actually near the top of the biggest safety problems in Christchurch. The W2W cycleway with signals here would be a win-win on both counts…
So here we are now set for a key decision by Council over the next week or so to determine the next steps. Seven different options have been presented, ranging from pressing on as before, to partial or simpler solutions, to pausing the project for now. It seems like a sad conclusion to a project where only a minority of people were ever against it in the first place…
What do you think of the Wheels to Wings Cycleway saga?