A talk given to the 1998 AGM of

Cycle Aware Wellington

Good evening. I’m Alix Newman. I work for the Christchurch City Council as their cycle planning officer. In that role I am responsible for planning cycle routes and facilities, the design of cycle facilities and development of design standards, and the promotion of cycling in Christchurch. Overall, I’m sort of responsible for achieving (or I suppose failing to achieve), my council’s target for doubling the numbers of both commuter, and school cyclists, by 2001.

First up, I would like to thank you for inviting me to this meeting and to give this presentation. To be quite honest, I think that a lot of the gains and efforts the Christchurch City Council has made toward cycling are the result of a lot of political noise, and a perfect climate and topography for cycling. I think our engineering efforts are not quite actually up to the perceptions people outside Christchurch have of the city. Hence, I have spent a wee while questioning my credentials in being able to talk about a cycling city, a vision for the future. However, I am here, and because of that I’m feeling pretty smug about the whole thing, so thanks again.

I have been asked to talk about “A Cycling City: A Vision For The Future”. I have to tell you that what you are going to get in this presentation is very much a personal view of a cycling city or cycling city concept. I don’t know that I have ever been to a cycling city, but I would hesitate to say that that is because there aren’t any - more I think, because I just haven’t been everywhere.

So I’m going to give you a personal assessment and feeling, so I would ask that if you consider some of my views to be in contradiction to your own, or perhaps even a criticism of your own, then it’s not personal. Just consider it something to think about.

I have to say, that when I was given this topic, I was foundering a bit. I can talk for hours on design, promotions, planning of cycle facilities, and all of the practical stuff, but slotting all of that into a bigger picture, a much bigger picture, and then projecting it forward “A vision for the future - a cycling city”, that had me reaching. I have had to develop a few new thoughts and ideas for this and have subsequently learned quite a bit. Anyway, the point of saying this is that this is basically a first draft of my ideas on the subject, and far from an authoritative view of a cycling city.

Well, I’ve just given you a quick introduction. What I’d like to do next is ask you folks some questions. Then I’ll perhaps use some of those answers, perhaps not, to give you a personal view on a Cycling City. Then how it is possible to get there.

My question to you is “What makes a cycling city”. What do you see in a cycling city, what do you feel, how do you know you are in one, what distinguishes a cycling city from one that is not?

I would like some ideas from you if you don’t mind.

My view, is that a cycling city is one where there is an attitude throughout the city, and its population, which accepts cycling as part of the city - an element of the identity of the city. A quote from the movie “The Castle” - it’s the vibe yunno. Is there a vibe for cycling?

I found a quote in the American Bicycling magazine of November/December 1995 which illustrates how you can pick the health of an American city.

In biology, an indicator species is a group of plants or animals whose health foretells the vitality of the surrounding environment. If a type of shellfish starts to whither, for example, scientists know the whole bay is in trouble. Bicycles are an indicator species for a city.

Picture being dropped into the bowels of any large north american city. You’re assaulted by honking horns, exhaust fumes, sirens, grafitti, icy glass towers, brooding boarded store fronts. But if cyclists ply the streets, you instinctively feel better - less threatened, less harried, less overwhelmed. The presence of bikes tells you that this is a settlement with human scale, pace and values, a place that hasn’t entirely surrendered its land, its sky and its soul.

Bikes can’t save cities. But a healthy city has healthy biking. A city’s commitment to healthy biking means a commitment to sustainability, and all of the modern-speak things that go along with that - healthy land use, wise spending, reduced congestion etc.

My message is that the healthy city, with healthy cycling, is a cycling city, where cycling is fundamentally accepted in the psyche of the city. And I’ll explain a little more about the attitude or psyche thing, and how that differs from many locations currently in New Zealand.

Attitude Indicators

Engineering

1. First, movement by cycle has its own characteristics. Bikes are not small cars as much road engineering would have you believe. Factors of momentum, vulnerability and surface roughness are a lot more crucial to cyclists than cars. A cycling city is one where this is understood and features which cater for this are built into every road work, every new road design and all other land use developments as a matter of course. Engineering for bikes is not simply a matter of “adding on” as is done in many NZ cities, and will continue to be done for many years yet I suspect. A cycling city has cycle engineering by inclusion, not addition.

But a point of clarification, there does not need to be cycle facilities everywhere. In fact, I can envision a scenario where the roads are wide enough or quiet enough and driver behaviour disciplined enough so that facilities are not overly essential - but there is still a fundamental engineering occurring which considers bikes as road users.

Image

2. My second attitude indicator of a cycling city is that cycling is part of the city image. I reckon that a true cycling city is one where both the people inside it, and outside it, know it as a city for cycling in. People will come to it because of cycling. Not everyone of course, just some people.

I use Christchurch as an example of city image - it is known as the garden city. Everybody in NZ knows that, or should know that. Developers and the council know it, and it is relied upon as a drawcard for businesses and residents. The recent round of road reforms was fought, by the city council, on their impact on this image. Wellington, as another example, is known (or was) as the windy city. You have a tourist reputation which partially uses that, you have businesses which come here based on that - viz the windmill on top of the hill, and you even have, or had, a radio station using that theme.

My point is that the ideal vision of a cycling city is one where cycling is so entrenched, and healthy, that it is part of the understood image of the city.

Viable Transport

3. My third indicator of a cycling city is that cycling is actually a viable transport choice because of both transport possibilities, and individual capacities. By transport possibilities, I mean that it is as convenient to get from point A to point B by cycling as any other transport mode - not necessarily as fast, or as dry, or out of the wind, but you can travel by bike to where you want to go, as directly as by car or public transport, with equal or lesser risk of accident or collision, and the amount of mental processing necessary to make the decision to travel by bike is about the same as you would use to travel by car. This of course speaks volumes about how easy bike travel may be, or conversely how difficult car travel may be, but the ease of decision making processes to use the bike is the sort of concept I’m trying to get across.

And the other part of cycling being a viable transport mode is where the individual actually has the capacity to make the choice to travel by cycle. Are they fit enough, do they own a bike, do they know how to ride it well, and do they have a mindset to consider cycling to work, to the shops, to recreation, or even out on a date perhaps. In a cycling city, most people would or should have the capacity to travel by bike.

Mode Integration

4. My fourth indicator of a cycling city is one where there is relatively seamless transport mode integration. By this I mean that the ability to mode swap is as smooth for bikes as it is now, typically, for cars. It is currently possible, in most cities, to walk to a bus stop - that, in its crudest form, is a mode integration or mode swap facility. In other places it is possible to drive to and park at railway stations, and then use the train etc. When it is possible to ride and park to everywhere that you can drive and park, and perhaps even possible to drive to a parking area, unload or unlock your bike, and cycle on, then cycling is becoming involved as a legitimate transport mode, and becoming integrated with other modes.

Market Share

5. And my final indicator of a cycling city is one where those businesses involved in the cycle industry are competing for market share, rather than struggling to generate a market, full stop. In other words, if you look at the amount of effort which goes in to advertising for types of cars, car accessories, types of fuels, and find a similar amount of effort is applied to cycling associated activities such as selling new bikes, knobbly tyres, etc. then you are on your way to a cycling city.

The common theme I am trying to indicate for all of these is that my vision for a cycling city is one where cycling is accepted as part of the operating psyche of the city - almost to the extent that if it happens for cars, it happens for cycling, but with a little bit extra, and where cycling is part of the defining image for the city. The elements mentioned relate to a cycling attitude and it is this which I consider to be the defining indicator of a cycling city.

You may disagree, you may have different indicators. So be it - I don’t know if this list is exhaustive or fantastic. We’ll only know when we are there I suppose.

The question of course, is how do we get from where we are, to where we want to be. How to move from the windy city, to the windy, cycling city. How to move from the garden city, to the cycling garden city.

Many places around the world, and a number of cities in New Zealand have cycling strategies. Plans of attack which, to greater or lesser degrees, are looking to increase the number of cyclists in the cities. Practically every one of these is oriented around the use of the four “E”s. Each cycle strategy will look at engineering, education, encouragement, and enforcement. Working through these elements is the only way to increase cycling in your city, and slowly transform it into a cycling city. But, it is the order in which you work through these which will be instrumental in determining how quickly, or how close to becoming a cycling city.

I think what I’ll do here, is explain the four Es in a little more detail, then show you why the order is important.

Engineering

To my understanding, most cycle strategies look at engineering as developing infrastructure for cycles: cycle lanes, paths, bridge clip-ons, signals and crossings. A lot of engineering stuff is overlaid onto current land use patterns. If you are lucky, all this engineering stuff will link up to form a network, and we can start to get from A to B using cycle facilities. Push hard enough and new roads start to be engineered with tack-on facilities and we can all start to become happy that we are moving toward a cycle city.

Encouragement

Encouragement, in the context of cycle strategies, is pushing the message of cycling - its individual health benefits, environmental benefits, traffic volume reduction benefits. All the good stuff about cycling. Encouragement is generating the interests of people to get on their bikes and try it. Encouragement or promotion probably read the same in the cycle strategy context.

Education

Education is the informing and the teaching of riders, and those around them, how to operate well together. This of course involves the teaching of cycling skills to the young, and stupid, of which there are plenty around. Advising and informing of safer movement patterns in traffic, and perhaps even reaching the drivers to behave well around cyclists.

Enforcement

Fairly simply, I interpret enforcement to mean that all road users - drivers and cyclists, are having some movement discipline imposed upon them. Enforcement means protection of space and facilities, and punishment of infringements.

Now that is the four main elements of every cycle strategy. They may well be called different things, and the emphasis will be on different sections or subsections within each of them, but I think you will find that these form the key components of every cycle strategy.

Having got a cycle strategy, and having tried to work with one in Christchurch, I am becoming firmly convinced that the most effective way forward, and perhaps the only way toward the visionary cycling city is to initiate each of these areas in the order of :

engineering, encouragement, education, enforcement

I’ll tell you why

Regardless of how wonderful cycling may seem as a mode of travel, environmental asset or health improvement method, individuals will never cycle unless they feel comfortable on the road, or path or whatever the travelling environment. Individual perceptions of the functionality and safety of cycling are paramount in enabling individuals to take to the bike. Now perceptions can be changed by advertising, promotions and encouragement (the second E), indeed that is the function of them, however the real impact is going to be less than useless, and may even be negative, if the recently encouraged cyclist is made to feel exposed and in danger by road or pathway configurations. It shouldn’t be forgotten that many of the people who are being encouraged on to the bike will not have done it for a while. Their cycling environment will need to be engineering for them.

When there is an IMPROVING engineered cycling environment, then there is scope to start convincing people that riding a bike can start to offer some advantages. Your new cycle facilities are a product which can be promoted and advertised. To get to a cycling city you must work on the individual mind and attitude, and bend it toward making a cycling choice, but before you can do this, there has to be the mechanisms in place to positively reinforce that choice, and engineering cycling space is absolutely fundamental in this process.

Engineering has to start before encouragement, but once the roll has started, they need to be fairly closely linked.

After your big engineering push, and on-going encouragement push, your cycle numbers should be starting to increase, then you have the need to inform behaviour, to educate for peaceful and considerate co-existence on the road. I believe that if cycling in New Zealand cities ever actually reach the numbers that they could, then specifically engineered cycle facilities will never be enough. You will never engineer specific facilities everywhere, but cyclists will pretty much be everywhere. The education element becomes essential when those who have never cycled before, and the rusty, and the less than competent, are choosing to do it, because your engineering and your promotion has started to convince them that it may all be worthwhile.

The final element to be implemented on the path to a cycling city is enforcement. Now enforcement begs a really big question - enforce what? There need to be rules, laws, design standards and protocols before there is anything to be enforced. Did you know there is practically nothing in New Zealand road code which preserves cyclist space on the road. Cycles are vehicles under NZ law. No rules, cycle road code or laws will ever exist, unless there is a need for them, and realistically, this lobby informing the need will never come about by those who would cycle if there were rules in place. It will only come from those who already choose to cycle and those who depend on the cycle fraternity. Those who have been engineered for, encouraged, and indeed educated form part of the lobby; bike shops, bicycle manufacturers etc form the rest. Laws don’t happen unless there is a constituency which needs them.

In general terms then, and I admit what i have just given you is very generalised, I see the only effective progression from where we are now, to a visionary Cycling City, through the process of the four Es, is to do them in a specific order. I believe that as the individual areas are worked through, and gain some momentum, then cycling as a transport mode, or recreational pastime, or whatever, is becoming deeper and deeper embedded in the mind of the city as a whole. A cycling city is becoming more of a city attitude, developing from individual attitudes, which are in turn, reinforced by hardware.

I believe that as a city gets closer to its vision, the more the emphasis will shift from encouragement and engineering to education and enforcement. If you are educating, then you are talking to those who are cycling and will be cycling, not those who may cycle. To be involved in education aspect of becoming a cycling city, the numbers game must be pretty much won. If you, or your city is enforcing cycling regulation, then rules must already be in place. The improvement of cycling has moved from the establishment in the minds of individuals, to establishments in the mind of the city or country I guess.

So to summarise this far, I’ve stated I believe the cycling city vision is one where a city has an attitude which supports cycling, it is known and associated with the city image and entrenched in infrastructure and legislative environment as a transport mode. I believe to get there is not simply a numbers game - that is if there is a certain percentage of your population cycling then you are a cycling city, no, it is the change in numbers which is your surest indicator along the path.

Working with engineering, encouragement, education and enforcement in that order, is the way to go.

In a final quote from the article before, there is a brief section talking about Portland, Oregon. A cycling consultant, (and isn’t that an example of a serious cycling effort - a cycling consultant) says “ The civic culture is tied to cycling”. When pretty much everybody in a city can say the same thing, you have a cycling city.

Alix Newman

Cycle Planning Officer