What’s up, fellow urbanists 😎
We are looking for two types of volunteers to join the Bike Auckland Infrastructure Team (or, BAIT).
Firstly, we are seeking people with any of these backgrounds:
- Urban planning
- Traffic engineering
- Transport engineering
- Other tangentially-related fields!
And if you don’t have any of these backgrounds, but have a lot of passion for urban infrastructure just waiting for an outlet, we’ll take you on as well! Bike infrastructure just doesn’t get done well around these parts, and we need people to help fight the good fight… through bureaucracy! Even if you aren’t super-knowledgeable yet, our existing BAIT volunteers will help you get skilled up and get involved.
The Infrastructure Team is primarily looking for people who are interested to:
- Analyse transport designs
- Take on information from other BAIT-mates
- Submit collated feedback to the agency in charge (usually Auckland Transport or Waka Kotahi)
- Offer advice and knowledge about infrastructure to the Bike Auckland crew, so that they can be more effective in their roles
These are our infrastructure experts and consultants, and are the people who tend to do the more technical elements of submissions and analysis.
We understand that those of you with day jobs in transport engineering might sometimes come face-to-face with a conflict-of-interest. This is common and we can manage that by specifically excluding you from certain projects.
Secondly, we also have an interest in finding folks who have the skills to:
- Connect with project teams and authorities
- Pester the people in power
- Translate technical speak into everyday language, so that we can better communicate the changes we want to see.
These are our infrastructure communicators, who ideally would have a basic level of modern urban infrastructure knowledge, or be willing to learn. A volunteer in this role would sometimes come to meetings with Auckland Transport, and be the face of the Bike Auckland infrastructure team.
Sometimes, the feedback that the BAIT gives is very basic (support, do not support), and sometimes it can look like full-on reports. It depends on the scale of the project as well as everyone’s availability and capacity. Since the overwhelming majority of our infrastructure team is volunteer, we understand that sometimes we won’t be able to tackle every project every time – this is okay, and entirely expected.
We also have historically done a bit of reading through policy, statistics, and infrastructure funding documents; getting a feel for the landscape and really getting to know the numbers. Since this can be intense, we generally leave this to people who are particularly hooked in by that sort of thing. If you are interested in this element of infrastructure support, we would ask that you pass on a synopsis of what you have learned to the rest of the infrastructure team, as not everyone will have time to study every document out there.
Most importantly: sometimes the infrastructure team will get together to discuss infrastructure things, and Bike Auckland shouts pizza! The next in-person gathering will be happening soon! 😎
If either of these volunteer roles (expert/consultant or communicator, or by some miracle, both!) sounds like a bit of you, contact Cappuccino [cap@bikeauckland.org.nz] and they will follow up and see how we can get you involved with the Bike Auckland Infrastructure Team!
No CVs necessary; an expression of interest will be sufficient!
Cappuccino does try to keep a database of infrastructure volunteers, so, if you could try to include something for each of the following categories in your email, that would be very helpful! Cappuccino’s entry has been used as an example so that you have some idea of what to write.
Name of Human: Cappuccino
Email Address: cap@bikeauckland.org.nz
Role/s (if applicable): Administrative Assistant at Bike Auckland
Background: No formal background
Skills / Expertise: Having an approximate knowledge of many things.
Areas of Interest: Inner West
Areas of Bike Travel: Inner West. City Centre.
Things I want to learn: A little bit of everything bike infrastructure, so as to be able to know what needs doing and how to organise it.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you all!
Much love,
Cappuccino
