If you frequently cycle along Tamaki Drive you might already have forgotten what we’ve gained as a result of the new-look Ngapipi Road intersection completed in July, and the Quay Street Cycleway extension which opened just last month. A reminder, then. The Quay Street Cycleway, already one of the city’s most popular routes, was extended by 800 metres towards the east, adding a dedicated bi-directional, protected lane from Plumer Street to just short of The Strand. Further along the waterfront, the Ngapipi Road intersection – until recently one of the country’s top 10 crash black spots, got a $9million safety upgrade. It acquired traffic lights, signalised pedestrian/bike crossings (in anticipation …
Bike Auckland
Mission Bay and St Heliers are set to get safer streetscapes with raised pedestrian crossings. Which is great – but we say the designs must reflect the Tamaki Drive Master Plan and create separate spaces for people on bikes and people on foot. Luckily, we’ve worked out how to fit in quality bikeways and make the design work better for everyone. Help us convince Auckland Transport to do it right the first time by adopting our future-proofed designs that work for all. Add your voice before 30 April! Use the feedback buttons and suggestions for what to say below… and scroll down for further details. I support Bike Auckland’s better design for Mission Bay! …
TL:DR: the Waitemata Local Board has won significant improvements to the quality and safety of the Quay Street/Tamaki Drive cycleway at the Ports, to tie into Bike AKL’s win from 2017. As an advocacy group working ‘inside the tent’ with Auckland Transport on improvements for safer cycling, we often hear great news about bike projects before they’re ready to go public. So, when we were recently shown plans for a ‘missing piece’ of the Quay Street / Tamaki Drive bikeway, our first instinct was to tell you all the good news … but we kept our silence while the project was still under wraps. Happily, now that the Local Board has made …
One of the many upgrades happening along Tamaki Drive at the moment is a quick project to improve safety at the intersection with Watene Crescent, in Okahu Bay next to the Orakei Domain. Auckland Transport plans to install bicycle activated ‘smart studs’ here (small bright lights set into the road, as seen elsewhere in the city) with accompanying warning signs, to alert drivers to the presence of people on bikes. Of course, this is just one small but crucial interim safety fix along what is Auckland’s (and maybe New Zealand’s) busiest bike route. We really hope to see delivery of better safety on this stretch of Tamaki Drive – flashing warning signs …
Having ended 2017 with a story about cycleway opposition in Grey Lynn, we hoped to start the New Year with more positive news – and indeed, works finally began a couple of days ago on the next section of the Quay St cycleway. As you know, Tamaki Drive into the city is Auckland’s busiest bike route (which may make it New Zealand’s busiest?) – with 43,000 trips in November, and growing. But currently the 1000+ Aucklanders who bike along this route daily are forced to choose between braving the roadway (busy with port traffic, buses, and cars), or sharing the footpath with pedestrians. The existing Quay St cycleway – a two-way …
Everyone who rides a bike in Auckland knows that we’re still far away from best practice bike infrastructure – even if things are slowly getting better. But for all the places where there are no bikeways at al, sometimes what’s even more dismaying are the situations where the legacy of previous, limited bike infrastructure actually risks making things worse. Take for example the ultra-skinny bike lanes on Greenlane West (see image at right), or the end of the westbound cycle lane arriving in Mission Bay on Tamaki Drive. For those who don’t know Mission Bay, this cycle lane was installed as one of a few quick improvements after a spate of …
If you managed to make it to last Thursday evening’s event, you will already have heard the headline news: Tamaki Drive’s future cycleway design between Solent Street and Ngapipi Rd has gotten a major boost in quality. In a stunning turnaround, after a consultation in which we (and many of over 600 submitters!) expressed grave concerns about the orginal design, Auckland Transport has decided that the changes proposed by Bike Auckland make sense. AT essentially adopted Bike AKL’s Quality Option. YOU DID IT! We’ll be able to go into more depth soon,* but for now, here are the highlights – hold on to your handlebars… As we strongly pushed for, …
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