ViaStrada was the successful tenderer for a large project for Tauranga City Council - the design of 32 intersections along a proposed arterial road. Six consultants were invited to tender.

EBoP-walk-cycle-strategyViaStrada was the successful tenderer amongst five invited to bid for the development of a regional walking and cycling strategy to cover the BOP region, including Rotorua, Whakatane and Tauranga.  Work is now well under way, with the last of three monthly stakeholder meetings scheduled for 18 December.

Rick Houghton started with ViaStrada on 7 January 2008. Welcome to the team, Rick!

Rick is a keen cyclist, keener than perhaps anybody else on the team (and that's hard to beat). In his spare time, he is honing his downhilling skills.

One of the car parks in the basement now caters for ViaStrada staff bikes. There's room for a whopping 12 bikes - we reckon that's a very good use of that space. But given the rate at which we are growing, and the high proportion of our staff who bike to work (three quarters of staff in the Christchurch office), how long will it be before we run out of space and have to convert another car space for bikes?

Jeanette WardJeanette Ward joined ViaStrada on Monday, 19 November 2007. The team is very excited about having Jeanette on board. Welcome!

2007 Cycling ConferenceViaStrada staff co-authored four papers presented at the 6th NZ Cycling Conference in Napier in 2007. That was by far the strongest showing of any NZ consultancy.

newsletter snippetOur Fundamentals of Planning and Design for Cycling course has featured in the September 07 Land Transport NZ newsletter.

The Land Transport NZ newsletter (issue 31) is available on our website and the article can be found on the last page (page 6).

The 'Fundamentals of Planning and Design for Cycling' has reached a huge milestone. Over 500 individuals have now attended one of the courses. That's a great success for such a small country as NZ.

Megan's cover slideViaStrada staff have authored or co-authored five papers and remits, to be presented at the 2007 IPENZ Transportation Conference in Tauranga. That is a great effort well done, team!

A hook turn is an indirect way for cyclists to turn right at a signalised intersection (see the diagram below). It involves moving to the far side of the intersection (position 1), keeping as far left as possible. The cyclist then waits there until the side street gets a green light and then moves with side street traffic across the intersection (to position 2).

So it is turning right in two stages. Pavement markings can assist cyclists with undertaking this manoeuvre and explaining it to other road users, but some cyclists execute hook turns routinely even without hook turn pavement markings.