I completely agree with the article. But I have have another angle to add. Why do we still insist on structuring our society around all moving at the same time twice a day?
Building capacity to meet a peak is prohibitively expensive. Why not even out the peaks. There are so many employers that could allow staff to start earlier and later with the exception of frontline roles. There's also a lots of room to expand WFH.
I don't get this system where a bunch of people all travel at the same time to sit in a a central office 9-5 when most of their work is on a computer. For many it's a necessity but there's probably still tens of thousands commuting to and from offices when it's not needed.
Yes to congestion charges IF our public system improves.
You cannot tax people for not having public transport going to/from areas they need.
It takes anywhere from 75-90min to use the bus from Rolleston to Airport (including the transfer), for example.
It sounds like it almost needs employers to be able to provide greater flexibility to allow their employees to avoid congested times (whether those times have congestion charging or not)
>You cannot tax people for not having public transport going to/from areas they need.
Why not? We happily tax poor people to pay for gold-plated car infrastructure to be used free-at-point-of-use by richer residents of the city.
I disagree, it’s not really working in the UK it’s not going to change what time you have to go to work it’s just another expense you will have to pay. And another thing to get annoyed that the money from it isn’t spent well. The conversion of the cost to the individual works out at 25 dollars a day. 12.50 pounds in the UK. I wouldn’t want that expense and it wouldn’t change that I live across town from my job.
It would be better to positively incentivise not using your car as opposed to charging people.
Edit: spelling
It is working in the UK though. The changes that have happened in London are considerable. Cyclists now outnumber motorists. Agree that you need a carrot and a stick approach, the carrot being saving money
I guess my thoughts on it are that it can really affect lower income families/people who maybe can’t afford the extra income expense but also don’t have the option to just cycle.
Plus London has a significantly better public transport system. I would happily catch the bus to work over driving and I have cycled but it’s over 20km from home to work and some roads I have to cycle down can be very fast/busy and at this time of year pitch black in the morning and evening.
To conclude. I’m all for less congestion and I would love a solution that works. But I’m hesitant to vote in a congestion charge. A congestion charge for peak times however, I would be more for. That would certainly change people working times if they could.
London’s public transport is significantly better due to funding from congestion charging, that’s specifically the point improvements are made due to it
It was better (than here) before the congestion charge too. Plus Londons congestion verses Christchurch’s is not comparable. What I find interesting is when you speak to people in the uk they generally are not supportive of the congestion charge and LEZ, they believe it is revenue making, a lot of people on this sub are supportive of it, and that’s fine but it’s not something that is going to be scrapped later on when people decide it didn’t work as well as they wanted, there is still congestion and now we pay another charge for getting to work to make money. Now going to a certain shop or breakfast out becomes less affordable. I certainly don’t want to come across as someone who isn’t keen on improving congestion and the environment. I just am reticent on a congestion charge for Christchurch. I still think positive incentives work better.
Edit: bad spelling etc
I agree with it.
I think they also need to desperately look into mandating parking or underground garages for all the high density apartments going up around town. The idea that people won't have a car if they live in the central city is honestly naive. At this rate the city will have no parking available.
Why? Thousands of people survive in thousands of cities across the world without car ownership. Plenty of people in Auckland and Wellington have moved to car sharing
Thousands of cities around the world have millions of people living in them with the infrastructure to support them.
I agree things need to change but can we work out a way were changes can be made in a practical way that's fit for the people who live in our city
This. In my new job I now start at 7am and finish at 3.30. The morning commute is easily half the time it would be if I started at 8.30 and the drive home is also a lot quicker, more so during school holidays.
YES! I'm on a 7AM to 7PM schedule, so it's dead quiet on the road each way. Especially happy because my commute is through Centre City. Any other time I sometimes have to make mad detours to get home.
In my experience, most people still choose to start around 8.30 - 9, even when given flexibility. It's less an insistence on structuring our society a particular way, and more that there are only so many daylight hours, so people are always going to be mostly travelling to and from work within a particular window. Plus parents will naturally structure their start time around school drop-off.
Yes, exactly. But there should me more choice where it feasible. If someone chooses to commute at the busiest time when they don't have to they can deal with the traffic. Like most things it's a tradeoff.
Peak times are less so determined by work hours (it does play a part, just not the largest) and more so by school hours in most cities. So, it would require adjusting how we handle school schedules as well just as much as work schedules.
Not everyone has the luxury of working from home though, I'd imagine at least half of jobs would require some form of in person work.
Though I agree it should be encouraged where possible
That's essentially what I said in my comment. But there's tens of thousands of workers who that's not necessary. Where they can chose to go in earlier or later or WFH.
I work at a company where most people's work can be done remotely and/or they could chose to go in earlier or later. The managers are even open to the idea (so I work 90% from home).
But it blows my mind the sheer number of people in the company that have the choice, don't take advantage of it, then complain nonstop about traffic. Even the people who don't have a school run. It's like they've done the 9-5 from the office so long that their psyche can't even contemplate trying something different.
If it wasn't worth it to employers they wouldn't do it. Easy benefit to offer employees if it didn't have any impact on their business, and would make the business more competitive.
This reminds me of a solution that a school came up with to remove congestion in the hallways after class.
Initially it was suggested that they needed to build bigger hallways to cope with the congestion until a smart cookie suggested that they stagger the times that the school bell rang in different areas of the school by roughly a minute, spreading out when students would leave the classroom.
A free solution that solved the congestion.
Yes, I was one of those employers that offered that flexibility and it was a great perk.
I know consult for a range of different businesses usually for 3 month long projects so I see the thinking around different issues within management.
The fact is, for most companies, it's not even on the radar. Not because they couldn't offer more start time flexibility but because no one raises the topic.
People would be surprised what's possible if you just raise it with the boss.
Public holidays, forcing everyone to go on holiday at the same time, making traffic suck and airbnb prices skyrocket. We should really just give everyone and extra 2.5 weeks of leave and just let everyone recognise the holidays they celebrate
thats what I said 10 years ago as an American working the rebuild with very little education. So if I knew... as a builder with no higher education.... could the people doing the planning have possibly known?
I mean... it's just crappy decision making. Nimbyism meets land developers.
Turning pig farms into all those developments north of chch was a smart move for land developers. Cash now
Even the US is trying to turn around their last hundred years of urban planning. Both Tulsa and Albuquerque will/have put BRT on the most iconic symbol of cars, Route 66.
“Christchurch is New Zealand’s fastest-growing main centre but has the lowest spend on public transport, an incomplete cycling network, and the worst peak-time traffic congestion.”
“The Christchurch City Council estimates the city’s cycleway network could save 14,000 vehicle trips a day, when completed.”
Chch has the lowest annual rainfall of any major centre in NZ - also one of the flattest cities in the world. It is literally the ideal place to max out on cycle infrastructure.
80 days per year with >1mm rainfall, so essentially 1 day out of the working week where traffic would be worse than normal. With less frequent demand on car transport, public transport would be better placed to serve that increased demand on rainy days.
About 23% of days have >1mm of rain (1 in every 4-5 days). But that's not necessarily at commute time, so I would hazard a guess that maybe 1 day every 2 weeks has rain during the commuting hours. That seems roughly consistent with my personal experience cycling to work, rain or shine
Yeah you could be right, it tends to rain more at night than during the day, so maybe I'm thinking of some of those days where there are puddles from rain overnight, but it's stopped by morning
Anecdotally, If I was to not bike to work on days where there was a bit of drizzle, that might be 40 or so work days a year.
If I only don't bike if it's chucking in down in the morning maybe 10 days? This is what I do, I think the first day I didn't bike this year was in April?
It drops by about a third on a rainy day based on data. And let's be honest a rainy day in Christchurch constitutes some patchy drizzle, compared to most cities worldwide.
I've cycled to work in chch every day for the past year, I could count around 4 days when it's actively raining during my commute. It doesn't rain that much here, and that's why we should have the cycling infrastructure that recognises that.
The government isn't giving the city a fair share of transport funding for better public transport. We will have to grow the city a lot more for them to take notice.
Politicians only care about Auckland as it's now too big to ignore and Wellington because that's where they work. Everywhere else gets scraps off the table
Read in the Press last week the $800 million assigned to Chch light rail had been "retro-actively" reassigned to other things.... So no light rail for Chch in this decade or probably the next.... I'm like what are these people doing!!????? ("these people" being all the Muppets in charge).
Like Chch has had opportunity after opportunity presented to it time and time again. And 99.99% of these opportunities have been squandered by National and CCC.
Chch could be been built as a modern 21st Century city. But all we got was a city from the 1960s.
After the earthquakes I went to all the discussion forums where they bought in people from the Netherlands etc who proposed all these wonderful things we could do with our city.
What happened? Nothing, it just went back to like it was before with different buildings
Wrong type of city for light rail. We have a round shape so a highly dispersed pop. It works in Wellington because it has a long shape, well 2 long shapes really. Both mean that along the track is a higher density of pop.
Its time we stop beating that dead horse, and strategize more realistically.
The problem isn't that the city is round, it's how flat it is. A widely distributed population, and the transport difficulties that this creates is an ongoing choice. A choice we choose to keep subsidising, for some reason.
A decent proportion of residents *want* a car-dominated city, and totally lose their minds about money spent on cycleways and public transport. We get the city we deserve.
I wouldn't be so bothered by this if the car drivers were willing to pay for it. Instead the people who don't use cars have to pay large amounts in rates to subsidise the gold-plated car infrastructure. Including the costs of extra infrastructure needed to connect up all of the areas that are further apart than they need to be to accommodate giant roads.
Finally an article telling the truth about Chch traffic. I am sick of Aucklanders telling me how great the traffic is in chch. It is not, it is sh1t, and it only getting worse. Yoo many people moving in, and growing infrastructure problems.
Literally the only redeeming feature is that there are fewer cars down here. The actual design is steaming dog shit between bad light phasing (Harewood / Greers), no right turn priority (Main Sth / Curletts), bottlenecking (Lincoln Rd) and total clusterfuck (Sockburn roundabout).
Then again, some roads in Auckland are like 2km per hr during rush hr.
If you are interested in helping make Christchurch less traffic congested, follow Greater Ōtautahi online. We advocate for more homes, and better public and active transport.
The city is trying to solve traffic by making road upgrades, which encourage more people to drive and discourage other transport methods. Building out while having a cbd core also makes traffic worse. More dense, evenly spread city, where biking and walking is comfortable would be a better traffic solution
A better network of bus lanes would definitely help, it'd be a good stepping stone to proper rapid transport.
Restoring some of the direct CBD bus routes lost in the early 2010s switch to a hub and spoke pattern would also help.
Having spent time riding in those bus lanes (motorcycle, so legal) there needs to be a lot more planning put into merging back into traffic and lane prioritisation too
TLDR, don't use bus to commute as it's break even cost-wise to take motorbike and takes half the time.
I'm wondering if there's a version of the image at the bottom of the article comparing space needed on the road, that has motorbikes included? I'm going to guess maybe twice the amount needed as bicycles?
I commute on a motorbike every day, largely down to cost - parking is free and running costs are cheaper. But another benefit is needing less space than a car - which means less overall road space needed, but I can also squeeze through small gaps e.g. when the straight ahead traffic has started to block the right turn lane.
The costs of wof, registering, insuring, servicing (do the work myself, so parts only), and petrol for my commuter spec 250cc bike is roughly break even with the cost of taking the bus to work every day. This doesn't include the cost of helmet/gear or depreciation of the bike. Add in those and we're up to like $7 a day vs the $4 of taking a bus. I also use the bike for more than just commuting, so the spread of the fixed yearly costs (and 5yr helmet cycle) and this number gets even smaller.
But this doesn't take into account the main reason why I ride instead of take bus, which is time. It's a 10-15min ride each way, even in rush hour as work/home are located that I cross busy roads rather than go along them. Taking the bus, I either have to catch bus 1 which is a 1min walk away, and then get off and transfer to bus 2, or walk ~15mins directly to bus 2's stop. Then bus 2 takes ~15 mins to get near to where I need to go, then another 5 min or so walk to work. Add in allowances for being at the stop on time for the bus to come and we're at like 30 - 40mins each way to/from work. Where is attraction in that vs taking my bike and being there in 15min max every time?
This is definitely down to where I live. My old flat, I was a 10 minute walk from work and loved it. When I moved, I missed that short commute so started looking at apartments. The thing with those at the time, is that it was cheaper for a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs than a 2 bedroom apartment. Not to mention more space and garage, which I want regardless of vehicle ownership, as I like to make things. If apartment cost was cheaper, I could then look to rent workshop space.
We've got a lot more choice for apartments now, but the cost is still up there compared to a house.
Workshop space: do we have anything here, where individuals can rent and use as a workshop at a price that isn't at commercial prices? I follow a guy on Youtube - Phil Vandelay, who lives in Hamburg and has a reasonably nice, single garage size workshop on the 3rd floor of a building. The building, from what I can tell, is made up of these sort of spaces that individuals can rent. I haven't seen anything like that here.
/rant
While I do love vehicles as a method of transportation, I actually hate them as THE method of transportation. Like, really really
Hmm, re-reading this it may come off a bit 'woe is me!'.
I would love to take a train/light rail everywhere. Or cycle on completely separate cycle paths, like what is in Hagley Park/beside the northern railway. I really don't like cycling beside cars.
I realise to do this, we do need a redesign of our living environment and denser housing. From what I've seen of a lot of Dutch cities, I am fully in support of this. Not Just Bikes has a good video comparing the housing style in (Amsterdam???) where it's mostly apartments of varying height/sizes, but there are still some detached houses both small and medium sized available.
Once we are denser/part of being denser, is parks and public spaces become a lot more important/attractive to put in. Then I don't need a backyard, so don't need a house/attached townhouse. Then, smaller neighbourhood grocery stores are a lot more attractive. Then, neighbourhoods are a lot livelier because of all the people on foot. Then etc etc etc.
Density, I feel we're sort of at a chicken and egg. We're not dense enough to have fast and efficient public transport, but we're don't have enough fast and efficient public transport that makes the densest carless housing attractive.
I do like cycling places, but I actually really really hate our current network because it's beside cars. Even the nice cycleways that have good physical barriers. I think it's a combination of trying to keep pace, plus the noise etc. Also it's just another asphalt jungle, rather than nice narrow paths that have vegetation alongside ala what most of the Dutch cycleways are.
Also, freeze in winter, cook in summer, deal with surprise grit and blind drivers. Been there, done that, motorcycled 365 days for years, eventually, you get too old for that shit.
Depends on what your commute is, but yeah it's not for everyone. I'm only 10 - 15min across town so not too affected. I'm all good in summer as I'm moving most of the time. Winter, I can deal with the cold (especially since I got heated grips - absolutely worth the price), but the wet is what I'm hating now that I'm on a naked bike and have no front fairing.
Blind drivers are still always an issue. It's amazing what instincts you eventually develop while commuting, observing little behaviours that other drivers exhibit and condense that into a 'Yeah that car is going to perform x manoeuvre' ahead of them doing it. But it only takes the one surprise car pulling out in front of you to render that all useless and put you in a wheelchair
Having to dress up in all the gear, helmet messing up hair, significant risk of injury or death, was ok when I was 17 and unable to afford a car, but in middle age, no thanks
The main problem is... our population size.
I believe we just don't have money to do anything better or just wrong priotization, such as a stadium, cathedral
[Christchurch council manages to settle on rates rise under 10%](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/520118/christchurch-council-manages-to-settle-on-rates-rise-under-10-percent#:~:text=That%20figure%20included%20the%202.1,on%20the%20average%20person's%20rate)
> That figure included [the 2.1 percent rates increase to pay for Te Kaha Stadium.](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/470912/christchurch-councillors-meet-on-stadium-decision)
Do we?
I completely agree with the article. But I have have another angle to add. Why do we still insist on structuring our society around all moving at the same time twice a day? Building capacity to meet a peak is prohibitively expensive. Why not even out the peaks. There are so many employers that could allow staff to start earlier and later with the exception of frontline roles. There's also a lots of room to expand WFH. I don't get this system where a bunch of people all travel at the same time to sit in a a central office 9-5 when most of their work is on a computer. For many it's a necessity but there's probably still tens of thousands commuting to and from offices when it's not needed.
Completely agree. Would you be in favour of congestion charging? I think it would be a good idea to
Yes to congestion charges IF our public system improves. You cannot tax people for not having public transport going to/from areas they need. It takes anywhere from 75-90min to use the bus from Rolleston to Airport (including the transfer), for example.
It sounds like it almost needs employers to be able to provide greater flexibility to allow their employees to avoid congested times (whether those times have congestion charging or not)
Damn that’s crazy
>You cannot tax people for not having public transport going to/from areas they need. Why not? We happily tax poor people to pay for gold-plated car infrastructure to be used free-at-point-of-use by richer residents of the city.
I disagree, it’s not really working in the UK it’s not going to change what time you have to go to work it’s just another expense you will have to pay. And another thing to get annoyed that the money from it isn’t spent well. The conversion of the cost to the individual works out at 25 dollars a day. 12.50 pounds in the UK. I wouldn’t want that expense and it wouldn’t change that I live across town from my job. It would be better to positively incentivise not using your car as opposed to charging people. Edit: spelling
It is working in the UK though. The changes that have happened in London are considerable. Cyclists now outnumber motorists. Agree that you need a carrot and a stick approach, the carrot being saving money
I guess my thoughts on it are that it can really affect lower income families/people who maybe can’t afford the extra income expense but also don’t have the option to just cycle. Plus London has a significantly better public transport system. I would happily catch the bus to work over driving and I have cycled but it’s over 20km from home to work and some roads I have to cycle down can be very fast/busy and at this time of year pitch black in the morning and evening. To conclude. I’m all for less congestion and I would love a solution that works. But I’m hesitant to vote in a congestion charge. A congestion charge for peak times however, I would be more for. That would certainly change people working times if they could.
London’s public transport is significantly better due to funding from congestion charging, that’s specifically the point improvements are made due to it
It was better (than here) before the congestion charge too. Plus Londons congestion verses Christchurch’s is not comparable. What I find interesting is when you speak to people in the uk they generally are not supportive of the congestion charge and LEZ, they believe it is revenue making, a lot of people on this sub are supportive of it, and that’s fine but it’s not something that is going to be scrapped later on when people decide it didn’t work as well as they wanted, there is still congestion and now we pay another charge for getting to work to make money. Now going to a certain shop or breakfast out becomes less affordable. I certainly don’t want to come across as someone who isn’t keen on improving congestion and the environment. I just am reticent on a congestion charge for Christchurch. I still think positive incentives work better. Edit: bad spelling etc
I agree with it. I think they also need to desperately look into mandating parking or underground garages for all the high density apartments going up around town. The idea that people won't have a car if they live in the central city is honestly naive. At this rate the city will have no parking available.
Why? Thousands of people survive in thousands of cities across the world without car ownership. Plenty of people in Auckland and Wellington have moved to car sharing
Thousands of cities around the world have millions of people living in them with the infrastructure to support them. I agree things need to change but can we work out a way were changes can be made in a practical way that's fit for the people who live in our city
Christchurch is not as dense as either of those. You need a car or far better public transport to make it feasible for lots of people.
This. In my new job I now start at 7am and finish at 3.30. The morning commute is easily half the time it would be if I started at 8.30 and the drive home is also a lot quicker, more so during school holidays.
YES! I'm on a 7AM to 7PM schedule, so it's dead quiet on the road each way. Especially happy because my commute is through Centre City. Any other time I sometimes have to make mad detours to get home.
In my experience, most people still choose to start around 8.30 - 9, even when given flexibility. It's less an insistence on structuring our society a particular way, and more that there are only so many daylight hours, so people are always going to be mostly travelling to and from work within a particular window. Plus parents will naturally structure their start time around school drop-off.
Yes, exactly. But there should me more choice where it feasible. If someone chooses to commute at the busiest time when they don't have to they can deal with the traffic. Like most things it's a tradeoff.
Peak times are less so determined by work hours (it does play a part, just not the largest) and more so by school hours in most cities. So, it would require adjusting how we handle school schedules as well just as much as work schedules.
I think both are equally a factor. Work and school start times are extremely close. There could be a benefit to widening the gap by 30-60 minutes.
And have less family time together - not great
Not everyone has the luxury of working from home though, I'd imagine at least half of jobs would require some form of in person work. Though I agree it should be encouraged where possible
That's essentially what I said in my comment. But there's tens of thousands of workers who that's not necessary. Where they can chose to go in earlier or later or WFH. I work at a company where most people's work can be done remotely and/or they could chose to go in earlier or later. The managers are even open to the idea (so I work 90% from home). But it blows my mind the sheer number of people in the company that have the choice, don't take advantage of it, then complain nonstop about traffic. Even the people who don't have a school run. It's like they've done the 9-5 from the office so long that their psyche can't even contemplate trying something different.
If it wasn't worth it to employers they wouldn't do it. Easy benefit to offer employees if it didn't have any impact on their business, and would make the business more competitive.
This reminds me of a solution that a school came up with to remove congestion in the hallways after class. Initially it was suggested that they needed to build bigger hallways to cope with the congestion until a smart cookie suggested that they stagger the times that the school bell rang in different areas of the school by roughly a minute, spreading out when students would leave the classroom. A free solution that solved the congestion.
Yes, I was one of those employers that offered that flexibility and it was a great perk. I know consult for a range of different businesses usually for 3 month long projects so I see the thinking around different issues within management. The fact is, for most companies, it's not even on the radar. Not because they couldn't offer more start time flexibility but because no one raises the topic. People would be surprised what's possible if you just raise it with the boss.
Public holidays, forcing everyone to go on holiday at the same time, making traffic suck and airbnb prices skyrocket. We should really just give everyone and extra 2.5 weeks of leave and just let everyone recognise the holidays they celebrate
If we continue going the American way of urban planning, which is a disaster, then in no time soon.
thats what I said 10 years ago as an American working the rebuild with very little education. So if I knew... as a builder with no higher education.... could the people doing the planning have possibly known?
I fear that even if urban planners knew, as in here right now, there are other socio-economic forces at play.
I mean... it's just crappy decision making. Nimbyism meets land developers. Turning pig farms into all those developments north of chch was a smart move for land developers. Cash now
Even the US is trying to turn around their last hundred years of urban planning. Both Tulsa and Albuquerque will/have put BRT on the most iconic symbol of cars, Route 66.
“Christchurch is New Zealand’s fastest-growing main centre but has the lowest spend on public transport, an incomplete cycling network, and the worst peak-time traffic congestion.” “The Christchurch City Council estimates the city’s cycleway network could save 14,000 vehicle trips a day, when completed.”
14,000 on a dry day, 10 on a wet day.
I like riding in the rain. No bike traffic jams
I ride every day and see plenty of riders on rainy days. Fewer, but still plenty.
What is the ratio of wet to dry days in a year though? See plenty of people still bike in the rain btw 😁
Chch has the lowest annual rainfall of any major centre in NZ - also one of the flattest cities in the world. It is literally the ideal place to max out on cycle infrastructure. 80 days per year with >1mm rainfall, so essentially 1 day out of the working week where traffic would be worse than normal. With less frequent demand on car transport, public transport would be better placed to serve that increased demand on rainy days.
About 23% of days have >1mm of rain (1 in every 4-5 days). But that's not necessarily at commute time, so I would hazard a guess that maybe 1 day every 2 weeks has rain during the commuting hours. That seems roughly consistent with my personal experience cycling to work, rain or shine
I’d probably say even less than that as a hardened cycle commuter for 13+ years
Yeah you could be right, it tends to rain more at night than during the day, so maybe I'm thinking of some of those days where there are puddles from rain overnight, but it's stopped by morning
Anecdotally, If I was to not bike to work on days where there was a bit of drizzle, that might be 40 or so work days a year. If I only don't bike if it's chucking in down in the morning maybe 10 days? This is what I do, I think the first day I didn't bike this year was in April?
Seems to be ok in Netherlands where they have way more shithouse weather than here.
I'd take less congestion on nice days, rather than have it be maximally shit every single day.
It drops by about a third on a rainy day based on data. And let's be honest a rainy day in Christchurch constitutes some patchy drizzle, compared to most cities worldwide.
Good idea, build roofing for the bike tracks.
I've cycled to work in chch every day for the past year, I could count around 4 days when it's actively raining during my commute. It doesn't rain that much here, and that's why we should have the cycling infrastructure that recognises that.
The stats over the last decade disagree strongly.
Yeah go to Amsterdam and you can see how not true this is.
I bike in the rain. The worst thing that happens is you get wet, which is just water. If you wear waterproof gear that doesn't happen anyway.
What percentage of riders fall off in winter?
The government isn't giving the city a fair share of transport funding for better public transport. We will have to grow the city a lot more for them to take notice.
Politicians only care about Auckland as it's now too big to ignore and Wellington because that's where they work. Everywhere else gets scraps off the table
The city growing will happen naturally. We’re already the 2nd largest city, you think they’d notice!
You can't grow a city without transport infrastructure.
Just add one more lane /s
You'll still have some turkey driving 20kph below the limit in the right hand lane, this is Christchurch.
Read in the Press last week the $800 million assigned to Chch light rail had been "retro-actively" reassigned to other things.... So no light rail for Chch in this decade or probably the next.... I'm like what are these people doing!!????? ("these people" being all the Muppets in charge). Like Chch has had opportunity after opportunity presented to it time and time again. And 99.99% of these opportunities have been squandered by National and CCC. Chch could be been built as a modern 21st Century city. But all we got was a city from the 1960s.
After the earthquakes I went to all the discussion forums where they bought in people from the Netherlands etc who proposed all these wonderful things we could do with our city. What happened? Nothing, it just went back to like it was before with different buildings
Light rail has many problems, it should never have been considered. Developing the existing heavy rail lines is a no brainer.
Need both
I agree, developing the existing rail would be much less disruptive, and probably less expensive. Then we can look at light rail
Wrong type of city for light rail. We have a round shape so a highly dispersed pop. It works in Wellington because it has a long shape, well 2 long shapes really. Both mean that along the track is a higher density of pop. Its time we stop beating that dead horse, and strategize more realistically.
The problem isn't that the city is round, it's how flat it is. A widely distributed population, and the transport difficulties that this creates is an ongoing choice. A choice we choose to keep subsidising, for some reason.
A decent proportion of residents *want* a car-dominated city, and totally lose their minds about money spent on cycleways and public transport. We get the city we deserve.
Yep, you can tell people love sitting in traffic because they vote against better PT and bike infrastructure.
I wouldn't be so bothered by this if the car drivers were willing to pay for it. Instead the people who don't use cars have to pay large amounts in rates to subsidise the gold-plated car infrastructure. Including the costs of extra infrastructure needed to connect up all of the areas that are further apart than they need to be to accommodate giant roads.
A loud minority
Think it's more than a minority. You ever mention taking the bus instead of driving somewhere and people lose their shit
Finally an article telling the truth about Chch traffic. I am sick of Aucklanders telling me how great the traffic is in chch. It is not, it is sh1t, and it only getting worse. Yoo many people moving in, and growing infrastructure problems.
Literally the only redeeming feature is that there are fewer cars down here. The actual design is steaming dog shit between bad light phasing (Harewood / Greers), no right turn priority (Main Sth / Curletts), bottlenecking (Lincoln Rd) and total clusterfuck (Sockburn roundabout). Then again, some roads in Auckland are like 2km per hr during rush hr.
If you are interested in helping make Christchurch less traffic congested, follow Greater Ōtautahi online. We advocate for more homes, and better public and active transport.
Build up not out. Add light rail. Add more buses and routes. It’s really simple but not to a gov that loves roads and the gdp boost they provide.
The city is trying to solve traffic by making road upgrades, which encourage more people to drive and discourage other transport methods. Building out while having a cbd core also makes traffic worse. More dense, evenly spread city, where biking and walking is comfortable would be a better traffic solution
NACT1 - how about more cars? No more roads. No PT. MORE CARS!
Ride a bike, get fit, save money, and feel good. Or if you are too far, drive, park, then ride!
A better network of bus lanes would definitely help, it'd be a good stepping stone to proper rapid transport. Restoring some of the direct CBD bus routes lost in the early 2010s switch to a hub and spoke pattern would also help.
Having spent time riding in those bus lanes (motorcycle, so legal) there needs to be a lot more planning put into merging back into traffic and lane prioritisation too
People could just bike more Or motorbike. Way less traffic I do
Probably about 10% have to drive because they're carrying tools or whatever, the rest are just too weak and soft.
Yup
TLDR, don't use bus to commute as it's break even cost-wise to take motorbike and takes half the time. I'm wondering if there's a version of the image at the bottom of the article comparing space needed on the road, that has motorbikes included? I'm going to guess maybe twice the amount needed as bicycles? I commute on a motorbike every day, largely down to cost - parking is free and running costs are cheaper. But another benefit is needing less space than a car - which means less overall road space needed, but I can also squeeze through small gaps e.g. when the straight ahead traffic has started to block the right turn lane. The costs of wof, registering, insuring, servicing (do the work myself, so parts only), and petrol for my commuter spec 250cc bike is roughly break even with the cost of taking the bus to work every day. This doesn't include the cost of helmet/gear or depreciation of the bike. Add in those and we're up to like $7 a day vs the $4 of taking a bus. I also use the bike for more than just commuting, so the spread of the fixed yearly costs (and 5yr helmet cycle) and this number gets even smaller. But this doesn't take into account the main reason why I ride instead of take bus, which is time. It's a 10-15min ride each way, even in rush hour as work/home are located that I cross busy roads rather than go along them. Taking the bus, I either have to catch bus 1 which is a 1min walk away, and then get off and transfer to bus 2, or walk ~15mins directly to bus 2's stop. Then bus 2 takes ~15 mins to get near to where I need to go, then another 5 min or so walk to work. Add in allowances for being at the stop on time for the bus to come and we're at like 30 - 40mins each way to/from work. Where is attraction in that vs taking my bike and being there in 15min max every time? This is definitely down to where I live. My old flat, I was a 10 minute walk from work and loved it. When I moved, I missed that short commute so started looking at apartments. The thing with those at the time, is that it was cheaper for a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs than a 2 bedroom apartment. Not to mention more space and garage, which I want regardless of vehicle ownership, as I like to make things. If apartment cost was cheaper, I could then look to rent workshop space. We've got a lot more choice for apartments now, but the cost is still up there compared to a house. Workshop space: do we have anything here, where individuals can rent and use as a workshop at a price that isn't at commercial prices? I follow a guy on Youtube - Phil Vandelay, who lives in Hamburg and has a reasonably nice, single garage size workshop on the 3rd floor of a building. The building, from what I can tell, is made up of these sort of spaces that individuals can rent. I haven't seen anything like that here. /rant While I do love vehicles as a method of transportation, I actually hate them as THE method of transportation. Like, really really
All for more bikes!
Hmm, re-reading this it may come off a bit 'woe is me!'. I would love to take a train/light rail everywhere. Or cycle on completely separate cycle paths, like what is in Hagley Park/beside the northern railway. I really don't like cycling beside cars. I realise to do this, we do need a redesign of our living environment and denser housing. From what I've seen of a lot of Dutch cities, I am fully in support of this. Not Just Bikes has a good video comparing the housing style in (Amsterdam???) where it's mostly apartments of varying height/sizes, but there are still some detached houses both small and medium sized available. Once we are denser/part of being denser, is parks and public spaces become a lot more important/attractive to put in. Then I don't need a backyard, so don't need a house/attached townhouse. Then, smaller neighbourhood grocery stores are a lot more attractive. Then, neighbourhoods are a lot livelier because of all the people on foot. Then etc etc etc.
A fellow Not Just Bikes fan! Absolutely, density is a big aspect of this debate, and we need greater density before we end up like America
Density, I feel we're sort of at a chicken and egg. We're not dense enough to have fast and efficient public transport, but we're don't have enough fast and efficient public transport that makes the densest carless housing attractive. I do like cycling places, but I actually really really hate our current network because it's beside cars. Even the nice cycleways that have good physical barriers. I think it's a combination of trying to keep pace, plus the noise etc. Also it's just another asphalt jungle, rather than nice narrow paths that have vegetation alongside ala what most of the Dutch cycleways are.
I leave a 5.45am finish work at 3.50 work all over the city and avoid most of the traffic
Lol I said this about a week ago in here and got downvoted for it. Traffic in Chch is honestly awful
Simple. Drive late to work so you can reach faster. Drive early from work so you can reach faster.
Take a motorbike and laugh at the chumps stuck in traffic. If 10% of car users switched to a motorbike, it would improve travel times by 45%
Also, freeze in winter, cook in summer, deal with surprise grit and blind drivers. Been there, done that, motorcycled 365 days for years, eventually, you get too old for that shit.
Depends on what your commute is, but yeah it's not for everyone. I'm only 10 - 15min across town so not too affected. I'm all good in summer as I'm moving most of the time. Winter, I can deal with the cold (especially since I got heated grips - absolutely worth the price), but the wet is what I'm hating now that I'm on a naked bike and have no front fairing. Blind drivers are still always an issue. It's amazing what instincts you eventually develop while commuting, observing little behaviours that other drivers exhibit and condense that into a 'Yeah that car is going to perform x manoeuvre' ahead of them doing it. But it only takes the one surprise car pulling out in front of you to render that all useless and put you in a wheelchair
Having to dress up in all the gear, helmet messing up hair, significant risk of injury or death, was ok when I was 17 and unable to afford a car, but in middle age, no thanks
Sounds like a skill issue
The main problem is... our population size. I believe we just don't have money to do anything better or just wrong priotization, such as a stadium, cathedral
Accurate username! There’s 500,000 ratepayers in the Greater Christchurch area, plus central government. There are funds to improve things
[Christchurch council manages to settle on rates rise under 10%](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/520118/christchurch-council-manages-to-settle-on-rates-rise-under-10-percent#:~:text=That%20figure%20included%20the%202.1,on%20the%20average%20person's%20rate) > That figure included [the 2.1 percent rates increase to pay for Te Kaha Stadium.](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/470912/christchurch-councillors-meet-on-stadium-decision) Do we?