With London having just announced a whopping 900 million pounds for cycling infrastructure (400 million in the next 3 years alone), several CAA staff have announced we might as well go where the riding is good, and expressed interest in moving to London.
But we are not sure whether they will take cycle advocates from a city that feels that “bus lanes are cycle infrastructure” when they are proposing things like this:
What are they proposing? Well, lots of everything known to be good for cycling: cycle paths separated from pedestrians and cars on main routes, traffic calming in quieter back streets, whole neighborhoods converted to emulate Netherlands’ cycle-friendly suburbs. They are even proposing to reduce traffic lanes on a motorway to provide space for a cycleway!
We also suggest you have a look through this brochure with some more nice visuals. And a wonderful quote: “Timid, half-hearted improvements are out – we will do things at least adequately, or not at all.” We wish we could push THAT through on more Auckland projects.
London may have a larger population than Auckland – 8 million in the urban zones that the cycling spend will be done in – but we would be quite happy to see an eighth of that kind of money spent here. The only projects were we see such quality cycle infrastructure proposed for so far are (occasionally) the larger roading projects like AMETI.
So when will we get a similar (funded!) plan for Auckland?
[Oh, and in case you were wondering why CAA in the end decided to stay put in Auckland? Because we love Auckland – and like a challenge!]
