Of course, I can give you a long list of cities that have built commuter rail networks and have failed to cope well with growth and have not avoided congestion. Wellington, San Francisco, New York, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, Moscow…actually the list is as long as a list of the cities with commuter railways.

I never stated or implied that building more roads prevents congestion. I merely stated that not building them doesn’t prevent congestion or traffic growth either. The really worrying thing is that Christchurch really does have all the things that should discourage congestion yet we have more cars per capita than Auckland (City) and we use our cars more than Aucklander’s do. We also have more shopping malls per capita. I suspect there is a common factor underlying this. Perhaps something as simple and human as climate control, escaping the weather. It is no less bizarre an idea than sitting in a car in rush hour traffic every day instead of living closer to work or using some better mode for commuting. An example of the sort of irrational behaviour that makes a mockery of both central planning and market forces.

Tauranga? Currently this is true, but for for how long? Unlike Auckland and Wellington the motorways actually form an integral part of the region’s land use plans. Whether that will work to constrain traffic growth remains to be seen.

As long as most people work nine to five Monday to Friday we will always have peak congestion on all of our transport modes. Motorways, subways and even CBD footpaths.

Er, maybe if I’d typed the whole sentence in my original comment it might have made more sense.
>>This would suggest that your basic premise is wrong. If they want to, they will come, whether you build it or not.

Here is the best site I’ve found for research on congestion and public transport. The evidence so far is pointing to demand pricing for roads and parking as the only traffic reduction strategy that actually works long term.
http://www.uctc.net/access/access.asp

Roads have never ever been funded from general taxation. From council rates yes. From road user charges, yes. From Public Works Loans which had to be repaid with interest, yes. From revenue from Crown Land sales in liue of the Crown not paying rates, yes. From general revenue, never. With one exception - roads to open up marginal farmland.

Not using general taxation to pay for roads is one of the few provisions of good government in the Constitution Act that has never been abandoned.

As far as cyclists paying for cycleways and roads - we do, the same way motorists do - general taxation. There’s a good argument that cyclists pay a lot more than they should because the costs from cycling are so low. Keep in mind (for instance) that most cycle paths are built way stronger than necessary for cyclists and pedestrians so that council can drive motor vehicles on them. That bumps the cost significantly. Crashes are similar, and once you remove “cyclist hurts themself” crashes you’re into “man bites dog” territory - on the occasions when a cyclist maims someone else we usually get headlines because it’s so freakishly unusual. Not so for cars…

IME if you give people any choice they will use public transport, but it actually has to work. Buses stuck in traffic don’t do that, any more than cars do. Hence the popularity of rail. In Sydney rail works disturbing well considering how thoroughly it’s been Thatchered over the years.

I’d love to hear examples of cities that have followed your advice to build more roads and have coped well with growth and avoided congestion.

What’s has happened in Christchurch since Moore was elected mayor is that Mayor Buck’s ambitious cycle lane program has been scaled back in favour of bus priority measures. Either because buses are funded by the regional council not the city council and the bus exchange would be a memorial to Moore’s mayoralty or because the cycle lane program was not having any measurable impact on cycle usage.

The new mayor “Sideshow” Bob is living up to his nickname by wanting to shift the emphasis yet again. This time to the ultimate money waster - light rail.

Christchurch has already tried all of the “approved” techniques to discourage traffic congestion. Not building motorways, operating a sensible bus service centred on the CBD, building a road hierarchy (narrow residential streets - wide arterial roads), building cycle lanes, chicaning and judder barring the rat runs, bus priority measures. Yet Christchurch has overtaken Auckland as New Zealand’s most congested city and officially ranks as third worst in Australasia.

This would suggest that your basic premise. If they want to, they will come, whether you build it or not.

The historical evidence supports the post WWII experience. Build roads to open up land for settlement and they will come. Once you’ve opened up the land you don’t need to build more or better roads. They will just keep coming. In fact, the main reason we have been building better roads over the last eighty years is because they (motorists) keep coming and handing over wads of cash for the privelege. Cyclists, on the other hand, haven’t dispayed that same willingness to pay for at least a century.

At a national level, mandating that every new major road must have a cycle facility the full length would be a huge advance. The cycle stuff doesn’t have to be bolted right on the side, as long as it’s well signposted and is not purely recreational. The railway reserve path in Nelson (Stoke/Tahuna) is a good example - it’s some distance from the road and has priority at local road crossings with excellent street signage and good design. You’d be surprised at how many cycle facilities assume that every cyclist either knows the area intimately or carries a local map… good street signs as well as directional signs are a big help.

There are very narrow street-sweepers available, IIRC Wellington council even own a few and use them on footpaths. So it’d be possible to drive one the length of that cycleway every couple of weeks… except that you probably couldn’t get it on or off because the ends are so badly stuffed up. We really need decent approaches to the cycleway and then the cleaning to be done. It might be better to just get a tractor with a rotating broom on the front like road repair crews use. The cycleway should be 2.5m wide anyway, just to meet the standard for a two way facility.

The Dutch moped problem is bad but not fatal, most Dutch cyclists seem to regard them as a blight to be tolerated as the price for excellent cycleways - anything that keeps them off the cycleways makes the cycleways unusable for many cyclists. Fortunately The Greens have Mike Ward on his trike to remind them that not every cyclist is a fit young guy on a mountain bike so hopefully we won’t see too many army assault course type barriers blocking cycleways.

How to make the government understand the need for good/independent cyce tracks? I don’t know. But we have to keep trying.