I recently had occasion to take an early flight from Christchurch – too early for my usual “bike and bus” combo. So I decided to bike the whole way for once; a reasonable trek from the south side of …
Category: Cycle-centric ideas
Bright ideas about cycling
Flashback Friday: How should we tackle Cycle Safety in NZ?
It’s been a tough past month safety-wise for cycling, with the tragic death of two people cycling, one in Auckland then one in Christchurch. That still only takes the total of cycle fatalities for the year to 4, but …
Flashback Friday: Cycling Stuff from Wellington
It’s easy to forget here in Christchurch that other places around NZ haven’t had the luxury of the cycleways that have been rolled out in our city over the past few years. While people will say “ah, but Christchurch is …
Flashback Friday – Clever Cycling Stuff: Cycle Bypasses
Gah, it feels like all I have managed to do lately on this site is recycle a few posts for Flashback Fridays, even though I have a bunch of other post ideas half-done or fermenting in my mind. Sorry folks, …
Flashback Friday: Learning from Ilam Road
One of the things I realised when I was in The Netherlands a few years back was that their great cycle infrastructure hadn’t happened overnight – it had been a series of gradual improvements as lessons had been learned from …
Flashback Friday: What “Quick Wins” would you like?
There’s often a lot of focus on the big flagship projects to help cycling, like the Major Cycle Routes. And, to their credit, they have already started to turn around cycling demand and safety in the city. But many of …
Flashback Friday: Cycling to Events
It’s been a very busy week of work and social activities; hence the lack of blogposts lately. One of those events (pre-lockdown) was the Electric Avenue music festival – very fun, but disappointing again to see zero consideration of bike …
Flashback Friday: Where should our next Open Streets be held?
Cycle infrastructure is a key part of the biking renaissance here in Chch, but it’s also important to have a variety of events and other initiatives supporting these activities as well. We’re fairly lucky to have a pretty good selection …
Flashback Friday: Dealing with Cycling Safety in NZ
Concerns about the safety of cycling in NZ certainly haven’t disappeared in recent times, and sadly we still have a number of deaths and serious injuries occurring every year. Still, many of the current efforts in this space (including considerable …
Photo of the Day: Rangiora Bike & Ride
There seems to have been a bit of a theme about bike parking in our posts of the past week or so, so let me continue that trend with a good example I came across recently, up in Rangiora. As …
Flashback Friday: Learning from the Dutch
Christchurch has been down the cycle network planning/design path for a while now and nationally the state-of-the-art has also progressed quite a lot. But seven years ago, it was a brave new world embarking on our Major Cycle Routes programme. …
Bike Parking at Major Events
Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Great Kiwi Beer Festival in Hagley Park, along with 15,000 others apparently. Not surprisingly, given those numbers, I figured that the most sensible way to get there was by bike, to …
Photo of the Day: Grocery Shopping by Bike
Apparently in many people’s minds, biking is still something you can only do recreationally “for fun” (some people still tellingly refer to it only as a “sport” or “hobby”…). And as for doing something practical like shopping – …
Has Cycling increased in Christchurch?
“Build it and they will come” – that’s what we’re regularly told about the magic of induced demand, especially for something like transport. It certainly seems to happen when we build additional roading capacity – what about when we …
Flashback Friday: Biking – Easier on the Body
Some recent heel niggles while out running have reminded me of how much easier it is when I can just hop on my bike and knock off a few kms that way instead. Similar thoughts were going through my head …
Flashback Friday – Separated Cycleways: Which Separators are Best?
Happy New Year! Another year, same old Flashback Friday. This time, let’s go back to something first posted in Oct 2013 when separated cycleways in Christchurch were quite the rarity. Now we have a considerable selection of separators around the …
Cycling in Chch 2020: The Power of a Bike…
It’s that time of the year when we reflect on what has been happening cycling-wise in Christchurch in past 12 months and also look ahead to the coming new year. If I had to pick a theme this past year, …
Flashback Friday: Cycling wishes for Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that Santa has got you something suitably bike-friendly… Speaking of what we want, I thought you might like to muse on this Christmas wishlist (originally posted in Dec 2017) and think about what we …
@Limebike e-Bikes now in Christchurch
Note: “Cycling in Christchurch” does NOT operate Lime e-bikes. To contact Lime about discarded e-bikes or other issues, email support+nz@li.me or phone 0800 467-001. More info at their Help Centre.
Last month, we mentioned that Lime was bringing public …
Better Consultation
As Submissions Convener for Spokes Canterbury for 12 years, now retired, I have some thoughts to share on how consultation might work better. The links are to Strong Towns which offers a rich source of articles on urban planning and …