Regional council officially recognises worth of Great Harbour Way

A cycling and walking way skirting Wellington Harbour from the Capital to Eastbourne may be a step closer.

Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) is preparing  to hold hearings on its Regional Cycling Plan.   The plan drew 35 public submissions, with many considering it to be relatively weak, like the Regional Walking Plan that GWRC reconsidered after complaints.

Cyclists' and walkers' hopes for progress on the so-called  Great Harbour Way came after intense lobbying by cycling advocates and Green Party regional councillor Paul Bruce at two regional council committee meetings over the last few months, and a publicity campaign.

Last month Cr Bruce succeeded in getting GWRC's Transport and Access committee to adopt an amendment to the Ngauranga to Airport Plan and Regional Walking Plan, supporting the concept of the harbour path. But the motion gives support for the concept only, without effect. Wellington City Council has already said it supports the idea.

However, Cr Bruce says he is "delighted with this outcome, and looks forward to [other agencies with funding] collaborating to make this a stand-alone project.

"Lives would be save if cyclists did not have to mix it with speeding cars and heavy trucks" along State Highway 2 from Petone to Wellington, he says.

The major obstacle to such a path, at least along the SH 2 and railway corridor, has been the lack of land space between the western hills and the harbour shoreline to put it on.

The former Transit NZ roading agency has tried to improve the SH2 cycleway gap section, but it has also said it was constrained by narrow rights of way and lack of major funding.

Cr Bruce says cycling and walking interests like Cycle Aware Wellington and Living Streets Aotearoa "want a proper cycle and walk way all the way from Upper Hutt to Wellington. Rotary helped develop the Hutt River Trail, and we need something like that for the Great Harbour Way and Petone gap."

The T&A Committee amended the draft Ngauranga to Airport Plan approval. It noted that the Great Harbour Way  would add to the attraction of cycling and walking as a commuter and recreational option; tourism; reduced traffic congestion; and railway line protection.

It welcomed community initiatives to have the harbour cycle and walk route promoted and signposted; recognised that the ‘missing link' between Petone and Kaiwharawhara required the most urgent attention; and "Offers its support to any proposals of the Regional Transport Committee to give high priority to filling this missing link, preferably with a safe seaward walking and cycling track on this section".

Cr Bruce says the most likely scenario for the ‘missing link' is now constructing a pathway on fill on the seaward side of the railway right of way. He is looking forward to the new NZ Transport Authority (replacing Transit and Land Transport NZ) collaborating with OnTrack to make the plan possible.

OnTrack already has to repair the seaward side of its track land, and had indicated that the cycleway might be possible, as well as a grade level railway crossing, he says.

No time frames or costings were mentioned, and there is no planning or positive funding for the cycleway yet. Action would have to come, ultimately, from the Regional Transport Committee.

The 10-page cycling plan sets actions to implement the Regional Land Transport Strategy and Plan, approved by the Regional Land Transport Committee. It places as large a burden on local authorities for cycling improvements as the walking plan did.

The final meeting in September of the old RLTC before reorganization under the new Land Transport Act saw the Regional Cycling Plan adopted despite complaints from the public and councillors along similar lines to those that forced the rollback of the walking plan.

Chairman Fran Wilde, who is also GWRC chairman, said in a statement that the plan "proposes an important role for local councils as they are responsible for on-road cycling facilities and networks at the local level".

Wellington bicycle commuter numbers rose by 23 percent this year over last year, which saw a 21 percent increase over 2006. GWRC says this is partly due to increasing petrol price, and partly to fitness and environmental motives.

Critics say the plans are long on continued studying of the problems preventing achievement of high goals such as increased safety for cyclists and "all of the strategic cycle network provides an acceptable level of service".

There are no definitions of what those targets mean, particularly in terms of the roading network's cycleways. All the major roads are part of the cycle network, but large stretches of the main roads do not yet have dedicated, safe cycleways.

The plan says GWRC's responsibilities are facilitating regional coordination, advocacy, setting regional policy and lobbying central government for more money for cycling.

The plan's main points are things like "develop local cycling strategies" and a "programme for reviewing the cycling network" - both with a two-year time frame.

But cities like Wellington already have a highly developed cycling policy, which went out for public comment earlier in the year. It included a suggestion for cycle lanes to be built into city bus lanes - but nothing about an improvement to the Wellington-to-Petone State Highway 2 cycleway.

Cycling activists had proposed to GWRC, the RLTC, Wellington, Lower Hutt, and Transport New Zealand that they immediately fund and begin building a "Great Harbour Way" cycle path along the shoreline outside the rail lines. It was an idea that was a hundred years old, but still languishing, they said.

Local mayors bridled at what they saw as the RLTC passing the responsibility to the cities, as with the walking plan, and a lack of consultation between GWRC officers and cities.

Porirua Mayor Jenny Brash had said of the walking plan, "There is a principle here of forcing local authorities to do something (and it's true of the cycling plan, too) ... we already put a lot of emphasis on walkways ... you should call it a framework, not a [prescriptive] plan."

Hutt City Mayor David Ogden said "I don't think you [Cr Wilde] should chastise [us]: it's one of the more significant things we do."

Cycling interests at the meeting thought they were about to get a huge boost to the SH 2 cycleway. But they misheard New Zealand Transport Agency (formerly Transit NZ) regional representative Charles Taylor, who said his agency was fronting up with a half-million dollars of improvements at Petone, near where prominent Police superintendant Steve Fitzgerald was fatally injured in a bicycle-truck collision earlier in the year.

GWRC Chairman Fran Wilde had pressured all regional and local players to meet since then to take action. The cyclists thought he was announcing the estimated $15 million upgrade of the whole northern end of the cycleway. Sadly, they said, all they got was a band-aid widening of the cycle lanes on the Petone overbridges and approaches.