Tag: Public transport

Cycling Central Melbourne

Since the Christchurch earthquakes, the subsequent rebuild, the rearrangement of certain public spaces, and changes to the way people are being encouraged to travel around the city, travelling to other cities sets me onto comparison mode. Naturally, critiquing the cycling …

A postcard from Melbourne

This post is long time coming; too many other distractions since, like Biketober… I was lucky to head across the ditch in September for a couple of week’s holiday in Australia. We started in Melbourne and then drove the coastal …

Cycling in Los Angeles

So, as mentioned a couple of weeks back, I recently visited Los Angeles briefly on my return from Washington DC. Instead of the usual rapid stopover at the airport, I took the opportunity for a 24-hour stay to have …

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

While it’s been partially open for a few months now, with the second stage of the new Christchurch Bus Interchange now completed, it seems timely to have a look at it and see how it works for cycling (we’ll …

End of Tour: Reflections on Cycling in Europe

So, two months after I actually returned home, we come to the end of the belated reports on my 3-month study tour of Europe. I finished with a couple of days in Frankfurt, Germany, before flying out, and I’ve …

Vauban and Rieselfeld, Freiburg: Suburbs for Cycling

During my time in Freiburg, Germany, I paid a visit to two outlying suburbs that have become poster-children for sustainable development. Vauban and Rieselfeld lie to the south and west of central Freiburg respectively, with about 6-7000 people in …

Freiburg – Cycling and Sustainability

We’ve seen a lot of examples of cities around Europe that are doing great things for cycling. But our local readers might say “You’ve shown us big cities (e.g. Munich, Vienna, London), small cities (e.g. Enschede, …

Cycling in Zürich: An uphill challenge

After my time in Munich, I spent a brief few days in the Swiss city of Zürich, a city of about 400,000 people (although there are about 1.5 million in the greater urban area). Unlike the afore-mentioned German …

Unterhaching, Munich: Cycling and good planning

While I was in Munich for a week, I made a visit to one of the outlying suburbs of Unterhaching. Technically it is a self-contained town just 10 km away from central Munich (about 20 minutes by train); what …

Vienna: Cycling on the Rise

After the hustle-bustle of Velo-City in Nantes, I headed across the continent to the Danube and the Austrian capital of Vienna. With 1.8 million people, Vienna is a major European hub and also well known for its fabulous …

Cycling in Nantes and #VeloCity2015 Conference

After the highs of a month in the Netherlands, I still had another month to check out some of the “lesser lights” of European cycling (which, compared with New Zealand, invariably still means better than most of us…). …

What can Christchurch learn from The Netherlands?

Having had a month ranging far and wide around The Netherlands (and a month since to reflect), I think I’m starting to see some common trends emerging in terms of what makes the Dutch get on their bikes so much …

Arnhem and Nijmegen – Twin Cycling Cities

My Dutch cycling adventures continued with a visit to see two cities that are only ~18km apart and working hard to improve their cycling provision even further (do they ever stop…?). Arnhem and Nijmegen both have about 150,000 people …

Cycling in Houten – a triumph in Planning

When providing for cycling, it’s easy to get hung up on the various design details in how to build best-practice cycling routes. As I showed you in my previous post about Utrecht, the Dutch certainly have many very good …

Reflections on a Month in the UK

My time in the UK during my sabbatical has now come to an end and I’ve moved on to the Netherlands (more on that in the future!). I’ve provided a few thoughts and photos on London and Bristol specifically …

Cycling in Bristol

Well after spending three weeks in Bristol, UK, my time is nearly up. I came to spend time with some colleagues who also do quite a lot of work on sustainable transport issues like cycling, so it’s not surprising that …

Bikes and buses – starting to think about multimodalism

Great cities allow people to get around them in many different ways and to mix and match transport forms.  Christchurch already has some facilities that allow mixing and matching to happen, so I thought I’d reflect on this for a …