Category: Cycle-centric ideas

Bright ideas about cycling

Flashback Friday: How do you make your bike commute more interesting?

With the shift to a new house nearly a year ago, my commute to work changed. However, I don’t always takes the same route to or from there; sometimes due to the traffic at different times, sometimes to get in …

Flashback Friday: Inside the new Bus Interchange – What’s in it for Cycling

On my fairly regular trips out of town I often use a bike-bus combo to get to and from the airport. The central Bus Interchange is a great facility to join the dots here and they really did do a …

Submit on getting a Fringe Benefit exemption for Bikes-to-Work

Connor Read (co-founder of the Shutl e-bike rental service) has alerted me to an interesting but troubling development in the world of fringe-benefit tax (FBT). Many of you may know that current legislation in NZ requires FBT to be paid …

Flashback Friday: Timely street maintenance is important for cycling

I was in a meeting yesterday where a discussion was held about coming up with a standard national specification for maintenance of cycleways, now that quite a few of them are appearing around the country. It’s one thing to find …

Flashback Friday – End of Tour: Reflections on Cycling in Europe

Earlier this week I reported on the recent draft Chch Transport Plan, which has some great proposals in it. It’s stated that many of the ideas in it came from looking at best practice elsewhere in the world; many …

A lot to like about the draft Chch Transport Plan

It may have been an attempt at a political stunt but, whatever the motivations, the Christchurch City Council decided a couple of weeks ago to publish the draft version of its Christchurch Transport Plan currently in development. There was subsequently …

Flashback Friday – Vauban and Rieselfeld, Freiburg: Suburbs for Cycling

Last week I reminded you about my time visiting the German city of Freiburg and some of its transport-friendly aspects that the similar-sized Christchurch could emulate. Another feature that Greater Chch could do well to consider is how Freiburg develops …

Flashback Friday: Freiburg – Cycling and Sustainability

This week has seen a flurry of discussion locally by City Council about whether to release or not the draft future transport plan. In the end, the Council decided to publish the 30-year draft plan for the public to have …

Shutl brings e-bike subscriptions on demand to Christchurch

There’s a growing number of people in New Zealand who are liking the benefits that e-bikes can bring to their lifestyle, especially if they have to contend with hills, longer distances, or just poor health/fitness. But owning an e-bike doesn’t …

Flashback Friday – Cycling in Zürich: An uphill challenge

This week I have been spending time in Wellington, looking at some proposed cycleway routes and observing bike behaviour in our capital city. Although similar in size to Christchurch, Wellington suffers from having a lot of hills that limit the …

Flashback Friday: First Count Data for New Cycleways

Cycle counts in Christchurch were in the news this week, with some concerns about stalling bike numbers (at least the Press article was somewhat more measured and factful compared with some other misleading dross elsewhere…). We’re lucky to have built …

Flashback Friday: Cycling in Nantes and #VeloCity2015 Conference

Like many parts of the world, Europe is starting to attempt some semblance of post-lockdown normality (even despite the ongoing Covid infection numbers…). In the cycling world, that meant another recent Velo-City cycling conference two weeks ago, in Ljubljana, …

Flashback Friday: Christchurch – The City that… Cycles ??

As New Zealand reopens to the world (despite the lingering Covid numbers…), and we start to see more international visitors to our shores, it’s an interesting question as to what impressions they will take away from the various places they …

Time for another Winter Solstice Ride – Tue 21 June 2022

It’s hard to believe that a simple fun idea dreamed up 10 years ago would turn into a much-loved institution in the Christchurch cycling calendar. But that was the concept started by Ian Wells all those years ago, with the …

New 529 Garage site aims to tackle bike theft

Tackling bike theft is a perennial problem globally; it’s a particular issue in places where biking is increasingly popular – like Christchurch. We’ve talked about other attempts to address the problem before, but often the challenge is getting sufficient …