By Paul Callister
In July 2024, a raised pedestrian and cycle crossing was installed across busy Poplar Avenue leading to Raumati South on the Kāpiti Coast. After the current government’s defunding of such crossings, this may be one of the last built for some time. But, even working within a more sympathetic regime under the previous government, getting this crossing installed was not easy.
Te Ara o Whareroa shared walking and cycling track which connects the villages of Raumati and Paekākāriki was opened in 2016. Since its completion, it has been popular with walkers and cyclists. including children attending nearby schools. But the crossing of Poplar Avenue was always dangerous.
As a result, over many years individuals had approached the Kāpiti Coast District Council with their concerns about the safety of the road crossing. Some minor safety improvements were made including new signage and a 40km zone was established around the crossing. However, the fundamental safety concerns were not addressed. So, in late 2021 a petition for a safe crossing at this site was launched. The petition was endorsed by Low Carbon Kāpiti, Kāpiti Climate Change Action Group and Kāpiti Cycling Action. Patrick Morgan also visited the site and gave us good campaigning advice.
More than 700 signatures were collected and the petition was presented to the council by local Councillor, Sophie Handford.
The council eventually responded positively by contracting Tonkin and Taylor to undertake a safety review. We also undertook our own research on use of the track and traffic flows and speed on Poplar Avenue. This was greatly helped by the consultancy Smartsense undertaking monitoring at no cost. The Smartsense report showed a significant amount of traffic was exceeding the speed limit.
The Tonkin and Taylor report was released in March 2021. It acknowledged the dangers of the crossing and recommended that a raised crossing be installed. But there was no immediate action.
So we upped our campaigning under the name Kāpiti Urban Repair Crew. This involved a number of activities including:
Installing our own hit posts. These were kindly delivered by Alex Dyer, the chair of CAN, by cycling them out from Island Bay on his (non electric) cargo bike.
Putting up a cross with flowers in memory of all those killed on roads.
Installing bunting around the crossing.
Chalking messages on the pavement.
Holding a protest at the crossing.
Making a video of our action.
These actions were supported by funding from a Givealittle campaign, from the Radical Action Grants group and Cycle Wellington.
When doing these actions, we got to talk to lots of cyclists and walkers and this generated more support. We engaged with local media.
However, the council removed our hit sticks and other displays and asked us to stop this action. There is always a balancing act between action that simply annoys and action that gets results but we feel the onsite protests were helpful.
We eventally achieved our goal. And it has transformed the crossing. Vehicles mostly move much more carefully through the area and walkers and cyclists feel much safer.
It has been a great success. But such a huge effort should not have been necessary. This crossing should have been installed as part of building Te Ara o Whareroa in the first place. And the cycle track, which continues all the way to Otaki, crosses a number of busy local roads. If it was Holland, not Aotearoa, all would already have safe crossings.