Cycle paths to nowhere

Dunedin is a “fantastic city for cycling”, according to the city council’s website. Commuting home by bike, along North Rd in North East Valley, John Parker begs to differ. The on-road cycle lanes on both sides of the road are “dangerous, terrifying, appalling … and the road is a race track”. The lanes — theoretically helping a 9500-strong community get around in a cheap and fun way while reducing carbon emissions, air pollution and road risk from traffic — are promoted on two council maps. One shows city cycling routes, the other a recreational route that heads up the coast. In real life, the lanes are narrow strips of potholed road, squashed between traffic and parked cars, and only indicated by two lines of white paint and the occasional fading image of a bicycle. At the busy intersection near the Dunedin Botanic Garden, the lines disappear altogether in favour of space for car parking and a left-turning lane for vehicles. A note on the council’s maps reads like a disclaimer. It warns cyclists across the city to watch out for hazards, including “car doors opening”. It is a danger that has killed and injured — and a symptom of on-road cycle lanes, not segregated from vehicles yet without 30kmh limits or other traffic-calming measures to protect people on bikes and foot. Mr Parker says he has been hospitalised three times due to being “car doored”. Fourteen years ago, University of Otago dental lecturer Dr Li Hong He was killed when a car door knocked him off his bike and under the wheels of a truck in Cumberland St, aka State Highway 1. By 2019, improved cycleways had been constructed on city centre portions of SH1 in both directions, next to the pavement and separated from vehicles by wide, raised, concrete lozenges. One major issue, cyclists say, is that the safer cycleways do not take them all the way home or connect to low-speed neighbourhoods. Getting to where you need to go, which the council now wants to make easy for all, is only possible with risk and worry. As the northern cycleway approaches North East Valley, the lozenges end and the lethal lottery of being “car-doored’’ or run over on the 50kmh road begins. Mr Parker says he knows people who have given up commuting from here. “So many people would like to get around by bike, but can’t at the moment because they just don’t feel safe — and aren’t.” The Dunedin City Council’s Pathways strategy, being put to council prior to public consultation, has a goal to make it “easy for people of all ages and abilities to walk, cycle or wheel for everyday travel”. There is a hope the strategy will lead to an active travel “system” across the city that is “safe, well-connected and attractive,” councillors were told at a May workshop. Pathways is not DCC’s first strategy promising an integrated solution. A Strategic Walking and Cycling Network was proposed in 2011 and included in an Integrated Transport Strategy published in 2013. A Dunedin Urban Cycleways Programme was prepared in 2015 and included in the 2018-28 10-year plan. Some infrastructure has been achieved or is being constructed, including the harbourside cycleway, the Tunnels Trail and the Albany St cycleway, but other plans are unwritten and undelivered — including a commitment, within the Urban Cycleways Programme, to improve cycling in North Rd. A DCC spokesperson said the North Rd improvements were “not progressed because the project was later removed from the programme’’. "There are no plans or visuals for this work.” A downbeat DCC Strategic Walking and Cycling Review, published in 2024, said 30% of the 2011-proposed cycling network had been delivered and implementation of Pathways, to connect homes and destinations safely, would cost, in 2023 dollars, $145.6 million. Despite a “high benefit cost ratio”, co-funding from NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) was unlikely due to the government’s “significant shift in transport priorities and constrained funding environment”. “Given the scale of the investment required to deliver the programme and lack of co-funding, planning work … has largely been paused until there is greater certainty”. It was a statement reflective of politics. The year before, Transport Minister Simeon Brown had written to local authorities telling them he had ceased a funding stream to NZTA for active travel infrastructure. In 2024, the government’s policy statement on land transport was published, heavily focussed on road building. DCC’s recent Pathways workshop suggested funding for the strategy’s implementation could start in 2028, with a possible $38.4m expenditure spread across the following six years to 2034. It flagged a map of areas slated for priority investment, including the city centre and connections to the hill suburbs, South Dunedin and Anderson Bay. North Rd was indicated to have an “existing cycling facility”. The DCC spokesperson said the council was aware there were “deficiencies” with North Rd cycle lanes. The road would be “looked at again” under the council’s Future Development Strategy, and will “identify infrastructure improvements needed to support growth in the North East Valley area”. Implementation of Pathways priority projects was also “subject to 10-year plan decision-making and NZTA co-funding”. Director of road safety charity Brake Aotearoa Caroline Perry says the stalling and uncertainty of active travel and traffic-calming projects is a common story across New Zealand and significantly due to government policy and lack of co-funding. “There is such a small amount being invested, yet enabling people to travel on foot and bike, without fear, brings crucial environmental and health benefits”. The roll out of Pathways has staunch support from Liam Harrison, owner of Dunedin cycling courier business Pedals Couriers. There was “significant rhetoric” about specific cycleways, but “what is often missing in those conversations is the need for an interconnected network of infrastructure. It’s my understanding that Pathways is trying to get people to think about that’’. "If there are people in the anti-cycling camp, who don’t want to spend money on cycleways, it is good to remind them of the bunch of benefits that will flow if more people ride bikes and use public transport, including fewer cars, so fewer traffic issues.” Louise Efford, another cycling commuter, identifies a more immediate reason for cycling — the cost-of-living crisis. “People are finding it harder to afford vehicles. That is primarily why I use my bike. It is free, I don’t have to pay for parking and I can guarantee my journey time. "The weather is not always guaranteed, but you get compulsory exercise.” Cycling has not been crash-free: she suffered a leg injury when a car veered left into the North Rd cycle lane while undertaking a car in front. “I was also clipped by a guy’s wing mirror the other day. He had decided his car could fit in the lane with me. "You have to be 100% wary, all the time.” She would not allow her children to cycle the lane. The council’s on-road cycle counters recorded 4118 cycling trips in North Road in May last year — an average 66 return trips daily — and a similar number the same month the previous year. In May 2023, there had been double the journeys — 8368 — up from 5844 the year before. From the other end of town, teacher Heike Cebulla-Elder commutes by electric bike from Andersons Bay to Logan Park High School, whatever the weather. The ODT accompanied her — in a hail storm. Sporting waterproof clothing and a wide smile, she said cycling made her “feel alive” and was good for mental health. Patience was required to cross four lanes of fast-moving traffic on Portsmouth Drive to access the harbour’s segregated cycleway. Ms Cebulla-Elder then navigated the industrial area and main roads, with hair-raising junctions and no cycleways. Ms Cebulla-Elder said drivers often exceeded the 30kmh limit on Anzac Ave, but it was important to implement the lower limit “wherever possible” for safety. The World Health Organization has called for 30kmh limits to be the norm where people and traffic mix — kinetic energy dictates it becomes increasingly impossible for drivers to stop in time at higher speeds and crashes are more likely to kill and maim. Butts Rd, the final leg of Ms Cebulla-Elder’s journey, was “chaotic”, with cars driving close to the school gates. Efforts by her to persuade parents to park further away had resulted in limited success, she said. The DCC spokesperson said “transforming our transport system is central to achieving our Zero Carbon goals”. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had warned in 2022 that emissions needed to be halved globally by 2030 — and in 2023 the DCC published its plan to get the city to net zero by 2030. However, around a quarter of the city’s total gross carbon emissions are still from petrol and diesel vehicles, with around 80% from cars and light commercial vehicles, including privately-owned utility vehicles and vans under 3.5t. Back in 2023, the council had theorised the city could become carbon neutral, with net zero carbon emissions, by 2030. It would take various efforts, including decreasing road transport emissions by more than 40% against a 2019 baseline. They have dropped 2% so far. The DCC’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory reports buses have steadily decreased emissions: the regional council has decreased its diesel buses and started shifting to electric. However, between 2024 and 2025, emissions from petrol, diesel and hybrid cars rose by nearly 8% and light commercial vehicle emissions rose by more than 10%. The council’s Zero Carbon acting manager Rory McLean said short-term data sets must be treated with caution, but safety had been “frequently raised as a key barrier to cycling” when the city’s Zero Carbon plan was being prepared. "It was a consistent theme in community feedback,” he said. The advent of electric bikes makes it easier to tackle Dunedin’s hills, but a NZTA survey published last year found only 3% of Dunedin adults frequently cycled. One Roslyn-based family of four are giving it a go with two electric cargo bikes. It is unsurprising: mum Emily Cambridge is an urban designer focussed on enabling people to move in ways that are active, healthy — and social. Cycling around her neighbourhood is her “social service”, she says. She travels with Henry, 3, in a seat behind her while Lucy, 9 months, and Artie, the spaniel, ride in front. Henry likes going “fast and over the bumps” and the family brings joy to retired people they meet. Cycling was also quicker than driving when taking the children to city centre destinations. The family could park at the front door of anywhere they wanted to go. Her husband Riki commutes by e-bike to his lecturing job at the University of Otago. Having e-bikes removes the disablers of “wind, hills and distance”, Ms Cambridge said. There was also fun to be had — this week the cycling group Spokes organised a winter ride, with bikes decorated with lights. However, when asked to respond to the council’s claim that Dunedin is a “fantastic” cycling city, Ms Cambridge said there were “great opportunities” because the city is compact, but currently it is “not a great cycling city.” Dunedin was behind the times compared with Christchurch, where the family previously lived. There, you could cycle “everywhere, feel free” and drivers seemed to have respect for cyclists. Mr Cambridge said the Albany St cycleway was “going to be great”, but there was “no solid cycling option” across Highgate and through the town belt to the city centre. Cycling on busy main roads, including Kaikorai Valley Rd, had obvious dangers and travelling to South Dunedin was a no-go. There were “too many barriers”, Ms Cambridge said. Her father, 81, who lives in Geraldine, had also been cycling up to 200km a week — until recently. He had been “car-doored", shattering his femur and requiring major surgery. When asked if the family felt drivers realised there was a 9-month baby and a dog in the front of one of their bikes, both parents answered with a resounding “no”. Ms Cambridge was asked her thoughts on the pace of cycling infrastructure being built in the city, in the context of the IPCC’s cry for carbon emissions to halve by 2030. She answered in desperate tones. “Everything is too slow. Far too slow. That is essentially it. Budgets have been depleted. It is really slow and really hard.”