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The Christchurch City Council receives occasional comments about tram tracks causing problems for people on bikes.  A small number of crashes are recorded in the CAS (Crash Analysis System, the Police’s crash database), but the Council suspected this does not represent the full extent of the problem, since most incidents would not involve motor vehicles and are unlikely to be reported to the Police.  Thus, CCC employed ViaStrada to dig deeper.

Most of the time, we have a client who pays the bills. Sometimes, we work for the love of it to give back to the community. Biketober in 2017 was an example of the latter.  Helen and Glen were heavily involved in organising the affairs, which our staff doing much of the event management, and Helen in particular looked after the marketing components.

At the 2WALKandCYCLE Conference in 2018, Biketober Christchurch 2017 was the category winner in the Revolutionary Award for the best activity.

ViaStrada was commissioned by the NZTA to identify up to five intersections with the highest recorded crashes, investigate causal factors and propose concepts to address the cycle crashes. In addition, an assessment of cycling issues along four corridors was asked for; the expectation was that there would be overlap between the project components. A report was submitted on the worst intersections that examined the crash details, identified likely crash scenarios. It included observations of the high-risk locations and treatment options were provided.

ViaStrada was commissioned to conduct safety audits of the uni-directional separated cycleway pair on the one-way system in central Dunedin, on State Highway 1 between Pine Hill and Rattray Street. For the scheme stage, ViaStrada identified traffic signal level of service issues that could affect compliance and safety. A combined team of ViaStrada and NZTA safety engineering staff were brought back for detailed design and post-construction safety audits a year later.

The ViaStrada team conducted field reviews and desktop project identification. From the long list of projects, GIS analysis was conducted for demand estimates, an assessment of reported crashes, rough-order cost estimation, and multi-criteria analysis using the Activetrans Priority Tool (APT). For the top-ranked thirty projects, summary sheets including a project map, description, and key facts were developed to inform future investigations and funding applications. 

Dunedin City Council commissioned ViaStrada to develop an area-wide approach to addressing road safety issues around the five central city schools. By considering the whole study area as one (i.e. the “Central Schools Cluster”), a series of consistent treatments can be used to reinforce to all users entering the area (especially motorists) that they need to look out for other users (especially school pupils) and behave appropriately.

Project work included design advice for the Napier to Hastings intercity cycleway (February 2017). This included rural road safety advice on speed management, shoulders, and delineation for Marewa, Westminster and Sandy roads.

Marlborough Roads engaged ViaStrada to develop an improved roundabout design for the Alabama Road and Weld Street intersection. This site has residential houses on three quadrants and a large supermarket on the fourth quadrant. The roundabout improvement project builds on the previous cycle safety assessment ViaStrada undertook in early 2018 of five roundabouts and four routes in Blenheim. Of the five roundabouts studied, the Alabama Road and Weld Street roundabout had the second highest number of cyclist-involved crashes (9 crashes recorded in the CAS database).

KiwiRail and the New Zealand Transport Agency have led the development of a New Zealand design guide for pedestrian and cycle facilities at rail crossings, both alongside roadways and stand-alone. ViaStrada was commissioned to develop this guidance and worked with Stantec who were developing parallel new guidance on risk assessment of level crossings.

The NZ Transport Agency engaged MWH (Stantec) and ViaStrada to investigate options for amendments to several road user rules affecting walking and cycling, particularly near intersections. This complements the Transport Agency’s development of updated network planning and design guidance.