Comments (6)

By admin, May 22, 2013

For those who are curious, but haven’t been out that way recently, here are a few photos of the Grafton Gully Cycleway’s first stage (between Grafton Road, at the Business School, and Alten Road / Stanley Street).

Works to come also include cycleway changes to the Alten Road signals at the bottom. And of course, there’s 4 other stages to complete the whole route, plus AT’s Beach Road work… in the short run, Stage 1 especially may be much more popular with pedestrians than cyclists, so we have been keen to ensure it is wide enough for both.

NZTA in cooperation with CAA have in recent months also put a lot of thought into how to make the gradients as smooth as possible to ease your climb up the gully. We won’t be able to avoid steeper bits totally, but it gives us some confidence that the future rise from the sea-level to the Northwestern Cycleway at Ian McKinnon Drive will be over a much greater length than if one went the currently preferred* route of Anzac Avenue and Symonds Street. So hopefully, this will also make the ride up the hill overall less of a struggle.

*Well, preferred from a gradient point of view. Lots of people, especially those new to cycling, prefer not to ride in the heavy bus traffic on that route… – which is kinda the point of the whole Grafton Gully route!

Its exciting to see progress, but the coolest stuff is still to come, as we near Grafton Bridge and the top over the next year…

Comments (10)

By admin, May 10, 2013

Hello all riding on the Northwestern Cycleway – and between Pt Chevalier and Waterview on the “spur cycleway” along Great North Road.

Due to construction in the centre area of the Pt Chevalier Interchange, the footpath / cycleway there (shown in red at the right) will be closed until 2017. This means that the walk/cycleway through Unitec may get busier.

There have been some complaints in the past about cyclists riding past pedestrians in this area at unsafe (or simply startling) speeds. It would be good if everyone could look out for each other. Smiles work too.

To help, CAA has in recent months asked for a variety of safety measures in the area, running from fixing a variety of broken streetlights to adding additional signage and warning markings on roads and cycleways. Recently AT and the Well-Connected Alliance on our request also installed temporary “flexi-post” markers to get drivers to slow down / stay a bit further away from the narrowest part of the shared path along Great North Road.

[All images from the Well-Connected Alliance's Waterview Construction Newsletter]

Comments (4)

By admin, May 2, 2013

Orange and black signs have been put up on the cycleway/shared path today between Te Atatu and Great North Road as a reminder that construction work that will start on Monday 6 May.

There will be some changes to the shared path near the intersection of the causeway with Great North Rd. Cyclists and pedestrians will be transitioned up onto the T2 lane. There will still be full through-access for everyone.

Please just go easy on your speed while we all adjust to the changing layout. At off-peak times trucks will cross the shared path. Those crossings will be clearly indicated and monitored by our traffic managers to ensure your safety and that of the workers on site. We welcome your feedback at any time.

Comments (11)

By admin, April 22, 2013

Guest blog by Elizabeth Collins, NZTA

Hi everyone – a heads-up that work will begin in early May to upgrade SH16 and the shared path between Great North Road and Te Atatu.

I’m Elizabeth Collins from the NZ Transport Agency and also part of the Causeway Alliance who will be doing the upgrade work for the NZTA. We’re keen to keep you up to speed with the changes that you will notice on the shared path between May and the end of 2016. We’re also keen make sure you’ll be kept safe – and interruptions to your trip minimised – during the shared path and highway improvements.

It’s been hugely valuable for us to have had (and continue to have) input from Barbara, Max, Tommo and other CAA members to the shared path changes and info signs we are preparing for you. Feel free to send me (elizabeth.collins@sh16causeway.co.nz) your feedback and suggestions so that we can make your trip alongside SH16 as smooth as possible. A “no-surprises” approach is our favourite.

Separately, I’ll be writing a regular, brief email update about the project and particular aspects of it, so if you’d like to be added to the email list for that, please let me know. The content will vary from traffic info to construction insights, progress photos, and a window on the world of the project team who will be based next to the Te Atatu Pony Club from late May. Here’s a project fact for you for starters…one of our engineering geologists, Joanna, was telling me earlier this week about the Pleistocene, Holocene and Miocene-aged materials that form the base layers of the causeway. It’s incredible to think that Miocene materials are…20 million years old.

Meanwhile, down the road at the Lincoln Road Interchange, Lisa would like to let you know that the concrete for the new shared path has recently been poured for part of the new shared path across the Henderson Creek Bridge and that section is on track for opening early next year.

Thanks for your patience while we upgrade the SH16, shared path and causeway between Te Atatu and Great North Road.

Safe travels

Elizabeth

Comments (23)

By admin, March 12, 2013

When reviewing the Auckland Transport cycle counter statistics (CAA’s access discussed here), a while ago we stumbled across a real oddity – lots of cyclists were using the Northwestern Cycleway to ride to town. But a lot less were coming back.

As you can see from the results of last week, this pattern still holds true – the yellow being the eastbound riders counted at the [classified] Kingsland count location, the blue being westbound.

On Monday to Wednesday, a lot more cyclists during the whole day were riding eastbound than westbound, with about 20-40% of the missing on the way back! And that on a commuting cycleway, where you would expect everyone going one way to also come back the other way!

Clearly, some conspiracy is at work here that AT is trying hard to hide. Maybe we finally have the reason here why there are so few commuter cyclists in Auckland? Something in the city centre must be abducting them. Maybe even forcing them to use cars to go back home after identifying them on the way in as subversive elements…

[At least, the stats results for the Fridays and Weekend periods seem to disprove the even worse possibility, namely that the counter isn't working right. That would have really worried us. So what do YOU think makes those cyclists disappear? Where do they go?]

Also, nice stats for Census day. Makes me hope the “ride to work” count can rise a lot over the abysmal levels of the last Census.

UPDATE: Had a look at the detailed count for the Monday. It very clearly shows how the morning is making up almost all the dominance. It is in fact interesting to see how balanced the PM peak is. Though the mystery is far from clarified by that…