NTCA/NPDC CSIT meeting - New Plymouth

12.30 pm at the New Plymouth District Council offices, Mishima Room, Ground Floor. A new direction is required on how we are best to implement the cycle strategy: - Where should we focus our efforts? - How and what can be funded? Where to with the walking strategy and how we can progress it given that the current regime has sacrificed sustainable transport to further on-road transport?

Comments

Have changed date and included the change in Agenda for this particular meeting in early November.

OMG ! DYJH Acronyms !

A new direction is required !
(Is this an admission that business as usual is not working?)

(Unfortunately I can't make it down to New Plymouth but I'm not short on ideas or passion ).

How about this one:
Cycle 'advocacy' by 'officer class' cyclists provides for the likes of 'officer class' cyclists but not for the rest of us (unathletic risk-averse vulnerable users)who may otherwise choose to ride bicycles for transport within our urban areas.

Give us 'slow' cyclists somewhere to ride!:
Maximise the potential use of our existing network of segregated/seperated shared-pathways (yes,footpaths!) for use for 'slow-cycling' for ALL demographic groups - by advocating for a repeal of the obsolete law prohibiting
cycling on footpaths and by advocating that our councils
change bylaws to allow (and encourage) slow cycling thereon.

Start promoting the hell out of bicycles like these:
http://urbanbicycles.googlepages.com/bicyclesnz
that make cycling practical and attractive by a much
wider demographic than that willing to ride recreational style bikes.
The availability of appropriate styles of bicycles IS an essential part of the mix but cycle advocates in New Zealand seem to be oblivious to this aspect of cycling.
(Giving us somewheere to ride these kinds of bicycles 'slowly' is a prerequisite to the development of a market for them)

Stop persecuting people for taking up 'slow' cycling.
An estimated 86 million of Japan's 124million people 'slow'cycle for transport-in urban environments that are more similar than different to what we have here.
They choose to ride on the footpaths and are not persecuted for doing so and virtually nobody wears helmets and there is no requirement to do so.
( same goes for 110 million cyclists in the EU too ).
Consequently a culture has evolved to expect cyclists,-whereever you're walking,driving (or getting out of your car) and because as wide a variety of people ride bicycles in Japan as drive cars here, they would be, if they felt the need to be , an extremely powerful political force.

By enabling and encouraging 'slow'cycling by the vast majority of us for whom 'vehicular' cycling is just 'too hard/too dangerous to even contemplate, maybe we'll start getting somewhere.

If we won't (allow) change, we'll end up where we're going.

P.S. I've seen 3 different unhelmeted cyclists ride past my house on the footpath in the time it has taken to write this e-mail. (And the police station is just around the corner ! Time to join them.

Alan Preston in Mangawhai, Northland.
http://urbanbicycles.googlepages.com/

to answer the one line of your post that's relevant to the original article

NPDC = New Plymouth District Council (not too hard to guess as the council is mentioned in the text)

NTCA=North Taranaki Cyclle Action
(also not too hard to figure out, who would be meeting with the council in this context, perhaps a local cycling group affiliated to CAN)

CSIT is a bit more elusive, but you might guess it's something that both NTCA and NPDC are participating in , and decide whether you were sufficiently interested to find out. After a little effort you'd find it was the Cycle strategy implementation team

see acronym's aren't that difficult! or wasn't that the point of you comment?

Stephen W

Stephen Wood , based in Central Otago

NTCA = North Taranaki Cycling Advocates (see www.ntca.org.nz)

CSIT = Cycle Strategy Implementation Team. Made up of people from within NPDC's project and roading teams, charged with planning and implementing the District's cycle strategy.