Simon Wilson: A splendid cycleway and a horror crash - road safety, again

The result of the horror crash in Marlborough that killed seven people on June 19. Photo / George Heard

OPINION:

Three cheers for the cycleway on Upper Harbour Drive. What a splendid piece of suburban road design.

And yet locals have signed a petition opposing the way it's built. And, it's been reported, "Police and injured cyclist have grim safety warnings over Auckland Transport cycling project." Grim safety warnings? Give. Me. A. Break.

The cycleway is a relatively narrow strip, as cycleways go, on both sides of a sloping 3.7km suburban arterial road.

Until recently it was inherently dangerous for cyclists. Cars drifted into it, because the road is winding and many drivers treat it as a bit of a speedway. Auckland Transport (AT) encouraged this by giving it a 70km/h speed limit.

Now, though, saner views have prevailed. AT has reduced the speed limit to 60km/h and is adding low concrete barriers to keep cars and bikes physically separated.

Neither of these solutions is perfect. The speed limit should be 50km/h, if not lower. And the barriers should have some plastic high-vis sticks on them to make the divide easier to see.

Both improvements would be easy to do. In fact, AT appears to understand this, because at the moment it's using road cones to aid visibility.

But while it's not perfect, the design is very good. All the parking is off-road. A painted median separates the traffic lanes. There are reflective cats' eyes on the left-hand edge of the traffic lane, on both sides, all the way along.

Upper Harbour Drive: It's not a road to speed on. Photo / Michael Craig

All road users – pedestrians, cyclists and drivers – are catered for and safe from each other. The vehicle lanes are no narrower than many others all over town. With sticks and a lower speed limit, this design would be an excellent model for Auckland's busy suburban streets.

So what are people complaining about?

The main issue is that concrete barriers are unforgiving. Hit one with your car and you could blow out a tyre. But this is also true for gutters.

Some residents would prefer AT to use low moulded plastic dividers, because you can drive right over them without damaging your car.

Of course, that does mean cyclists in the cycleway are not safe. So that's a drawback.

But there's another problem with the moulded plastic option, which AT discovered a few years ago on St Lukes Rd.

The cycleways it installed there were divided from cars by moulded plastic barriers and high-vis sticks. What happened? Motorists used to mount the barriers and drive along in the cycleway, knocking down the sticks. This happened repeatedly. AT removed the sticks.

The sad fact is, some motorists think it's okay to threaten cyclists' safety and okay to vandalise cycleways. So cycling infrastructure must be able to withstand that.

The whole point of cycleways is to make cycling safe. The way to think about it is this: would you let your kids ride on that cycleway? If cars can and do drift into it, then it's not safe. Low concrete barriers are used on cycleways precisely because cars can't drive over them.

But are the concrete barriers a menace to cyclists too? A "competitive cyclist" says he rode into one and broke his collarbone. I feel for him – it's awful when you come off your bike like that. But was it the barrier's fault?

It's not the concrete that's the problem with these barriers, but their visibility. Again, just add the high-vis sticks. Although some people call them ugly, so they're complained about too.

As for the "grim warnings" from the police, that turns out to be a complaint by a senior sergeant, Warwick Stainton, a "roading police supervisor". He says officers can't park in the cycleways or do U-turns on the road.

But patrol cars are not supposed to park in cycleways. And if they can't do a U-turn, how about using an intersection? There are many, all along that road.

In his defence, Stainton has perhaps been too busy to attend a single road-safety training session in the last 30 years. If he had, he'd know what the police are supposed to say. Drivers should slow down. Drive to the conditions. The roads are for all users and should be safely shared.

At least the Upper Harbour Drive cycleway is relatively cheap, so the usual complaint about "huge costs" doesn't apply. This is because, as in Nelson St, they just repurposed some of the existing roadway and added the barriers. They didn't have to build a whole new piece of infrastructure.

This should be the norm. But complainants can't have it both ways. If you're going to object to expensive off-road cycleways (like Meola Rd), don't you have to accept cheaper on-road options?

This road asks one thing of all its users: compromise. A willingness to share the available space.

And it asks one more thing of drivers – a thing that, as it happens, will almost guarantee they don't hit the barriers and burst their tyres. Slow down.

Seven dead in Picton crash: Why don't we take road safety more seriously?

Meanwhile, seven people died recently in a horrifying crash on the Picton to Blenheim road when their van collided head-on with a truck.

The result of the horror crash in Marlborough that killed seven people on June 19. Photo / George Heard

If we took road safety more seriously, crashes like that would not happen. Why don't we?

I did a deep dive into road-safety issues last summer. There's a lot of good data and some things are worth repeating.

• Our serious crash rate is not normal. In nearly all other developed countries, the rate is falling. New Zealand and the US are outliers: our rates are rising.

• Vision Zero, known here as Road to Zero, is the official road-safety strategy of the Government and all our transport agencies. It's not just an advertising campaign, as some people seem to think. The ads are one part of a programme that focuses on safer road design, more police enforcement and lower speed limits, and also includes better driver education.

• Vision Zero is not the wacky invention of ignorant bureaucrats. It's the orthodox approach in those countries where crash rates are falling.

• Speed doesn't always cause crashes but it does make the consequences worse. American research suggests that each 1 per cent increase in speed makes it 3-4 per cent more likely that if you crash you will die.

Good police visibility promotes safety - road policing in Bay of Plenty. Photo / George Novak

• An AA study in 2018 revealed that 70 per cent of crashes are not caused by dangerous driving, but by a moment's inattention or a bad judgment call. It can happen to anyone.

• Where dangerous driving is a factor, better education isn't the solution you might think. One reason: it can breed overconfidence. Those drivers you see weaving in and out of motorway traffic or speeding down a quiet street don't think they're in need of a bit of Greg Murphy wisdom. They see themselves as really good drivers already.

• Serious crash rates go down when the police patrol the roads. Police enforcement helps control speed, dangerous driving, seatbelt wearing and mobile phone use.

• Having lots of fixed speed cameras on the highways has a similar effect.

• The best piece of road design for saving lives is the median cable barrier, also known as post-and-wire barrier. It's so successful, in some locations deaths and serious injuries have dropped to zero. And it's relatively cheap.

If we know what works, why aren't serious crash rates falling? Because the implementation of Road to Zero is excruciatingly slow.

There are 10,000 km of dangerous roads in New Zealand. But only 1000 km of them are scheduled to get median barriers, and that will take 10 years, and even that programme is behind schedule.

The introduction of fixed cameras is also painfully slow. And the police have neglected their contracted levels of on-road enforcement, even though road crashes kill more people than any other issue they face.

When the police patrol the roads, serious crash rates fall. Photo / George Novak

As for attempts to lower speed limits, they always, always meet a wall of resistance. On winding open roads and busy suburban streets alike, we have enormous trouble accepting that we do not always need to go as fast as possible.

That's why we need those median cable barriers. And cycleways that cars can't drive in. It's the same issue.