Women in Urbanism Aotearoa created a special weekend event to bring girls out to play on bikes, in partnership with the Auckland Women’s Centre, Auckland Transport Walking and Cycling, and special guest, Olympic BMX medallist Sarah Walker. Emma McInnes reports on how ‘Pump Tracks are for Girls’ brightened up a rainy weekend and empowered young riders. Right on 10am, children and their bikes began to materialise in Grey Lynn Park, decorating the pump track scene in raincoats and rainboots of vibrant blues, reds, yellows, pinks, adding colour to the dull grey, and bringing life and joy to the track. Plenty just showed up in singlets and tights; the rain was no drama to them, …
Bike Auckland
If you do ONE thing this month for a bike-friendly city, make it this: support the Waitemata Safe Routes before Friday 14 December. It takes less than 5 minutes, is absolutely free, and you’ll be giving the gift of safe streets – to the hundreds of kids who live and bike along these routes, to everyone else in the neighbourhood, and to all of Auckland. This is a HUGE turning point for Auckland – but victory is not yet guaranteed. Your support is vital. To make sure the project actually happens. There’s still loud opposition out there – so make your voice heard! So it’s the best it can be. …
Around the world, a bike bus (or ‘cycle train’) is an increasingly common phenomenon. As seen in Ireland and Italy, it’s basically a ‘walking school bus’ on wheels: a way for young children to ride to school safely while developing future independence. And now, the bike train is pulling into Auckland. Local parent Matt Fordham and Pt Chevalier School’s Sustainability Champion Keren Rego were motivated to start the Pt Chev Cycle Train by a sense of frustration that little kids want to bike to school but the streets aren’t safe enough – and a sense of optimism that there would be strong demand. Below, Matt explains how the initiative has become an express …
College Hill is a key route for people on bikes – but a dangerous one, with no prospect of improvement any time soon. Luckily, there are two quick consultations where we can call for change. Re-read our call for action on the first, and read on for the second… Here’s AT’s proposal for a new crossing and slow speed zone on College Hill Feedback closes Thursday 14 June Use the hot pink button to add your voice! Here’s what we say We like the proposal, but it needs changes Please make the crossing more visible, with flashing surface lights or similar. Please remove the side islands – and please add protected bike lanes! Make the …
Running alongside SH16, the Northwestern Cycleway is not only the key bike path from the western suburbs into the CBD, it’s also a crucial local connection to and between Kingsland, Eden Terrace, and Arch Hill. And it’s booming – daily bike traffic has tripled in less than five years, with a daily average of close to 1000 trips registered by the automatic bike counter near Bond St (and 1500 on the last Thursday in February!). It’s a huge success story – with a major pinch point: the section between St Lukes Rd and Newton Rd. Built in the early 2000s as a shared path for bikes and pedestrians, the width …
Kids and bikes: one of the most natural combinations in the world, and also one of the most eagerly searched topics at Bike Auckland. Our lists of great places to ride with children have always been popular, especially every time the holidays roll around! Now we’ve taken a step up, with a new searchable database of great rides that you can filter by location, ability level, and other features. We’re delighted to launch this fabulous resource, brought to you by hours of behind-the-scenes work by a dedicated volunteer, Tracey-Lee Pettifer, and our wonderful pro-bono technical and design team at Sandfield. Check out Bike Auckland’s brand new Rides page – featuring, for starters, ten …
Bikes and kids go together like, well, kids and bikes. Every kid who rides knows the feeling of mastery it gives you; and every adult knows that part of the fun of riding a bike is that it makes you feel like a kid again. And what we all share is a sense of joyful simplicity. At its best, riding a bike is as close as you can get to the way you fly in dreams. So we were overjoyed to be contacted by 12 year old Vita with a video she’d put together about exactly that (with a little help from her dad). Watch for a moment and savour …
Like bees to a honey pot they come – to the new pump track in Grey Lynn Park! After school and all weekend long, kids of all ages and sizes, round and round, and up and down, a perpetual motion machine on wheels. The mayor himself gave it a go – in a suit, no less – when opening the Grey Lynn Greenway. We also have it on authority that sometimes, long after bedtime, you can hear dads on bikes out there whooping it up in the dark. The track was the brainchild of two Grey Lynn dads: Paul Wacker, a business coach, and Scott Kuegler, an adventure guide, who are both raising …
Jonny Webster from Bike Te Atatu writes with news of some smart kids exercising their right to ride… A cancelled bus route has inadvertently helped a group of West Auckland students discover the advantages of a commute by bike. The scheduled bus from Te Atatu Peninsula to the Rathgar Road schools in Henderson was plagued by stuck rush hour traffic and slow journey times (in the morning, it took about 45 mins but was almost always held up in traffic, especially with works on Te Atatu Rd, and the evening bus left 30 mins after school finished, and took 40 mins unless the traffic was bad). Then the bus got …
A couple of years ago during the school holidays, we threw together a list of great places to ride with little kids – beyond the driveway, the neighbourhood park, and the local school courtyard. And every school holidays, like clockwork, that blog post leaps to life again! We’ve just posted an updated list of great places to ride with little kids…and started a dedicated Facebook group for chatting about where to ride with kids in Auckland. But would you believe that original list is our most popular blog post Of. All. Time? That’s right. ‘Where to ride with children’ is bigger than ‘what’s up with Skypath’, more popular than ‘how to fix Tamaki Drive’, and more sought after than …
It was all smiles at Point England School this week, with the formal launch of their new bike track and bike fleet, thanks to the wonderful Bikes in Schools programme. Point England is the 20th Auckland school to be so lucky – with five more fully funded and ready to go (Whangaparaoa Primary’s bike track opens on 1 March), and another two dozen currently fund-raising. Each school gets a full package of kids’ bikes in different sizes, plus helmets; bike skills training and a bike track to practice skills on; and secure storage for the bikes within school grounds. It’s all accomplished under the auspices of the Bike On Trust, and paid for by fundraising …
When new bike lanes come to town – like the current Inner West Safe Routes proposal – we like to dig deep into the infrastructure implications. And we nudge you to support the proposals in principle, as a path to a better, more bikeable city. But to truly understand how transformative a proposal is, there’s nothing like hearing firsthand from the people whose lives it will change. Bike Auckland member (and co-inventor of Friding) Greg Wood lives in Westmere with his young family. His Facebook post this morning sums it up better than we could, so we’re sharing it here unedited… in the hope it will inspire you to add your support before midnight tonight! …
Of the four new routes currently being consulted on in Grey Lynn, the Surrey Cres-Old Mill Rd-Garnet Rd one is the longest and one of the most interesting. It runs directly past two primary schools, lots of houses, and small groups of corner shops – the latter often marking ‘ghost stops’ along the old tram line: friendly neighbourhood places to buy tobacco and a newspaper in the morning, or pick up your shopping on the way home from work. It’s nice to think of those shops as pins on the map for the idea of a city organized around public transport and local community… biding time and holding space until it comes back into fashion. At first …
A few months ago, we wrote about Jo Clendon’s petition to legalise what’s a fairly normal practice for children and their caregivers (as well as older folk): riding on the footpath. Since the petition was presented to Parliament, there’s been a lot more coverage (including on Seven Sharp; see also Toni’s take), and some good, nuanced discussion of the finer points. Public opinion is invited – and Wednesday is the last day to have your say, via this online submission form. Here’s the text of Jo’s petition: The petition asks that the House recommend a change to the New Zealand Road Rules to allow cycling on the footpath by children under 14 years of age (and accompanying …
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