Posts by Glen Koorey
-
Hmm, it's a bit subtle that you can vote for each ROW, not for each column; therefore you could technically put in multiple 1sts, 2nds, 3rds without realising...
-
Hard News: The hard road to a…, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
It seems like every cycleway in this city has a different design/approach. Some of them are not even instantly recognizable as cycleways to be quite honest.
Could we not take the time to come up with a standard template approach and only vary from that when absolutely necessary?
Seems to me if would a lot safer (drivers know a cycleway when they see one) and cheaper to build and importantly maintain.
We've got concrete, tarseal, pavers.
We've got about 5 different types of flexi posts, planter boxes, rubber separators, concrete separators, no separation.
We've got pink, rainbow, long blocks of solid kermit, short pieces of kermit, different colours of kermit, no kermit.
We've got in berm, inside parked carks, outside parked cars, no parking.
We've got raised platforms at road crossings, we've got paths that go back onto the road at crossings.
We've got single direction, we've got bi-direction, got shared cycle/pedestrian.
We've got against the traffic flow, with the traffic flow.Seems a very expensive way for AT to "learn".
While I don't disagree with the sentiment for conformity (and my own 2010 NZTA research on what infrastructure would get people cycling said a similar thing), you will always have an element of 'horses for courses'. The Netherlands certainly doesn't have one standard cycleway design they use everywhere (or two, or three...). Like most traffic engineering, you have to design each site to suit the particular context rather than just pull something out of a standard recipe book.
Complicating that right now is that everything is all still new, so we are trying various things to see what works or not. Over time I expect that you will see some earlier less-than-stellar cycleway efforts get replaced with whatever is the current preferred best practice. In the meantime, assuming a design isn't inherently fundamentally flawed, it will probably stay as is until the improved version comes along. Assuming that appropriate use of signs, markings, colour, etc is applied, it should be sufficient for Jo Public to work out how to use it.
-
Hard News: The hard road to a…, in reply to Russell Brown,
This is pretty much what I think. Coming down like a ton of bricks on AT for getting something new a bit wrong isn't helping anyone, and it needs to develop skills and practices for taking the public along on these projects.
It's important to realise too that the Netherlands of this world didn't get it right the first time either. What you often see over there is second-generation (if not 3rd- or 4th-generation) infrastructure, refined over time as they have seen what works and what doesn't (and they still keep testing and tweaking).
We have the advantage of being able to borrow some of this insight for our own stuff, but it still needs a lot of "NZ-ising". In just the 3 or so years that we have been building new-style cycleways, I have to say that the design standard has been improving as each one comes out. And we already have a 2nd-generation separated cycleway in Christchurch, where Ilam Rd has been redone from the 2013 original layout.
-
Hard News: The hard road to a…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Here in Chchch, they are going to start fining people for parking on the grass berms – even on the streets (like ours) that they narrowed by almost two metres to create the new wider berms – this widening also makes a once easily traversable street effectively one way if there are cars parked on both sides (or you have to go at a crawl to pass oncoming cars and not take off wing mirrors) – no room for cyclists on this road and the new pavements are hard up against the property frontage so iittle leeway for cars emerging to avoid passersby .
Hard to know what they were aiming for with all the ‘improvements’ – no one has gained anything but more weed laden berms to mow for the council.I'd say what they're aiming for is a slower residential street so that people don't use them as racetracks or rat-runs. Have to wait a bit until the oncoming car has gone past, so that you can get through? Great, a local street should be like an extension of your driveway. And if it's slowed down enough (and ideally a 30km/h speed limit added to it), and unnecessary through-traffic is discouraged away, then people cycling can quite happily ride in the traffic lane. That's pretty much the philosophy behind the neighbourhood greenways for cycling - we opened another one in Christchurch today.
-
Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Jason Kemp,
I think it might be in certain seats where there is a list candidate from another party who doesn't need the electorate vote. Not sure how the calculations work in that case but suspect an overhang might be the result. Does anyone know.
In Maungakiekie for example RADHAKRISHNAN, Priyanca could have won if Chloe Swarbrick who is on the Green list had asked voters to give their electorate vote to Labour. Would it have made an overall difference to the total of electorate + party vote - I'm not sure.
Sigh, comments like these worry me - the electorate votes for local candidates do NOT affect the total number of seats in parliament that a party gets (let's ignore the case of a low-rating party like ACT only winning an electorate). With the exception of Epsom and the Maori seats, who you voted for as your local MP had no effect on the makeup of parliament; it was your party vote alone that did that.
I heard from lots of people tactically splitting their vote to "help them both" or protest voting to "kick someone out". If you want to support/change your local MP, great, but understand that only your PARTY vote can support/change the Govt. If a party unexpectedly wins an electorate seat, they don't get a bonus seat in parliament because they then get one less list MP.
-
Still trying to work out why kids of all ages were able to walk through the tunnel, but when you bring your bike next week you must be at least 16...
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Matthew Poole, in reply to Moz, about 2 hours ago
I suspect that Glen, being from Christchurch, has no idea what the bottom quartile of Auckland's housing actually looks like. Zero non-private-car transport options, and deciding whether you prefer blue or red when you pick the gang affiliation of your neighbours.
Anyone able to translate the worst parts of Otara and Mangere into Christchurch?
Living in Christchurch doesn't make me ignorant of life in other cities. I travel quite a bit for work and I can also read and do my own independent research. I'm also quite intrigued about the apparent blanket snobbery of entire suburbs that seems to condemn them to not even worth looking at on the basis of a few bad streets or sensationalist stories in the media...
My main point still stands. When I bought my first home (in Wellington) it definitely wasn't near the average price for a house in Wgtn, given that it cost us $96k in 1996. But two years later we sold it for about double, so it can't have been all bad... 20 years later we are finally in a house that is probably above the average value for Chch.
-
Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Then we get Liam Dann, yesterday, talking about how the average Auckland house price increased by $114,000 last year. Which means the average purchaser's average 20% required deposit increased by $22,800 last year.
I never understand why the media focus is always on what the AVERAGE price is doing. I'm pretty sure that most first home buyers will be aiming closer to the lower quartile (or even lower 10%), so these "average" numbers are somewhat irrelevant to what kind of deposit/mortgage they will actually need.
-
Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Sam M,
Is that right? Interesting. I thought I read somewhere (here?) that they had no legal standing.
I tend to stop as far forward as possible anyway - which is generally in front of the green box with my front wheel up against the lines showing the pedestrian crossing channel (if there is one).
Land Trpt (Road User) Rule clause 3.2(5):
While a steady red signal in the form of a disc is displayed...
(a) a driver of a vehicle facing the signal or signals must not enter the controlled area, but a cyclist may enter ahead of a marked vehicle limit line and stop behind a marked cycle limit line(http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2004/0427/latest/DLM303062.html)
So technically, sneaking just ahead of the advanced stop box is not allowed on a bike either; so long as you're not impeding crossing pedestrians. But motor vehicles definitely can't encroach in that area while waiting.
-
Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Bob Williams,
True enough, bikes are classified as vehicles (as anyone who's been pulled over for a DIC of a bike knows)...
...except that a bicycle is a vehicle but the drink driving laws only apply to MOTOR vehicles. So, despite the common myth, you can't be charged in NZ for being drunk in charge of a bike. They could possibly find reason to charge you with, say, "careless use of a vehicle", but again they couldn't compel you to take a breath test to make their case.