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By Max, April 18, 2013

Updated with new data at bottom

“Rainy weather can’t keep a good cyclist down” – I thought, trying hard to convince myself as I rode down Symonds Street last Tuesday, with drenching rain spraying into my face. Since I am not a cycle commuter at the moment (I live too close to work – its literally quicker to walk), I haven’t been cycling in the rain much recently. And its been a few years since this school-kid argued against his father’s modest request to at least, at minimum, stop cycling during icy conditions…

At least I felt quite happy at having found my good rain gear that morning. Even in that downpour, I was snug and dry, and able to arrive at my NZTA meeting with dry dress shirt and trousers, after having pulled off the zippered rain over-trousers.

But the more relevant point would be: How much does rainy weather influence the cycling numbers in Auckland? We know Copenhagen cycles through driving snow, but what about us Kiwis?

Well, first off, we – very roughly speaking – cycle about 25% less in winter than average over the year, and 25% more than average in summer. Those are the patterns when you look at the year-round automatic cycle counter results.

But what about day-to-day changes? And influence of weather directly, rather than seasonally? What happens when it is hosing down hard, like this Tuesday morning? So I went to have a look at the cycle counter data.

April 08 (Mon) Grafton Bridge 752 cycle movements

I used the handy-dandy Grafton Bridge counter to provide a comparison (I considered using Kingsland’s counter, but thought Grafton Bridge provides a better cross-section of cyclists).

I looked at 4 days:

• 

  April 09 (Tue) Grafton Bridge 907 cycle movements

  April 8 and 9 (Monday and Tuesday last week) – when we still had pretty good weather, and had had months of dry weather behind us

• April 15 and 16 (Monday and Tuesday this week) – while Monday was still tenable, Tuesday, as noted, was rather abysmal

April 15 (Mon) Grafton Bridge 574 cycle movements

So how do the results look like? Pretty telling (see results and curves at the right).

When looking at last week, we can see a real “bumper crop” of cyclists. 907 cyclists on Tuesday? Higher than any day on the bridge in the last December and January period. Monday was also a seriously strong day.

April 16 (Tue) Grafton Bridge 384 cycle movements

But then came the rains. Not only did the cyclist numbers drop off notably from last week’s Monday to this week’s Monday – presumably due to the start of worse weather over the weekend. They also took an even deeper nose-dive between Monday and our rainy Tuesday (and it wasn’t even raining all Tuesday morning – but by then, most commuters had obviously long since made their choice for more than 2 wheels). This week’s Tuesday had only 42% of last Tuesday!

So in the end, while this isn’t a very scientific study (way too few data points, lazy me), I feel confident to say that its seems to show that we just don’t like rain all that much!

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April 15 (Mon) Kingsland 460 cycle movements

UPDATE: One of our cocky commenters (well known to us) below threw down the gauntlet. Representing the Westies coming in along the Northwestern Cycleway, he’s telling the Grafton Bridge folks to “harden up” in the face of a wee bit of rain. Lots of cyclists out west – despite rain – he says!

April 16 (Tue) Kingsland 267 cycle movements

Well, we went back to the counter data, and this time had a look at the Kingsland counter – for the same Monday and Tuesday this week, with the rainy Tuesday. How many “Westies” (including inner-city Westies) gave up as the clouds opened up?

Well, it seems that on Grafton Bridge, between Monday and Tuesday, there was a 33% drop in cyclists. On the Northwestern Cycleway, in that same period, the drop was 42%…

Mmm, Tommo – seems like Westies are actually MORE affected by rain. But at least tall tales still work

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By admin, April 12, 2013

By Pippa Coom

In early March I travelled on a private trip to Melbourne with the Velociteers who performed at the Melbourne Bike Fest. I took the opportunity to check out why Melbourne is considered to be one of the world’s most liveable cities. The first thing that struck me was the number of people using bikes for transport, especially young women.

Melbourne suffers from similar issues to Auckland with car-centric city design, excessive speeds and road congestion. However unlike Auckland there is connected bike infrastructure that makes cycling pleasant and safe. It wasn’t perfect but there has clearly been investment in a whole variety of different approaches to encourage cycling – painted green cycle lanes, shared paths, contra-flows, traffic calming, intersection treatments and separated or “Copenhagen” lanes (see the photo below of a lane under construction along the route of an existing painted lane).

The Melbourne public bike hire scheme introduced in 2010 has also increased the visibility of cycling. Over the four days I was there I used the service for all my trips. I found it to be convenient, cheap (registration is $2.40 per day with the first half hour free ) and took me to where I wanted to go around the city centre. I was able to make the compulsory helmet requirement work by taking over my own helmet and being willing to carry it around between trips (not an option that suits everyone – although helmets are for sale for only $5).

However experiencing the Melbourne bikes also convinced me that in Auckland we should not make a public bike hire scheme a priority until we can offer connected and safe routes.

I totally support the aim of public bikes being available for transport in Auckland and will continue to work for this (it is a priority in our Local Board Plan) but I don’t think a publicly funded scheme can be justified in the short term when the infrastructure doesn’t exist to send locals and visitors on short A to B type trips around a variety of locations in the city centre and fringe.

Ideally a public bike hire scheme should be funded as well as investment in cycling infrastructure and we shouldn’t have to wait for either but as we have to prioritise right now (from a very limited walking and cycling budget) I don’t think a Melbourne type scheme is top of my list for Auckland Transport to deliver.

[Pippa Coom is a former CAA Committee Member and is the current Deputy Chair of the Waitemata Local Board]

Editor’s Note: The comment about the public bike hire is an interesting one – because it comes back to the chicken-vs-egg question that we often discuss in CAA – are more cyclists needed to get more cycle infrastructure, or do we need more cycle infrastructure to get more cyclists? Will promotion work when the groundwork on the road hasn’t been done yet?

On the other hand, overseas schemes where the city went all-in (such as Paris, or London) have been credited with creating a lot of new cyclists, sometimes even in the absence of other new infrastructure. What do you think? [Note that Pippa's comments above regarding the Bike Hire scheme have been updated with more context since the initial version of the post.]

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By admin, March 27, 2013

TL:DR: Cops on Bikes in Manukau. Tamaki Drive / Ngapipi to get signals, not roundabout. Cycle attitude survey coming. Monthly cycle count up 7.9%.

As every month, we have a look at the business reports of Auckland Transport, to review any items of interest for cycling. In the past, this has several times allowed us to “catch” important projects before problematic decisions because irreversible. Where possible, we will also provide additional context from our own discussions with Auckland Transport.

Note that where the below is italicised, we have copied the text from Auckland Transport’s report directly, without changing it. Where news is of particular importance, we have bolded the item.

• A new section in the Business report discusses funding applications to NZTA that are at risk. Of the $11.2 million dollars at risk currently identified, $1.1 million are walking & cycling projects. When your scope of the total pie is already so small, you don’t like to hear that. At least one of our favourite projects at the moment, the Beach Road Cycleway (linking to Grafton Gully Cycleway) is noted as having a very high BCR and being likely to be funded in the end. Not so nice is that one of the AMETI public transport projects (that includes a lot of cycling works) is also included in the “at risk” projects. Here’s hoping.
• The section of the Omaha-Matakana walkway and cycleway along Takatu Road Matakana has been completed following a successful partnership by community groups, Auckland Council and Auckland Transport. The walkway and cycleway has been developed by the local community and mainly consists of connections along private property, Auckland Council land and quieter local roads. Maintenance work along the heavier trafficked Takatu Road provided a safe cost effective opportunity for a segregated cycleway to be delivered. We hadn’t heard of that one before this. Any locals who can tell us how you like it?
• A partnership agreement was undertaken with NZ Police Counties Manukau District for 12 bicycles to be provided to six Police stations in South Auckland for the month of February. Officers based at each of the stations used the bikes while on active duty, patrolling the local area and promoting cycle safety and Auckland Transport’s ‘Cycling’s the Go -summer campaign’. Due to the success of the agreement the Counties Manukau District are now purchasing two mountain bikes and safety gear to enable regular access for patrolling on bicycles. Nice to see we are getting some permanent ‘Cops on Bikes’, after the Auckland Central scheme seems to have fallen through / been delayed.
• Tamaki Drive (Ngapipi Intersection) A preferred option has been selected for presentation on 14 March to the Orakei Local Board for comment. The selected option is a signalised intersection that is future-proofed for additional road widening that is likely to be required as a consequence of the Tamaki, Ngapipi, Kohimarama, Kepa (TaNKK) Study. Great to hear we won’t have to rouse ourselves for a fight against what could have been a horrible scenario – a multi-lane roundabout on our busiest cycle route. Though the comment about “additional road widening” does make us wonder. More traffic lanes??? We are currently chasing up more detail on this.
• Whangaparaoa Road (Hibiscus Coast Highway to Red Beach Road) – An adjustment to the budget is sought to enable further investigation into improved bus and cycle facilities in support of the draft Regional Public Transport Plan, the updated Regional Cycle Network and the anticipated changes to cycling design standards. Lets hope this rushed legacy project transforms into something we can actually recommend cyclists to use! The most difficult step should already have been achieved, by convincing AT to stop and review.
• Waterview Connection Cycleway – The contract for the Scheme Assessment Report has been awarded to Beca and work has commenced. Not much new here.
• Auckland Harbour Bridge Pathway – A report was presented to the Transport Committee on 13th February that recommended that the matter be considered by the Council Strategy and Finance Committee. In preparation, a risk workshop was held by Council to identify the risks of the project. Again, not much new here.
• Further walking & cycling improvements are supposed to come for the Auckland Domain, to start construction around May. We understand this mainly means more speed tables to reduce the numbers / speed of cars using Domain Drive, as well as a cycle lane on one side. Which we didn’t really support, because it seemed to us to make limited sense to only provide for one direction here (unlike on Lower Domain Drive, where an uphill cycle lane makes lot of sense).
• Cycling Research – This is the first time AT has undertaken a comprehensive review of customer attitudes and behaviour with regard to cycling across Auckland and will be in market in March. The research will help to develop a more detailed profile of people and cycling in Auckland, will guide promotions planning and provide useful information into the walking and cycling team in Community Transport. This item is rather unclear (it may refer only to tendering for this research in March) but we understand that AT has finally agreed to undertake the comprehensive review we have been asking for for years (may we call it a “Bicycle Account” as in Copenhagen? We will see!)
• Significant work is occurring with Cycle Action Auckland to ensuring that its design and safety needs are addressed at all relevant levels of the Road Corridor Operations, Infrastructure Design, Community Transport, and Road Corridor maintenance units. We are happy to report that key staff at AT are really on board with Cycle Action in terms of genuine collaboration and working to deliver for cycling. Big ‘ups’ to these unnamed stars doing “significant work” with us.
• Cycle numbers recorded at the 9 automatic cycle counters in February 2013 were 7.9% higher than in February 2012. Morning peak movements were up 18.5%. For the total year, numbers were up 8.7%  Keep riding, keep growing!

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…

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By admin, November 10, 2012

If you are a hardy soul, and intend to come to the Dawn Blessing for the Grafton Gully Cycleway construction start, we have some tough news. It has now been moved even earlier, to ensure that it is a proper DAWN ceremony. So the new time is 4:45am, to get underway for a 5:00am ceremony! Location is still Stanley Street / Alten Road, Thursday 15th November.

For those who manage to get out of bed to “show the flag”, you will get a light refreshment to accompany a nice morning ride. Let’s get some 2-wheelers to the ceremony!