This is the most common news type.
Season's greetings to all our clients, colleagues and peers from the ViaStrada team. We hope you enjoy a relaxing holiday. Our office closed on Friday 23 December and reopened on Wednesday 4 January. The move to our new location hasn't happened yet, as there's some damage to fix first. We'll advise on the new move date through our website, and we'll then be on Level 1, 284 Kilmore Street, Christchurch.
We wish everybody a safe, happy and prosperous 2012.
New Zealand's give way rules will change on 25 March 2012. The current rules, now unique to New Zealand, were introduced in 1977 and many motorists will question the rationale for the change. The performance of the majority of intersections will not be affected by the change, but in some cases, mitigating measures should be considered.
ViaStrada has competed in the McLeans Forest Park "6 hour blast" mountainbike event for five consecutive years. Following last year's result of third in the corporate category, this year our A team came second out of 102 teams, with the B team a respectable 34th.
ViaStrada director Andrew Macbeth attended the Bike Futures conference in Melbourne in October 2011. The preceding afternoon included a number of technical tours, including the impressive City of Yarra, where significant improvements have been made for cycling over recent years.
For the third consecutive year, we have enjoyed a "bake-off" competition run over the winter months. The competition had its origins in demand outstripping supply at the biscuit tin, but it's grown into something fantastic. Since the earthquake rearranged half of Christchurch, we've been sharing premises with our colleagues at QTP and our IT service provider Egressive, and of course they had to join this season.
The Christchurch City Council recently provided for resource consent applications to be lodged electronically.
ViaStrada has been utilising this new initiative and is already seeing benefits in terms of prompt consent lodgement and simplified payment of Council fee deposits, plus a reduction of costs associated with the printing and physical lodgement of hard copy consent applications.
ViaStrada has recently been commissioned to undertake the following projects:
Nelson City Council - Road Safety Audit Professional Services 2011/12
Auckland Transport - Safe Routes Evaluation
Upper Hutt City Council - Upper Hutt Walking & Cycling Strategy
Grey District Council - Grey District Plan Review
Selwyn District Council - Christchurch to Little River Rail Trail - Tullet Block to Macartneys Road Concept development
Subsequent to the recent Christchurch earthquakes, ViaStrada has successfully obtained approval for the relocation of the Cashel Street and Ferrymead Les Mills Fitness Clubs to a new site at 41 Riccarton Road. Full details of Les Mills' relocation can be found at their website.
Christchurch was snowed in, and our office was closed on Monday and Tuesday (15 & 16 Aug 2011). The weather has improved, though, and we are all back at work