Refreshed Wellington Urban Cycleways Programme

There's a lot to like about the refreshed Wellington City Urban Cycleways Programme

At this Thursday's Wellington City Council Transport & Urban Development Committee meeting councillors will consider a paper on the Wellington City Urban Cycleways Programme review and refresh. The paper is a response to the review of Wellington's urban cycleways programme and makes recommendations around the scope, timelines, funding and engagement approach.

You can read the complete paper below but here's what I think are the key points:

• The WUCP "aims to create a sustainable, liveable, attractive city that offers choices about how to travel and an all ages & abilities cycle network". It's great to see this re-stated so clearly.
• The planned cycling improvements in the CBD are now subject to the Let's Get Wellington Moving Programme (LGWM) outcomes so funding will be moved elsewhere.
• New additions to the programme are the Great Harbour Way (Cobham Drive + Evans Bay to Waitangi Park) and the southern corridor from Berhampore to Pukeahu Park - fantastic!
• The 4 year programme now looks like this. The big winners here are the eastern and southern suburbs. The biggest loser is the CBD, which is now on hold until the LGWM programme is finished. To be fair, there's probably no other way around this (as explained below).

• ​The council recognises the need for a holistic and integrated engagement approach, recognising a cycleway is part of wider streetscape & community in which people live.
• The need to engage with all voices within communities, not just those the council can easily connect with, is also recognised.​
• A reconfigured approach to engagement has been developed - "We're cycling the Wellington Way", which is great to see:

• In Island Bay WCC is working with the Island Bay Residents Association (IBRA) & Cycle Aware Wellington (CAW) on a community led approach to a 10 year plan focused on The Parade.
• A pop-up shop is already open in Island Bay and workshops are also planned  as part of a broader, deeper engagement approach.
• Council officers and the Island Bay community will provide an update on the Island Bay engagement approach to the September Transport and Urban Development Committee meeting.
• The new approach has cost, timing and resource implications and will likely make the engagement and design phases of each individual programme longer.
• The council must show united leadership at a governance and management level. There is a risk that funding may be lost if NZTA lose confidence.
• The newly formed council must prioritise cycling matters in its first meetings and achieve the following key milestones:

That's all pretty good stuff. In fact, the only remotely negative things I can think of to say about this refreshed programme are:

• It's disappointing to see that cycling improvements in the CBD have been de-prioritised but in reality it probably has to be that way. As James Burgess from Cycle Aware Wellington helpfully pointed out on Twitter this should be a good thing in the long term. Trying to keep the cycling and LGWM programmes separate would effectively rule out anything really good for bikes near key public transport and car routes, and prevent improving some key journeys:

• The IBRA and CAW are certainly not 'all voices within the Island Bay community'. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with how these two organisations seem to have been reductively positioned as the two opposing forces in this debate, which then fits a convenient narrative of "calling a truce". This risks disenfranchising any Island Bay resident who chooses not  to engage with the residents association, whether they support the cycleway or not (or are neutral or don't care). However, I know that the council are acutely aware of this and are keen to hear feedback from any other individuals or organisations about how they would like to be engaged with. You can drop in to the pop-up shop on The Parade with your ideas or contact the council directly: Phil.Becker@wcc.govt.nz. There are also workshops coming up so keep an eye out for those. And to be fair to IBRA and CAW it's not their fault. They were asked to help design the engagement approach and they have got stuck in, so good on them.
• ​It's quite interesting to see that both the current council and the yet-to-be-elected post October council are being giving a very clear warning in the paper that they "must show united leadership at a governance and management level" and that "the newly formed council must prioritise cycling matters in its first meetings". I think this is great, of course, but I hope it doesn't provide a platform for reactionary, populist candidates to grandstand from. Let's hope that the politicisation of the Island Bay cycleway, and urban cycling in general, is now at an end.

Overall, this seems like a sensible & pragmatic refresh of the WUCP and I'm looking forward to unanimous approval from Wellington city councillors tomorrow!

Regan.

​
Read the complete paper here: