As every month, we had a look at the business report of Auckland Transport to review any items of interest for cycling. Where possible, we will also provide additional context from our own discussions with Auckland Transport.
There aren’t that many cycling-related items in the report that we haven’t already covered with other posts, but there’s still a few tidbits we thought might be of interest, starting with:
- AT have completed a Cycle Crash Route Identification and Ranking Report which identifies the highest risk cycle-crash routes in Auckland for safety engineering, education and enforcement interventions. This report is a valuable document for prioritising and supporting safety investment on cycle routes. The report isn’t publicly available yet.
- The automatic cycle counters through the region report a 15% increase of cycle traffic over the same month last year. Not as much an increase as during summer months, but still pretty good. Morning peak cycle traffic rose 23%, which may indicate that our new commuters are already slightly hardier than our new recreational riders? NOTE: This since turned out to actually be slightly out of date February information. See here for the recent post specifically on the cycle counts.
- A number of predominantly northern, predominantly rural Auckland roads are intended to see their speed limits reduced, mostly from 100 km/h to 80 km/h. CAA is always supportive of reducing speed limits on roads that aren’t designed safely enough for a blanket 100 km/h.
- Tamaki Drive Trailer Parking – safety campaign has been developed and distributed to drivers on Tamaki Drive along with the introduction of additional signage and increased enforcement. Unsafely (and since some months ago, now also illegally) parked trailers on Tamaki Drive have been endangering cyclists on the road for a long while, so it’s good to see more action there, as signs alone were not being complied with.
- Tamaki Drive Projects: A contract has been awarded to assess the feasibility of the proposed boardwalk widening and the procurement of consultants to undertake a Scheme Assessment (SAR) for the Ngapipi intersection is underway. Note: These are the “larger scale” CAPEX projects intended for the next years, rather than the imminent safety upgrades we have blogged about before. We’ll closely follow this process, especially for Ngapipi Road / Tamaki Drive. No roundabout here please!
- Hibiscus Coast Highway Walkway/Cycleway – 600 metre long walkway/cycleway from Silverdale Rugby Club to Weiti River Bridge to improve safety. Something for our northern Aucklanders here – project is being tendered to a contractor, i.e. it will be built soon.
- Tiverton Wolverton route improvements. Funding by NZTA has been confirmed. The tender evaluation process is in progress and the award of the contract is expected by mid-May. We recently blogged about this already. Since then, we had confirmation that most of CAA’s requests for the design had been able to be incorporated, and also that it is intended to upgrade the parallel cycle route early in the project, so cyclists don’t have to wait the 1-2 years before the car route upgrade is completed.