Projects

Environment Bay of Plenty asked a number of consultants to bid on the development of a regional walking and cycling strategy in September 2007. We won the tender and have since held three intensive stakeholder meetings to refine the strategy. Participation included all six district councils, Land Transport NZ, Transit NZ, two district health boards, the police, Sport BOP and a local cycling advocacy group, Cycle Aware Tauranga.

Should cyclists be allowed to ride across zebra crossings? When you've got a tricky question like this, who do you ask for sound and reasoned advice? VicRoads, the state roading authority for Victoria, based in Melbourne, sought the answer from ViaStrada. We reviewed international literature and based on this, gave our professional opinion on the merits of cycling across zebra crossings, signalised mid-block crossings, and crosswalks at signalised intersection.

Bike path users in Melbourne can often find it difficult to find their way around on the many off-road paths around the city. Hence, a review of the adequacy of signposting was required.

The trouble was, VicRoads staff never got lost; they knew their way around. So Christchurch-based ViaStrada was called in. If a foreigner could find his way around, the signposting would be fine. Or maybe the theory was that if a Kiwi bloke could navigate the routes, then a normal Melburnian would have no problems.

A discussion paper on a proposed national road classification system (NRCS) or road hierarchy was prepared in mid July 2003 by Andrew Macbeth (at that stage, working for MWH New Zealand Ltd) with input on drafts from Transfund NZ and Transit NZ. The discussion paper was distributed to all road controlling authorities and other interested parties. Recipients were advised of the project, invited to respond to a survey about the proposed NRCS and invited to attend one of a series of five workshops held throughout New Zealand to discuss the proposed NRCS.

Christchurch City Council has ambitious plans for bus priority. In 2006 ViaStrada (Traffix) was engaged to design bus priority measures for the #70 Queenspark corridor (Gloucester Street, Fitzgerald Avenue, Whitmore Street, Hills Road, Shirley Road, New Brighton Road, Bower Avenue, Queenspark Drive and Broadhaven Avenue).

Recent development of residential subdivisions in the north west of the city has resulted in a substantial increase in traffic activity on a number of roads in the area. The increased activity has not been limited to vehicular traffic but it is evident that pedestrian and cycle activity has also increased. Previously many of the roads experienced very little traffic activity.

This project was carried out by Axel Wilke whilst he was still employed by Christchurch City Council (CCC), and Wayne Rimmer (Landscape Architect). Axel and Wayne were commissioned to develop a strategic plan for the section of the Avon River between Kilmore and Barbadoes Streets as part of the CCC Avon River (Central City) Masterplan.

Environment Canterbury (ECan) is developing a regional cycle network plan. ViaStrada staff developed an audit methodology, enabling alternative network elements to be compared with one another. The resulting methodology combines site visits with a clever RAMM assessment.

MWH New Zealand Ltd (Christchurch) and ViaStrada evaluated five different potential cycle network models. ARTA’s British expert peer reviewer thought that our GIS-based methodology, using Auckland demographic data and existing transport models, was pretty clever.

End result – a clear idea of how to develop the regional cycling network (and a happy client!).

The project was to provide real intersection and midblock layouts that practitioners could use to design and implement vision impaired ‘user friendly' facilities. LTSA (now NZTA) recognised that many vision impaired standards used ‘simple' or 'ideal' situations that could not be replicated in most design situations.