Safety forum promotes road sharing

Tamaki Drive has been Auckland City's worst black spot for cycling injuries during the past five years. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Cyclists and residents of Tamaki Drive in Auckland will be invited to join a safety forum being set up after a cyclist was seriously injured last weekend.

City transport chairman Ken Baguley wants the forum to come up with ideas for how all users can share the popular waterfront route more safely while "moving beyond the motorist versus cycling antagonism which has this week dominated media and blogs".

His committee decided to ask council officers to set up the forum, which the police and bus operators will also be invited to join, before any more cyclists were hurt.

That also followed the Transport Agency identification of three Tamaki Drive intersections as the city's three worst black spots for cycling injuries over the past five years.

Top of the list was Tamaki Drive's intersection with Ngapipi Rd, where cyclists were injured in 13 crashes.

It was followed by the Patterson Ave and Atkin Ave intersections in Mission Bay, with 11 injury crashes between them.

That was before a group of four cyclists was hit by a car at the Cliff Rd intersection on Saturday, injuring four of them, one seriously. Engineer Greg Paterson suffered critical injuries and last night remained in a stable condition in Auckland City Hospital.

Constable Mark Rodgers, crash analyst for the Auckland serious crash unit, said an investigation was continuing and no one had been charged.

Councillor John Lister, the city's road safety spokesman, says Tamaki Drive is Auckland's busiest pedalling route - used for more than 200,000 cycling trips in the past 11 months.

But Mr Baguley's initiative received bipartisan political support from the transport committee only after he agreed to rephrase a late item he tried to introduce to its meeting agenda under the heading "Responsible cycling".

City Vision councillor Graeme Easte said that implied "some onus on cyclists for an event that happened in recent days".

"If you want to have shared use of the road by cyclists and cars, it should be more neutral, so it implies shared responsibility."

Mr Baguley said his motion was not intended to apportion blame for the weekend crash, but the council needed to deal quickly with the fallout.

"We've got a group of residents getting increasingly agitated - we've got to get on to it quick," he said, before agreeing to change the heading to "Shared use of Tamaki Drive".

"This relates to the aftermath of the incident, not the incident itself."

Mr Easte was later heckled by his own political team, however, for complaining about being held up in his car by a large bunch of cyclists "who would not get out of the way but were not capable of getting up a speed".

"You should have walked," said fellow City Vision member Cathy Casey.

Urging the committee to invite motorists to join the forum , Mr Easte said: "With all due respect to the cycling community, some of its members are pretty bolshie about knowing their rights."

- ADDITIONAL REPORTING: ELOISE GIBSON