Soaring popularity of cycling clashes with lack of investment in cycle paths across New Zealand

This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

Hundreds of cyclists have gathered in Wellington to demand safer infrastructure and more investment from the Ardern government, after the death of a cyclist near the capital this month.

On Monday more than 600 people protested outside parliament to remember 65-year-old Brent Norriss who died after being struck by a vehicle while cycling on State Highway 2 between Wellington and Hutt Valley. Police enquiries into the crash on 3 February are continuing.

Protest organiser Patrick Morgan, from the Cycling Action Network said proper infrastructure needed to be built – including barriers – to protect cyclists in the region, and around New Zealand.

Currently only paint is used to mark cycle paths on State Highway 2 and many cyclists say they feel they are gambling with their lives when they get on their bikes.

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“Paint is not protection.” Morgan said.

In 2016, five cyclists died on New Zealand roads, 169 were seriously injured and 560 suffered minor injuries in police-reported crashes, according to the Ministry of Transport.

According to the New Zealand Transport Association, cycling is the the fastest growing mode of transport in cities and towns across New Zealand, including Wellington and Christchurch.

Census 2013 showed cycling to work in Wellington had increased by 73% since 2006, to 3.6%, while in Christchurch 5.8% of the city’s employees travelled to work by bike, up from 5.3% in 2006.

But as cycling’s popularity has increased, so too have tensions with drivers and other road users, including several recent incidents of motorists verbally abusing cyclists and threatening to run them off the road.

Late last year the mayor of the South Island city of Dunedin called for calm after a series of aggressive altercations between drivers and cyclists on narrow harbour roads.

Dr Caroline Shaw, a senior lecturer in public health from the University of Otago, said such conflicts may be particularly prevalent in New Zealand because cycling infrastructure has seen bare bones investment, and the “utter normalisation of cars” in the sparsely populated country has made it “quite challenging for many people to see alternatives – they find it confronting, and hard to adapt”.

Cyclists have a higher death rate than other road users, Shaw said, but because so few cyclists use the roads in New Zealand, the death rate remains much lower than that of drivers.

“More people are cycling now and it’s really highlighted that the infrastructure is not up to the job; it’s the result of decades of under-investment,” Shaw said. “In the last 40 to 50 years New Zealand has almost entirely funded infrastructure related to cars.”

“There’s a bit of a crunch happening in this country, and people are getting incredibly frustrated at the lack of infrastructure, and the lack of rapid action on improving the infrastructure.”

Associate transport minister Julie Anne Genter made headlines when she cycled to Auckland hospital to give birth to her first child, and has been a powerful advocate for getting more people cycling to work (which she does herself, as does speaker of the house Trevor Mallard), and more children cycling to school.

Despite the minister’s personal commitment to cycling, Shaw says the Labour coalition government’s actions on improving cycling infrastructure have been “disappointing”.

“We’ve just had this very large infrastructure package announced and a large amount of that was towards roads. A lot of people feel there’s a lot more that could be done in this space and it’s not getting the priority and attention it deserves if we’re actually serious about improving cyclist safety, reducing carbon emissions and having much nicer cities.”