Spokes Canterbury Cycling News - February '08

Sorry, due to an administrative error, the February newsletter didn't
go out to the 'Feedback' group that you belong to. That's a teething
problem with item #8 below - please accept our apologies.

In addition, the previous version had some links omitted. Please ignore the previous version and look at this version only.

1. 2008 MINI NATIONAL CYCLE CONFERENCE

2. GREEN GREEN LIMOUSINE

3. e.CAN 158 NEWSLETTER

4. PROBLEMS WITH BUSES?

5. BIKES ON BUSES - FEEDBACK PLEASE

6. MAKING CYCLING IRRESISTABLE

7. YELLOW NO STOPPING LINES ARE COMING BACK

8. SPOKES EMAIL DISTRIBUTION AND WEBSITE

9. RECENT SPOKES ACTIVITIES

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1. 2008 MINI NATIONAL CYCLE CONFERENCE

On 21st February Christchurch residents had the opportunity to attend a
mini cycle conference at the Council Offices. It was a condensed
version of the 2007 National Cycle Conference held in Napier in
October.

A wide range of topics were covered in the 2 hours focusing on papers
presented by Canterbury-based authors. Subjects including technical
engineering, data gathering and research, the language of promoting
cycling through to an update on the Chch to Little River Rail Trail.

Opened by the Mayor it attracted a large and diverse crowd including
several city and ECan councillors. Inspite of difficulties over recent
years cycling is obviously still alive and well in Chch. Given the wide
range of interested parties present, the event can only be considered a
success.

To this end Spokes would like to thank the organisers of the event
especially, Michael Ferigo CCC Transport Planner - Cycling and Walking,
Councillor Chrissie Williams and Axel Wilke of ViaStrada who all kindly
volunteered their time organising this event. Also a thank you to
Christchurch City Council for providing the food and venue and the
Mayor for opening the event.

For more detailed information on the papers and a copy of the presentations, go to:
http://viastrada.co.nz/story/cycling-mini-conference

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2. GREEN GREEN LIMOUSINE

The most environmentally friendly airport pickup service yet! Steven
Muir from Cycling Church has now produced a large suitcase-carrying
trailer which can be towed behind a tandem bike with several folding
bikes in the trailer.

When visitors to Christchurch have arrived, they can ride to their
accommodation on the back of the tandem or on the unfolded folding
bikes. Up to three large suitcases (or four smaller
backpacks/suitcases) can be easily placed in the plastic bins.

One local person can thereby pick up three or four visitors
depending on the amount of luggage. It is the ideal way to demonstrate
a real commitment to reducing one's carbon footprint and generate some
very good PR, exercise and fun in the process.

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3. e.CAN 158 NEWSLETTER

The email bulletin of Cycling Advocates' Network, NZ. Go to http://can.org.nz/ecan/ if you want to have a read. The contents of this newsletter are:

- Ready for Bike Wise Week?

- CAN provisional policies up for comment

- Cycle friendly plans in Rotorua

- Travel Demand Management conference- brochure out now

- Bike sales riding high in Australia

- Oz bikers protest ban on bikes in trains

- 36% of Copenhageners cycle to work: not enough, says Lord Mayor

- Bicycle lanes aimed at cutting accidents in Japan

- UK government pumps millions into cycling

- China halves bike thefts

- Weblinks

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4. PROBLEMS WITH BUSES?

Spokes has recently received reports from cyclists of bus drivers
who seem not to take due care and attention when going past. What are
the options if this happens to you?

One is to report incidents to Environment Canterbury. ECan are
responsible for planning, funding and co-ordinating the public
passenger transport system. They have a complaints database and will
pass on your complaint to the bus company involved. The bus company is
then required to investigate and report back to ECan.

If you do file a complaint it will be much easier to investigate if you
include date, time, location, route number and name of bus company.
ECan and bus companies take road safety very seriously but without
these facts it will be difficult for them to deliver you a satisfactory
outcome.

In addition we would like to be informed and whenever possible will try
to help. If the problem is widespread then there may be other options.
Contact us through http://spokes.org.nz/contact/chairperson with
details.

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5. BIKES ON BUSES - FEEDBACK PLEASE

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6. MAKING CYCLING IRRESISTABLE

Ever wondered why commuter cycling is so low in some countries
compared to others with similar demographics? Well here is a research
paper that reveals all and does it in a clear and understandable way.

The researchers studied the different travel strategies over the
last 30 odd years of several similar countries to us - UK, USA,
Australia, Denmark, Holland and Germany. It shows the outcomes of each
- the successes and failures in the area of sustainable transport.
Importantly it removes the notion it is due to some kind of mythical
divine intervention when one country gets it right and another doesn't.

It is a MUST READ for anyone involved or interested in transport
planning, road engineering, active transport advocacy and political
governance of healthy and sustainable societies. If you know any of the
above - insist they read it!

A thank you the authors Pucher and Buehler “Making Cycling
Irresistible” Transport Reviews, Vol. 28, 2008 for writing it and Alan
Preston for bringing to our attention. See it now at http://spokes.org.nz/article/making-cycling-irresistible.

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7. YELLOW NO STOPPING LINES ARE COMING BACK

We understand that Christchurch City Council have recently decided to
mark yellow no stopping lines again in cycle lanes that are adjacent to
the kerb. Spokes has long been in favour of this measure and
congratulates Council on their change of direction.

The background to this is that in February 2005, the Road User Rule
replaced the Traffic Regulations 1976, and one of the changes was that
it became an offence to park in a cycle lane. In 2006, CCC decided not
to mark broken yellow lines on urban kerb side cycle lanes any longer,
as they were no longer legally required. Some kerbside cycle lanes
still have broken yellow lines. The ones that don't have either been
installed since 2006, or the road has been resealed within the last two
years and the yellow lines have not been put back.

CCC has invested significant effort into education and enforcement
at a number of locations, but there was apparently limited improvement
to the level of illegal parking. They have considered other options,
but say that at a practical level the most effective action for
encouraging people to cycle is to now reintroduce the broken yellow
lines on kerb side cycle lanes.

See http://spokes.org.nz/news/2007/illegal-parking for
some discussion on this on our website. One of the underlying problems
is that Government introduces changes to driving rules, but Land
Transport NZ has never had a budget to advertise this change to the
motoring public. This just shows that despite some Government rhetoric,
cycling is still not being given the importance that it should be
given.

So thank you again, CCC, for fixing up this mess! We can now have our cycle lanes back.

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8. SPOKES EMAIL DISTRIBUTION AND WEBSITE

Over the last 18 months or so, some Spokes members have put in a
huge effort to create a new internet presence for Spokes. This has
resulted in an interactive website, where members can actively
contribute (more about this below).

See http://spokes.org.nz/article/paper-e-advocate if you want to find out about the underlying rationale and our aims.

We have now undertaken the next step in this process by having migrated
the e-mail distribution for our approximately 900 members from
YahooGroups to our website.

So this is the first newsletter where every member receives their
newsletter straight from our website, and no longer via YahooGroups
(sorry, we've been using some of you as guinea pigs for a while, so you
won't notice any change). Whilst that might not be a big deal for you,
one of the advantages is that it is much less likely that the incoming
newsletter will be caught by a spamfilter (as there is a lot of spam
being distributed via YahooGroups).

It also means that you can now update your own information information
on the Spokes website. What you have to do is to create an account by
going to http://spokes.org.nz/user/register and when you subscribe with
the e-mail address that we already have on the system, it will from
then on put you in control of changing your e-mail address or any other
details that you wish to list (none of that will be publicly available
to other users of the website, other than your user name if you post
anything).

Once you have an account, you can contribute to articles on the
website (many articles allow you to post comments). Note that in this
case, your user name is visible to anyone with internet access, so if
you wish to remain 'anonymous', choose a username that doesn't give
away who you are when you set up your account.

We will shortly have two newsletters - this monthly one that you are
reading right now, and a more regular one that makes you aware of more
urgent issues, mainly Councils and Transit consulting on transport
issues. If you'd like to receive the second newsletter, too, subscribe
to "Spokes feedback" when you set up your account. Those of you who
were previously subscribed to "Spokes discuss" on the YahooGroups
system have been transferred to "Spokes feedback".

The Spokes website has been built to be compliant with the
internationally accepted web standards. If you use an internet browser
that doesn't support all those standards, you may find that some things
don't work (properly). Microsoft Internet Explorer is the worst one
when it comes to not adhering to industry standards, and if this gives
you grief, we recommend that you start using Mozilla Firefox instead.
Go to http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ for a free download
of that browser software.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with our web
co-ordinators Michael and Nigel via
http://spokes.org.nz/contact/webmaster.

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9. RECENT SPOKES ACTIVITIES

In the past month Spokes, YOUR local cycling advocacy group, has done a number of things:

- Helped with organising Go-By-Bike events including the Bike to Work Breakfast hosted by Rex Verity of CPIT.

- Provided a submission to CCC on the Curletts Road cyclepath project.

- Met with CCC/Transit NZ reps to discuss cycling issues on the proposed Southern Motorway Extension project.

- Attended Canterbury Active Transport forum hosted by ECan.

- Took part in a sustainable transport workshop hosted by the Ministry of Transport to update the NZ Transport Strategy.

- Attended Colombo St South Bus Priority workshops.

- Represented cycling views on the Chch Road Safety Coordinating Committee.

- Held our regular monthly "core-group" meeting to discuss coming issues.