Review of the Traffic Management Workshop in Terms of Cycling

The 1999 Traffic Management Workshop, held from 1 to 3 November in Palmerston North, had one of its focuses on cycling issues.  One of six sessions was completely covered with remits regarding new cycling developments.

Remits

Alix Newman (Christchurch City Council, Cycle Planning Officer) described the investigation process of different delineation techniques available.  Alix reported that the current practice of marking cycle lanes is a very weak form of assigning road space to cyclists and wants to be able to show at the end of the process which techniques are most appropriate for the different situations.

In his second remit, Alix reported about the process of how cycle lane markings have been developed in Christchurch for signalised intersections.  The overall objective is to make signalised intersections as safe and cycle friendly as possible, but we will have to do much more research before we can confidently claim this success.

Andrew McKillop (Hamilton City Council, Traffic Engineer) talked about an Advance Stop Box trial.  Two of these facilities, where cyclists find a storage area ahead of the vehicle limit lines at signalised intersections, have recently been installed in Hamilton.

Andrew then presented a remit on behalf of Roger Boulter (Hamilton City Council, Transportation Policy Planner).  Roger has won the IPENZ Transportation Group Study Award.  The emphasis of his work is getting the multiplicity of agencies to talk to each other, which ultimately may result in the development of a National Cycling Strategy.

Canute Chandrakumaran (Transit New Zealand Head Office, Policy Division) reported the findings of a research project about cyclists and thermoplastic roadmarkings.  The State Highway agency has changed their standards following this research in order to improve the safety of cyclists.

Vadi Vencatachellum (Auckland City Design, Traffic Engineer) informed the conference delegates about a combined bus priority and cycle lane in Auckland.  A green colour has recently been installed to improve the delineation of the shared facility in Symonds Street.

Coloured Surfacing for Cycle Lanes

Conference attendees expressed a need to discuss the appropriate colour for cycle lanes and bus priority lanes.  Green has been chosen for the combined Auckland bus and cycle facility.  Red is the colour earmarked for a cycle facility in Auckland, to be marked in December 1999.  Hamilton has used green for their Advanced Stop Box trial, whereas Christchurch has used red for the cycle facilities that have been coloured yet.

One of the purposes of the Traffic Management Workshop is to achieve consistency within New Zealand in terms of traffic management.  To prevent driver confusion when visiting another city, it is aimed for that road controlling authorities follow the same rules and standards throughout the country.

A spontaneous meeting was convened of interested parties to discuss the most appropriate colour.  A group of about 30 practitioners from local authorities, Transit New Zealand, traffic engineering consultancies, road safety co-ordinators, the Land Transport Safety Authority and road marking companies discussed the issue in some depth. 

The group concluded that green is the most appropriate colour.  It was this group’s wish to informally recommend to New Zealand’s road controlling authorities the use of green if they wish to use colour for delineating cycle, bus and combined bus and cycle facilities.

National Cycling Working Party

The colour issue highlighted the need for a national cycling working party.  Issues like the development of design standards (including sign posting of cycle facilities), trial approval by the Land Transport Safety Authority and research should be co-ordinated, as it would be a waste of our resources if different institutions double up their efforts.  And as mentioned earlier, we should aim for uniformity throughout the country.  Alix Newman would like to set up this working party in the near future.  Express your interest to him if you would like to be involved.

Closing Remarks

It was good to see so many professionals presenting remits about cycling issues.  This is a very positive development, as there is still a definite need for all of us to learn more about the specific needs of cyclists as road users.  We have only just started to learn about it!

I would like to encourage everybody within the profession who is involved in planning or designing for cyclists to prepare remits for sharing the knowledge and to attend future workshops.  If workshop attendance is not possible, I believe that anybody from the proposed National Cycling Working Party would be happy to present a remit on their behalf.  Cycling is an area where we all have to up-skill ourselves.

I would like to thank everybody for their input at this years Traffic Management Workshop.  I believe the spontaneous meeting mentioned earlier was of high significance.  Colleagues whom I believe some years ago would have discussed whether to provide cycle facilities were present at this meeting and intelligently contributed how to design and provide for cyclists.  A very positive development indeed.

Axel Wilke

City Design Christchurch, Traffic Engineer

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