Here at home, Wellington City Council’s latest figures show that the number of people commuting by bicycle has almost doubled in the last three years. This is despite little dedicated cycle infrastructure in the capital, and little action from the Council to improve it, especially in the CBD. If cycling numbers are growing despite a lack of encouragement, how fast would they grow with better facilities – proper bike lanes, more bike racks, and lower speed limits?

We know now that getting people riding bikes is about providing the right infrastructure for them to do it. The latest published research shows that having bike paths and lanes available is the biggest determinant of cycling rates in a city. It’s pretty clear what we need to do to get the huge benefits of a high bicycle mode share.

Hastings has had dedicated investment in cycling and walking infrastructure from NZTA as one of its ‘model communities’, and cycling figures there have shown the results – a rise of 23% just a year after the iWay program began. Portland’s entire cycling network has an estimated replacement cost of one mile of urban motorway, and that city has seen a 400% rise in cycling numbers in the past 20 years (check out the PDF here). It now has the highest bicycle mode share in the US. In Copenhagen, a city where the bicycle is used for 37% of trips, they’ve just opened a set of ‘Cycle Super Highways’ to create better conditions for commuter cyclists, for the benefit of all road users – because cycling investment doesn’t just help people who use bicycles, it also helps those who choose to walk, drive or take public transport.

The popularity of cycling was demonstrated in London and Europe earlier this week. In London, ahead of the upcoming mayoral election, 10,000 people braved the British rain to show their support for proper cycling infrastructure. The ride was organised by the London Cycling Campaign, who are urging the mayoral candidates to support its calls for ‘Dutch quality’ cycling infrastructure  – check out the photos here. In Edinburgh, 2,000 people cycled together. In Rome, 50,000 (!) people made it out on bikes, at one point laying their bikes down to protest the deaths of cyclists and pedestrians on the city streets. This echoes 1970s protests in Holland, shown in this video, which provided the catalyst for that country to become world leaders in cycling for transport.

The problems that Holland faced back then are the same that New Zealand is facing now. Spending billions on new motorways kills our communities and creates more congestion, wasting valuable land on concrete and parking. With fuel prices expected to rise even further, New Zealanders want alternatives to burning up their incomes in their petrol tanks. They want safer neighbourhoods and more liveable cities, and the public health benefits that come from increased walking and cycling.

There’s no better time to stop spending billions on the National Party’s so-called ‘Roads of National Significance’ and start investing in cycling.

First, the bad news:

The Napier—Gisborne line is hanging by a thread after being washed out. This is a huge blow to the regional freight line, which thanks to local efforts had been running a full freight service three times a week since the beginning of the year. There is a serious risk that Kiwirail will use this setback to mothball the line, which was their watching brief to begin with.

Wellington Regional Council is putting up public transport fares in a bid to raise revenue. Unfortunately, without a comprehensive approach to transport, this will likely lead to the typical public transport death spiral wherein high fares mean fewer passengers and lower revenue, therefore hiking fares even more. Although, high petrol prices mean there is something of a captive audience… there is a better, more affordable approach to transport and this is not it.

No hint that the Government is going to defer or delay its programme of burning billions of dollars to build a few motorways with extremely poor business cases (henceforth referred to as the RoNS). I can report from my experience sitting on the financial reviews of Ministry of Transport and the New Zealand Transport Agency in select committee a few weeks ago that the general managers of these organisations are not able to give satisfying or compelling answers as to how these projects will deliver economic benefit to the country.

They did, thankfully, acknowledge that the forecasting of both passenger and freight volumes that had been used in the RoNS business cases had not eventuated over the past 5 years. But they did not seem to think that recent trends should have any bearing on near future travel forecasting or project prioritisation. The GM of MoT told me that he did not share my concern that higher oil prices and lower GDP growth would result in a need to prioritise different projects over the next ten years.

There was a surreal moment when he also tried to tell me that the Ministry did not decide which projects should be funded – that NZTA did the project evaluation and funding, and therefore selection. Given that the Government Policy Statement identifies the amount of money that will be spent in each activity class, including well over a billion dollars each year on new motorway infrastructure, and the RoNS were specifically announced in Government policy, I found this claim confusing. Even if all the economic evaluations for the RoNS are low, NZTA will still have to fund some of them. He then tried to claim that the RoNS were identified as priorities in Regional Land Transport Strategies, which in the case of Puhoi to Wellsford is patently false.

What do we take from official obfuscation? These guys have no idea what’s about to hit them, and they have unerring faith in the complexity of the four-stage traffic model to provide the right outcome. You can’t really blame them, they have been employed to defend and implement Government policy.

The good news?

Cycling, bus and rail patronage all grew hugely last year in Auckland, and we can expect that trend to continue. The case will become stronger by the day for a reprioritisation of funding.

I sent a letter to the Transport and Industrial Relations select committee today laying out the case for an inquiry into the prioritisation and evaluation of the RoNS. We’ll see what happens when we meet Thursday.

On the one hand, we have a housing affordability crisis. The solution, we are told, in the very disappointing  Productivity Commission draft report, is to free up more land for development on the fringes of the urban area. This will presumably bring down house prices, though it will result in higher transport and infrastructure costs.

On the other hand, we have a chronic transport problem, which we hear about all the time. The Auckland Council has a huge funding gap, and have just released an (also slightly disappointing) paper on possible ways of raising revenue to fund all the big roading projects and the critical city rail link.

The Government’s supposed solution to congestion is to spend over $1 billion a year for at least the next decade on just a very few expensive motorway projects (which will do nothing to lessen congestion on existing local roads), raise fares on buses, and stymie the Auckland Council from raising revenue to pay for the city rail link.

I bet if I told you there is an extremely low cost solution to both of these problems, which will actually be better for business and households (and developers!), you would think it is too good to be true. But it is not.

Cars take up a lot of land. So much more than we realise.

For decades, planning rules have set aside huge amounts of land for car parks, which inflict large costs on developers and reduce the availability of land for productive uses including housing. These costs are passed on to us, of course, through higher rents, and higher prices for goods and services. Because we rarely pay directly for parking, we all collectively pay much more for it. And “free parking” and car oriented development, forced on us by traffic engineers and council planners (who meant well), has resulted in worse peak hour congestion, by 1) massively subsidising single occupant vehicle trips, and 2) making it nearly impossible to get around the city in any other way.

Proponents of car oriented sprawl claim they want to improve housing affordability, but try to deny the huge cost of minimum parking requirements.  One would think good free marketeers would support removing bad government regulations. They also attack ‘smart growth’ and compact development as being unaffordable.

But wait, why would compact development result in higher land values than sprawl?  It takes up less land, and per capita infrastructure costs are lower.

Is walkable compact development more expensive because in fact, people prefer it to sprawl, and the transport costs are lower?

It’s no accident that the least affordable cities in the world are the places where people want to live, and vice versa.

I’m not saying that everyone wants to live in walkable neighbourhoods. But the Urban Land Institute has done some research that has shown the market share in the US is something like 30%. The supply of housing stock that is compact and walkable is about 2%.

This is a significant market failure caused by planning and traffic engineering regulations, among other things, and it likely the reason why compact walkable neighbourhoods well-served by public transport are unaffordable — the supply is very low relative to demand.

This seems to be a problem in Auckland as well, as noted by Barfoot and Thompson yesterday on morning report (at 6’08″). The suburbs that have become the least affordable in Auckland are largely inner-city suburbs, many of which are fantastic and walkable, because people don’t want to waste time commuting if they can avoid it.

So in fact, the solution to our land affordability and our transport problems is one and the same: get rid of minimum parking requirements. Allow more urban land to be used for truly productive uses. Invest in better infrastructure for walking, cycling and public transport.

There are other tools we can use to improve housing affordability, like a capital gains tax and increasing the supply of state housing. But increasing car-oriented development on the fringes of Auckland is not a long-term solution to housing affordability. It will result in higher transport costs and worse traffic congestion, and we could just follow the USA down the path of financial ruin.

We can retrofit our existing low density, car-oriented urban areas for less than what we are spending now, and it will improve transport AND housing affordability, plus create lively, walkable neighbourhoods that New Zealanders obviously value. (Example below, or more here.) But we need to put the paradigm shift on the radar of the Productivity Commission, the Government, and the Auckland Council, because for the moment they are missing our best opportunity to respond to the environmental and economic challenges we are facing, and foster smart green towns and cities.

Use the slideshow controls at the bottom ^ to browse through.

Yesterday I took apart my bike and crammed it into the small rental car of a friend attending the festival. We drove back to Dunedin airport, where incredibly helpful people gave us materials to pack up the bike. Upon arrival in Wellington, I unpacked it, put it back together (with the assistance of friends I ran into in the baggage claim), and cycled back around the bays. I was slightly surprised and very proud that it worked properly!  A half hour bike ride now seems impossibly short.

The festival itself was a great success. Sunday was a community open day in the town of Mataura, where I (and hopefully quite a few locals) learned a great deal. The star of the weekend was a fifth generation Queensland farmer named Sid Plant, who has direct experience of a mine moving in and destroying a farming community. His community of 64 families has dwindled to 11, as the noise, dust, and other negative impacts of the mine have driven people to sell off and move out. He said the land would take at least a million years to return to its pre-mined state. His story was poignant, and actually brought tears to my eyes as he played a song written about the sad fate of his town Acland.

We are up against something big. The powerful corporate interests that stand to make a lot of money from selling fossil fuels, especially as liquid fuels and fertiliser become more expensive, have money and influence on their side. Local and central government tend to be optimistic and enthusiastic about the potential to increase growth, and reluctant or unable to challenge the proposals. The public are busy trying to make ends meet and raise their families. They usually just want to avoid conflict, and would like to trust in the professional competence of those proposing the mine and/or those charged with regulating activities. Given the financial challenges facing many families, survival of their nearest and dearest is paramount, and they may not feel they have the luxury of protecting an abstract entity called The Environment.

For decades the argument has been that there is a trade-off between prosperity and environmental protection. It was right there in the answers to the poll on the Southland Times website yesterday. It essentially asked: Do you agree with the protestors that coal mining will be bad for the environment, or do you think we should go ahead because it will make us rich? When it is posed as this kind of dichotomy, it is easy for people to believe the Government’s rhetoric about a ‘balanced’ approach — just a little more environmental degradation for a little more economic growth won’t hurt us.

The green paradigm shift is the recognition that we don’t have to trade off our health and well-being for a little more economic growth. All the additional fossil fuels we burn from now on will only make it harder for us to transition to an economy that is not dependent on fossil fuels, and will worsen climate change. We have the opportunity to do things differently, and in a way that benefits us all.

It may not be good for mining companies, who have a mindless and ethic-free imperative to return a profit by doing the same old thing. But companies are not people. The people working for mining companies can do something different, and possibly much more enjoyable. We need government and regulation to step in and create the incentive for new activities that won’t result in catastrophic climate change, that won’t threaten our essential farmland, and that will build up (rather than destroy) our communities.

We must start with education and outreach, listening and learning. The more people involved in the conversation, the more robust our collective decisions about the future of our economy will be. As someone said at a closing meeting of the festival, a tiny flame as been kindled in the community of Mataura. I look forward to watching it grow.

This is how the story begins.

A bit anti-climactic, isn’t it?

I woke early this morning, and headed for the hilly route west along the Clinton-Mataura highway. It was a great 50km ride on reasonably still and chilly morning. I got to the festival just in time for morning tea.

I’ll post an epilogue with some reflections on the journey and the festival after it has ended. So far it’s been a day of very productive and interesting conversations, delicious nourishing (and unquestionably ethical food), and some great live music. I’m very keen to see what the community open day tomorrow will yield.

View the first post in this series

It was exhausting then, though I didn’t have much weight on my bike and hadn’t spent the previous week cycling five to eight hours a day.

Oh, and I was probably fitter, too.

Eight years later, I thought if there were enough hours in the day, I could cycle the 110+km to Gore today.

I might have pulled it off, as I did leave Waihola at 7:20am. Arriving in Milton less than an hour later, I passed a cyclist with the same bike as mine, heading in the other direction. He stopped to say hello. He was cycling to Dunedin from Balclutha like it was no big thing. Clearly a regular journey for him. He gave me some good advice about routes, and I left with renewed hope about making it to Gore tonight.

Sometime around 10:30am the weather intervened. You can tell there’s a strong headwind when you have to pedal hard to go downhill. Between hills and headwinds, my average speed fell from 18 to less than 10km an hour, not including breaks.

On the bright side, the Clutha countryside is gorgeous, and the trucks became much less frequent as the day went on. I probably had the energy to cycle for another two to three hours. But with the strong headwinds, it would have taken me AT LEAST four more hours to get to Gore.

It was just after 6pm when I rolled into Clinton at barely more than a crawl. I was relieved to find a pub/motel with vacancies. It was actually being outdoors in the high winds that was most intolerable, even more than cycling at a painfully slow speed.

For most of human history, nature had a much greater say over what we did and when we did it. We slept when it was dark, and worked when it was light. We ate fruit and vegetables that were in season. We did less in the winter and more in spring, summer and autumn. When there were extreme weather events, we took shelter and waited it out, and quite often suffered.

The more predictable cycles of the days and the seasons are still embedded in our physical and cultural reality, such as our holidays, even if we have forgotten their seasonal significance (especially in the southern hemisphere). The industrial revolution led to advances in technology that have allowed us to extend our working hours and ignore the natural cycles — but our bodies can’t. Studies have shown, for example, that people who work nights suffer from a number of health problems.

We haven’t mastered the unpredictable side of nature either, though we keep going as long as possible despite horrific weather. In fact, one of the objections to the practicality of walking and cycling is that it doesn’t work in bad weather. We need to drive to work because some days it rains a lot. But wouldn’t it be easier to adjust our schedules to account for the conditions outdoors, rather than use high energy transport systems just to be able to travel at a certain time every day?

Are the activities we currently undertake really so important that we need to work well into the night, or go out in horrendous weather, if it means we will jeopardise our health and safety? Analogously, is growing our fossil fuel based economy so important that we must jeopardise our stable climate?

As we face the many challenges of sustainability, it may be that our economy needs to take more account of nature, rather than just the human clock and roman calendar.

I can’t change the wind, so I’m content with my decision to wait it out tonight, and at least get a good night’s sleep before tackling the last 50km. I’ll still make it to Mataura tomorrow, perhaps a few hours later than I originally planned.

Next post: Day 8 — Made it!

I left beautiful Karitane this morning, after an incredible breakfast that included gluten free pancakes made by my exceedingly generous hosts. The morning was cool and overcast, perfect conditions for cycling, and still very beautiful. The ocean was a still blue grey mirror reflecting the sky, with hints of light coming in through on the horizon under the layer of cloud.

The Coast Road had a lot more ups and downs than I expected. It was perfect for interesting cycling, but I was running late to meet fellow cyclists at the top of Mt Cargill. I note that when you’re not pressed for time, cycling is nearly always enjoyable as long as you travel at a good sustainable pace. Many people find it difficult because they try to travel faster than is comfortable for them. I did that for a while and then resigned myself to being a bit late, and started enjoying the ride.

The journey up Mt Cargill took me just under 90 minutes, during which I saw about three cars and one heavily-laden German cycle tourist who was pushing his bike. More stunning nature, lots of endorphins, how could I not feel fantastic when I reached the top? A cyclist and Green Party member had come up (and part way down) the hill to meet me, which made the last few climbs even easier.

In less than 20 minutes we were down the other side in Dunedin, checking out the bike lanes on North Road with fellow cycle advocate, Dr Hank Weiss, who researches injury prevention and rides a well kitted-out electric bike, with room for a passenger or cargo on the back.

We went through town and met up briefly with Metiria, and then spontaneously joined Hank for an afternoon presentation/workshop on an innovative road safety curriculum being developed for school kids by teachers and the NZTA. It was heartening to meet the committed and talented people working in these areas, in all different roles. I’ve no doubt that this work is a small but important step in changing the transport culture we have in NZ.

Unfortunately, I do believe that culture follows infrastructure to a great degree, and that as long as we continue developing infrastructure that is designed to increase the speed and flow of vehicles, innovative educational intervention will be unlikely to have a huge impact.

We see examples of the misguided and unintended consequences of traffic engineering principles all around us. Ever find it hard to keep to the speed limit on the motorway or a wide empty arterial? Roads are deliberately designed to have sight lines and take high speeds to be ‘safer’. But because they make you feel comfortable travelling at a higher speed, subconsciously you will tend to speed up.

Increasing the speed and flow of vehicles is also the quickest way to discourage people from walking or cycling. It feels unsafe, it can be very unpleasant, and it usually creates environments that are long and boring. Have you noticed that you can walk 20 minutes down a street full of people and shops, like Lambton Quay, and not even notice? Whereas walking along a suburban arterial, bordered by car parks, strip malls, surrounded by noisy cars and trucks, where you’re the only person walking feels like you’ve been crossing a desert for hours after about 10 minutes?

The psychological reaction to different urban environments is very real. Jan Gehl reports on some of the research in this area in books like Life Between the Buildings. This impact of urban form influences our choices about how we travel, and where we want to be. Dunedin could do a lot better by prioritising people in the town centre and environs. There would be economic benefits for the city and for shop keepers, as well as a reduced road toll.

I stayed too long at the workshop, and the weather turned for a while. A strong westerly wind was blowing and it was starting to rain, and it was after 4pm. Looking at my options for getting out of town, I succumbed to safety and time concerns and got a ride to the end of the motorway.

Good thing I did, it was nearly 2 hours straight into the westerly wind, along the beautiful, empty side roads like Henley Rd, to Waihola. Slow going, but the sun came back and I was happy to be away from the big trucks on the highway, and just paced myself.

Tomorrow (Friday) is my biggest challenge day. Well over 100km to Gore, and strong headwinds are forecast. If the winds are too strong, the distance may be too ambitious for one day. I’ll do my best, though!

Next post: Day 7 — Serenity to accept that I cannot change

The plan was to cycle from Oamaru to the little village of Waikouaiti, where I was to stay in the only pub/hotel available. I heard about Beach Road, a coastal route out of Oamaru, from a Green Party member who lives near Hampden, who had contacted me after reading the blog and offered to ride part way with me today. I enthusiastically accepted, and we made a tentative plan to meet somewhere on the coastal route.

Beach Road is the perfect cycle route. Rolling hills, gorgeous expansive views of pristine beaches, and hardly a car in sight. It was a dream. I was quite tempted to go for a swim in the shimmering crystal blue sea, but I was already behind schedule. So I pushed forward as quickly as possible. When I met up with my cycling companion, he had been chatting with a group of 6 Russians who are cycle touring the entire ring of fire, and have been in NZ since early December.

It is a pleasure to be able to cycle and converse at the same time. You don’t notice the uphill effort as much, you can share your awe at the magnificent scenery with someone else. It’s usually just nice to have company,  just as it is nice to share a car with others for long journeys. Funny, it’s taken for granted that cars take up at least twice the width of a cyclist all the time, even when they’ve only got one person in them. Yet often those in cars seem outraged that two cyclists should ride abreast and converse as they are travelling together…. We discussed many things, including possible routes for my next two days, as I was getting nervous about being able to arrive in Mataura in time for Saturday.

Leaving the coastal route at Wainakarua, there is literally no alternative (not even a steep, up-hill, out of the way one) to SH1 until Moeraki. And this stretch is where the shoulder of SH1 becomes much more narrow, and significantly bumpier. It would have been terrifying but for the company to distract me, although it did get much more difficult to converse.

We stopped in Hampden for lunch, as that was the turn off for my cycling companion. (The fish and kumara chips in Hampden are about the freshest and most delicious I’ve had. Highly recommended as a stop if you’re on the road.) Sitting outside eating our freshly caught lunch, we chanced to meet a woman from Karitane (just past Waikouaiti), who is quite involved in a number of community and sustainability initiatives.

“You must meet her, I’ll introduce you,” said my cycling companion. And so he did. She and her daughter were coming back from a workshop on food security that had been held in Oamaru this morning. We got to talking, and she proposed that I stay at hers tonight.

I had been contemplating canceling my booking and trying to make it further along today, anyway, and when she proposed that she could ring a number of people involved in the East Otago Walking-Cycling Network to see of they wanted to come over for a chat over coffee and cake, I couldn’t refuse.

After lunch, I headed off alone towards Palmerston with Kanye West’s “Stronger” as my motivating soundtrack, steeling myself for the grueling hills ahead, aiming to be in Karitane by 6pm. There was a slight complication, as I was probably going to have to pay for the booked accommodation anyway, but I figured I’d sort that out when I went through Waikouaiti.

About 9km out from Palmerston, I stopped for a water break at a beachside rest area, the last point before the State Highway turns inland. I started heading up the hill, slowly overtaking a truck (that had previously overtaken me) which was pulled over on the side of the road. The driver, a classic kiwi truckie in his early 60s, struck up a conversation with me as I passed.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but he offered me a ride (anywhere I wanted on the way to Invercargill) and though I initially declined, I impulsively accepted. I’d gone just over 50km and had about another 30 to my destination. I thought, this is a great opportunity to see what it’s like to be inside a big truck, and chat with a truckie about the issues he faces, and save a bit of time and energy so I can make the next two huge days and not miss part of the festival. So we strapped my bike on the bed of the truck, between two giant rain tanks, and I hopped on in.

My observations were as follows. It is damn comfortable to be up high, gliding along in a truck. You get excellent visibility of what’s in front of you. We passed 3 cycle tourists going the other direction. You have NO IDEA at all what it’s like for the small slow moving objects you pass. It’s easy to see how drivers, even if they give wide berth as this driver does, could become quite cavalier about overtaking bikes at close proximity, at high speeds. They’re quite insulated.

We had a great chat about transport, truck driving, and the demand for goods around the south island, and I heard a lot about his family and life story. But it all happened quickly, because we were through Palmerston and to Waikouaiti in no time. Maybe 15 minutes and we were where I was planning to be in 3 hours. And it was so easy and comfortable. This could get addictive.

Just as I was starting to feel guilty about all those kilometers I hadn’t cycled, things started to work out. I popped into the motel to see if I could cancel for the night, only to find they were in the midst of trying to arrange a last minute hotel in Palmerston for a long staying guest because they had double booked. They were in the process of booting out some poor gold miner for me, but he’d been out of contact up a mine shaft all day. I got there just in time, so the hotel owner could cancel the arrangements and we were all happier, with the gold miner none the wiser.

Arriving in Karitane at about 3:30, I was able to do laundry and visit with my exceedingly generous hosts, who had arranged an impromptu cycle advocates meeting and even baked a chocolate cake since I last saw them in Hampden. I watched the child poverty documentary that has been the centre of a serious political maelstrom (more on that from me later) this week, and I ate about twice as much as every one else of a delicious home cooked dinner: fish, rice, veggies and salad. What a miracle.

At 7pm, a number of locals heavily involved in the East Otago walking-cycling network started coming by, some with home baked desserts. We had a fantastic korero about their projects and aspirations, about transport policy and advocacy, and we even got a surprise visit from Dundedin City Councillor Jinty MacTavish, who is from nearby. At least one of the people was heading to the Keep the Coal in the Hole festival this weekend as well, and she was able to provide me with alternative route advice for my  last 2.5 epic days.

This is how we can and must develop the solutions to the challenges we face. With community. Sharing information, ideas, food, rides, passion. I feel so lucky to be a part of it, and to receive such kindness and generosity from strangers.

Tomorrow I plan to meet Metiria at the top of Mount Cargill around 10:30am, for a ride into Dunedin with public health expert Hank Weiss, and hopefully some local cycle advocates.

Next post: Day 6 – just 110km or so to go

There’s something I want to say to all of you. It’s a little personal.

It’s not your fault.

It’s not your fault that it’s difficult, inconvenient and expensive to take the bus or train most of the time. It’s not your fault that it’s difficult and frightening to walk, cycle or send your kids to school on their own.

It’s not your fault that the goods you buy or sell are mostly moved by truck. And you can’t change the transport system on your own through your consumer choices.

But you CAN tell the Government that you want a smarter transport policy. One that will make it easier for you (or others) to spend less money on cars and petrol. One that will stimulate economic development in our town centres. One that will reduce the road toll, and reduce our collective carbon emissions. One that will make it possible to travel between some cities on a train, or even a bike, if you choose.

We can do this, and the Government can SAVE money. And you don’t have to stop driving if that’s the best option for you. (Though you may have pay a little more directly for parking and fuel emissions, but you’ll find it easier to find a park and you’ll get stuck in fewer traffic jams).

That’s my message, just wanted to make sure it was coming through clearly…

Today was a fantastic day. I cycled the 80-some km from Timaru to Oamaru with the wind at my back. The highway signs informed me it is called “The Strawberry Trail”. I stopped for an excellent lunch at a cafe that’s just over halfway to Oamaru, at the turn-off to Waimate. They even had gluten free pancakes and organic museli! But I opted for a salmon frittata.

I passed a few fellow travelers on loaded touring bikes, both going the opposite way. Liz, from San Francisco, has been cycling all over the South Island for the past 5 weeks, and this is her last week before heading home. She’s loved her trip, but finds the trucks overtake uncomfortably closely and the shoulder of the road is significantly bumpier than the road itself.

Shortly before arriving in Oamaru, I saw the typical road signs that had been informing me just about every kilometer how far it was to Oamaru and Timaru, but something was different. These signs had the distance to the South Pole and the Equator — and I was just over halfway. The 45th parallel. Pretty sweet. It’s the sort if subtle thing one might miss if not on a bicycle.

Tonight I cycled into the heart of old Oamaru and watched the little blue penguins come in from their day at sea. Unbelievably cute. The town has a well preserved and very charming historic quarter, but typically the main street is mainly oriented to cars and car parking, and development stretches out thin along the state highway. Still, there’s a bike lane the whole way and it’s well lit. It’s got potential.

The cycling seems to be getting easier (knock on wood), though everyone I meet warns me about the big hills into Dunedin, and I am starting to worry about the 75km I have planned for Thursday. I may yet have to revise the itinerary down a bit.

Tomorrow, I leave the highway for a while to cycle by the sea, and then I head up into the hills. Eek…!

Next post: Day 5 — Serendipity and Community

“Oh, but you may just want to have a lie in after all that,” she smiled.

“I’ve got 5 more days of cycling ahead of me,” I insisted, full of good intentions to hit the road early.

In fact, I slept in until about 830 and then made breakfast and packed. I didn’t leave until closer to 930, and then I only cycled about 1km to the cycling gear store, where I proceeded to go on a shopping spree.

Cycling gloves? Check. Merino top? Check. Padded bicycle shorts? Oh yes. As much as I adore my Brooks leather saddle, to make it then next 460km I will need shorts that feel like they have a built-in adult diaper. (Never fear, normal-looking shorts cover up the padded Lycra portion).

So I embarked on the day’s 80km journey slightly after 11am, but very happy with my purchases, which should suffice as my long-cycle-trip uniform for years to come.

Yesterday I mentioned that I had a big choice to make today: would I cycle a longer and much slower route to avoid potential loss of life and limb, or go straight to Timaru on SH1?

I chose the latter. When cycling for transport, you want to get where you’re going, just like anyone traveling by any other mode. Yes the journey can be enjoyable, but I’ve got a deadline of Mataura by Saturday midday, and adding additional kilometers seems impossible at this point.

The trade-off of safety and comfort for directness happens in the city too.  People traveling by bike and on foot are often instructed by council transport planners to take more circuitous routes to avoid traffic. It’s ironic because when you’re traveling under your own steam, a few extra kilometers is a lot more of an ask than when you’re in a car. Yet it is usually those on foot or bicycles that are asked to mount the over-bridge, cross three times, or go downhill to the off-road path, only to climb uphill at the end of it.

Commuting to the city centre from St Luke’s in Auckland, I found the fastest way to cycle was New North Road to Ian McKinnon Dr, a weird semi-motorway route frequented by vehicles travelling well over 100km an hour (and usually even unwilling to change lanes to overtake a bicycle, though the middle lane was inevitably empty.)

Perhaps the years of being overtaken at half a metre by speeding buses and trucks in Auckland have desensitised me. I found today’s ride quite enjoyable, despite the noise and immanent threat of the passing trucks. (Sorry the mysterious iPad is not allowing me to upload pictures to the blog, but you can see some if you follow me on Facebook.) I arrived in sunny Timaru around 530pm, surprised to encounter some small hills, and had plenty of time to walk to the supermarket and make a healthy dinner.

We shouldn’t have to choose between directness and safety. It is entirely possible to build infrastructure that welcomes people on bicycles and on foot, and doesn’t make them travel twice as far. In fact, building our towns and cities so they are welcoming to people (as opposed to funneling vehicles through as quickly as possible) will cost us less in many ways. It’s a perfectly understandable mistake of traffic engineering that so many of our towns and cities are impossible or terrifying to navigate without a car.  It’s a mistake we can undo relatively easily by adopting different traffic engineering standards, changing some of our planning rules, and redirecting money towards walking and cycling infrastructure, which is much more cost effective than infrastructure for motor vehicles. However, our political and business leaders haven’t quite grasped this opportunity yet. I’m hoping I can use the next few years to get that message out.

But for now, I’ve got to focus on the remaining 345km (not all of it flat!) to Mataura. Tomorrow I’m definitely going to be up and on the road by 7am…

Next Post: Day 4 — The strawberry trail into Otago (after a slightly emo pep talk)

It all started out very auspiciously, with a sunny still morning, an invite to breakfast at the home of a friend who is a former cycle champion and now transport planner. He made me a fantastic omelette, helped check over my bike and offered me some gear, and then took along me the scenic route to Lincoln.

We saw heaps of Cantabrians on bikes! All ages. All types of bikes. Literally dozens on random country roads. They out-numbered the cars easily.

They are recreational cyclists. Many kiwis love to bicycle — according to SPARC, cycling is one of the most popular recreational sports in the country, and it’s the fastest growing.

It’s a small step from recreational cycling to cycling for transport, but there are some key things to consider. Cycling for transport requires a comfortable bike that allows you to easily carry clothes and other items you may need. Mud guards are essential so you don’t get sprayed with dirty water just after it has rained. And you probably would prefer to have infrastructure at work and the shops, and on the roads in between, that would make it easier for you to feel safe and to secure your bicycle. As to have a shower and store your things. In some European countries they do this very well, and consequently 25-30% of adults bike to work. There’s no reason in principle that we couldn’t get a lot more recreational cyclists using their bicycles for transport in NZ  if we provided better infrastructure.

My friend talked me into taking the scenic route which was a bit longer, to avoid the frightening environment on SH1. He was right to do so, and I made great time to Leeston. However, leaving Leeston things went down hill (or rather, didn’t go downhill but did come to a near stand still). I wasn’t quite halfway to Ashburton, and it was already after 2pm. The wind was picking up, and I had to cycle west to get to SH1 just before the Rakaia bridge.

There is nothing quite so frustrating as cycling directly into a headwind while staring at the flat, straight path that stretches for miles in front of you. I inched along, the wind roaring in my ears, for well over 2 hours. Each bend in the road I prayed would take me out of the relentless wind. No such luck. You thought you were cycling directly into the wind before, Julie Anne, but you were mistaken. NOW you’re head on…

This could be a metaphor of my life. Inching along against powerful entrenched forces, trying to smile and pleasantly move forward with some tiny  but crucial improvement to transport policy. Zen and the art of cycling against the wind.

I did make it, in the end. The last 30km on boring and truck-dominated SH1 took far less time than the 20km into the wind. And I was so overjoyed to be moving forward at something like a normal speed, I almost didn’t notice that heavy vehicles were passing me on the narrow little shoulder at a breakneck pace and were potentially life-threatening.

Tomorrow I will write about the safety/efficiency trade off that cyclists often must face in NZ. I faced it today and I will again tomorrow. I have yet to decide if I take a longer route to avoid feeling like I’m going to be sucked under an 18 wheeler carrying milk every 30 seconds.

What I can say after a nice dinner, a few after dinner snacks, and a good hour on the computer in bed, is that at this moment I am VERY glad I made the journey. This must be why I chose to travel by bike again and again, even though there are tough bits.

Next Post: Day 3 — The straight and narrow path (to Timaru)

So I decided to take the train from Picton to Christchurch, a journey that can be arranged in conjunction with the Interislander ferry from Wellington. And to my pleasant surprise, the two modes are quite well integrated. It’s only a 4minute walk off the ferry to the train station, and you can arrange to have your luggage transferred for you upon check-in the ferry terminal.

Bicycle facilities on the ferry are sorely lacking, and I am hard pressed to understand why. You pay extra to bring a bike, and there is plenty of room for a nice rack in a clean and well lit area, which would hardly cost much. I was told to walk to the end of the car storage area, with no instruction how or where I should secure my bike. I saw another bike already tethered to some sort of railing ensconcing barrels of what appeared to be motor oil. The ground was wet and oily, and there were a few random ropes that I used to tie my bike to a filthy railing.

My beautiful bicycle was treated better on the train, which has quite new and very comfortable carriages. The luggage operator expertly secured my bike with a small, new bungee cord to one of the luggage racks. But there isn’t much room for growth in bike/train tourism as they would not easily be able to accommodate more than a few at one time.

The Picton-Christchurch rail service is lovely and efficient, with some of the most stunning views of the Kaikoura coast. I highly recommend taking this train. At about 5 hours, it competes well with driving for time, and is far more comfortable than a car, as you can read, move around, and enjoy the gorgeous scenery.

The only problem with the alternative journey from Wellington to Christchurch is it’s comparable in price to flying, if not more expensive, even though it takes far longer. How could that be? Surely an airplane is more expensive to buy and operate than a small train, and one would expect the ferry to be more cost effective for passengers only.

I suspect the answer lies in the relatively low demand for rail, which may have roots in unintentional subsidies to other modes, and the asset stripping that occurred when the rail line was privatised. I’m also curious about subsidies or initial state investment that enabled airports to get up and running, though that merits more research in the NZ context.

If externalities such as climate pollution are included, the ferry and train could become more attractive, despite the longer journey. As demand for these slower but lower carbon modes increased, there would be more opportunities for services (making it more convenient), fixed costs could be distributed over a larger pool of consumers, we would see potentially more competition with the ferries, and consequently relative prices may fall, or at least have more variation as airline tickets do.

What do you think?

Arriving in Christchuch I was a short ride from Riccarton, where I am staying — a neighbouhood well endowed with bike shops, outdoor gear outlets, and cheap tasty Vietnamese food. Everything a girl could dream of, except the surplus of big empty car parks behind the shops of course.

All in all, it was a great day and journey. I have some photos to illustrate the post, but I may have to upload them later.

Now I just hope the wind stays a nor’easter or dies down, or it’s going to be a hard slog to Ashburton tomorrow!

Next Post: Day 2 — The windy Canterbury Plains

As the new transport spokesperson, I decided to take a bit of time during the summer holiday to travel to the festival in the most climate-friendly means possible. I’ll be leaving by ferry from Wellington on Saturday morning, catching the train to Christchurch, and then embarking on a 550km journey by bicycle on Sunday 15 January.

The point of this trip isn’t to be morally superior — as an MP and a person who loves to explore the world, I have a big carbon footprint due to air travel. But I believe that we must work and live within the flawed system we’ve got and try to improve it. That doesn’t mean giving up travel altogether. We make changes where we can. The most crucial thing is to advocate for infrastructure and policy changes that will make it possible and practical for people to travel by means that are better for the climate, for their health, and for the economy.

For some decades the green movement has emphasised personal action, which is an important part of responding to climate change. But what is becoming ever clearer is that massive change is needed at an infrastructure level to enable people to make changes to their lifestyle. This is especially true in transport.

Local and central government policy and funding has made it much cheaper, easier and more convenient to travel by personal car around our towns and cities, and to travel around the country by plane as our passenger rail services have languished. Meanwhile, it has become much less convenient, less safe, sometimes more expensive, and sometimes impossible to travel by train, bus, or on foot or by bicycle.

Ironically, councils and government agencies will sometimes urge people to get out of their cars — whether to combat congestion, obesity or climate change — as though it was the fault of individuals that our infrastructure makes it much harder to travel by means other than a car or plane.

We don’t always have the luxury to travel by foot or cycle, especially long distances. My hope is that I can use this trip to draw attention to the opportunities we have to make it easier for New Zealanders to travel in ways that are better for the climate and our health, and to share some of the pleasure of traveling slowly over land and water.

Here’s my draft itinerary. I’ll be blogging the journey each day. Let me know if I’m coming your way and you’d like to meet up or cycle some of the way with me!

Jan 14th: Wellington to Christchurch on ferry and train
Jan 15th: Chch to Ashburton 85km
Jan 16th: to Timaru 80km
Jan 17th: to Oamaru 80km
Jan 18th: to Waikouaiti (outside Dunedin) 80-100km
Jan 19th: to Waihola (or Balclutha)via Dunedin 40-80km
Jan 20th: to Gore 80-110km

Jan 21 – 22 Coal in the Hole festival in Mataura

Total journey approx. 550km by bicycle
Over 1000 km total ferry+train+bicycle

Next post: Cycling to Southland – Day 1 (the easy part)

Being a new MP myself, Damien came up to me in the audience for some freshman hazing. He asked me what I hoped to achieve in the next three years. Quite ambitiously, I launched into a short but passionate effusion against the so-called Roads of National Significance.

Just after I sat down, a well-heeled woman of the boomer generation walked by. She turned to me and sneered, “What a load of rubbish, what you just said about the roads.”

I leapt to my feet and promptly got into a lengthy and interesting discussion with her and her husband. They seemed to be quite open to my explanation, but it took several minutes and a lot of technical detail about the traffic modeling process before they looked at me less skeptically. They live in Wellington and walk everywhere. He is trained in economics. They have every reason to be onside with Green Party transport policy, but they aren’t (yet).

Many reasonable and well-informed boomers will have a similar gut reaction to brief and impassioned statement against motorway expansion, if they haven’t studied or worked in transport planning.

“People like to drive. It’s their choice to sit in a queue for an hour.”

“In other countries they have big motorways with free flowing traffic. Why shouldn’t we?”

“New Zealanders don’t want to live in shoebox apartments. They want a quarter acre section and a garden.”

There is some truth to all of these statements, but what is missing is the understanding of how transport funding and land use planning regulations have influenced people’s choices and the pattern of urban developments in a way that is not good for anyone in New Zealand.

People can and will make different choices when the costs are more direct. Plus, the world is changing, we have only to look across the Pacific to see where the trends are headed.

This excellent op-ed in the NY Times explains why we don’t need to expand the supply of fringe suburbs, by removing the metropolitan urban limits and building new motorways, though that is what the National-led Government would have us do.

There are better changes to regulation than removing the metropolitan urban limits, including removing minimum parking requirements and providing better incentives for high quality medium density development, that will reduce development costs and improve housing affordability. But the most important thing the central government needs to do now is factor changing demographic trends and demand for transport into their funding priorities.

New motorways were never going to reduce congestion anyway, but given the high demand for walkable neighborhoods, increased cycling and public transport, we should be investing the bulk of our transport funds into projects where we will see the most growth over the next few decades. We are not going to see growth in demand for road travel at peak hour, especially if we stop subsidizing single occupant vehicle trips with free parking.

As I explained to the couple at the Backbencher pub, we’re not anti-motorway. We are aware that these motorways are unbelievably costly solutions to a problem that they won’t solve, a problem that won’t exist in the next decade. In fact, the Roads of National Significance will create different problems.

If we don’t pay attention to what is happening in the US, we may well follow them down the same short-sighted route. It would be a costly mistake, and a lost opportunity.

Julie Anne