Cycling advocates today welcomed the funding set aside for cycling projects, while bemoaning its small proportion relative to overall transport funding.Land Transport Plan projects, Roads of National Significance and increased rail spending attracted the lion’s share of today’s Transport appropriations, totalling $6.379 billion, but spending on cycling is growing: the first $45 million of a $100 million total has been set aside for the Government’s Urban Cycleway Programme.The Urban Cycleway Programme is an NZTA-led scheme providing funding and oversight to local roading authorities for cycleway projects.‘Funding for cycling, protected in today’s Budget, demonstrates a seismic shift – we’ve moved from excluding cyclists to welcoming them onto Kiwi roads’, said interim spokesperson Will Andrews of Cycling Advocates' Network (CAN). ‘We’ve a solid upturn in cycling numbers in New Zealand...
News: May 2015
May
Cycling advocates are today criticising the Government's response to the recent spate of traffic deaths. Umbrella group Cycling Advocates' Network (CAN) expressed regret that expert advice on speed limits is being brushed aside by a Government uninterested in providing a fit-for-purpose transport system.Transport experts Michael Keall of Otago University and Glen Koorey of the University of Canterbury have both come out in support of lower speed limits. Assistant Police Commissioner Dave Cliff has agreed, and local government body TRAFINZ have gone so far as to call for a reallocation of funding from the Roads of National Significance projects to provide for safety on existing danger spots.In the face of this clear advice from experts, from those charged with maintaining the roads, and the very personnel charged with preventing the carnage -and cleaning up afterwards- the Government's...