Auckland Transport criticised for 'ridiculous' cycleway plan costing $8m per kilometre
Thursday, 9 December 2021
Auckland Transport is taking flak for promising 129 fewer kilometres of cycle lanes than Wellington at almost eight times the cost per kilometre.
Last Friday, Auckland mayor Phil Goff announced a $1 billion climate action package aimed at reducing carbon emissions and delivering more buses, ferries, cycling and walking options as well as an urban tree canopy across the city.
More than $144 million will be spent on about 18km of cycle infrastructure – at a cost of about $8m per kilometre. Meanwhile, Wellington is promising to provide 124km of bike lanes – on top of the 23km which already exists – over the next decade for about $1.5m a kilometre.
Women in Urbanism Aotearoa chairwoman and urban designer Emma McInnes said it was “utterly ridiculous” that less than 20 kilometres of cycle paths should cost so much money.
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“We know there are projects AT have done, such as Project Wave, which delivered each kilometre of cycleway for about $500,000. We don't have to spend $8m per kilometre on cycleway,” McInnes said.
Auckland Transport and the Auckland Council needed to “really seriously answer” why it cost so much for “somebody to come and move some kerbs”, she said.
The $144m investment comes on top of an existing cycleway programme looking to improve the safety of 60km of existing bike paths.
AT spokeswoman Natalie Polley said the cycling projects funded by the climate package would link up existing parts of Auckland’s network and would primarily be built on arterial and collector roads.
This would require more “complex intersection work and safety treatments” than Project Wave, thus increasing costs, Polley said.
“This will deliver better value for money by attracting a high number of users to support the emissions reduction and climate change goals,” she said.
An independent report by Abley found Auckland’s cycleways were some of the most expensive in the world, with around $30 per head being spent on bicycle infrastructure – compared with New York’s $2 per person.
The editor of the Greater Auckland advocacy website, Matt Lowrie, said there were a number of factors contributing to the high costs in Auckland.
AT considered many of these projects to be streetscape redesigns, rather than solely bicycle lane installations, Lowrie said.
“For example, if you look at Karangahape Rd, it wasn’t just adding the cycleway. It also included adding trees, putting fancy paving down and all sorts of other things like that.
“These are all being lumped onto the cycling budget, which is making these projects much more expensive,” he said.
McInnes said AT didn’t have to “landscape everything”.
“But unfortunately, that's how we get people over the line – we have to give people full upgrades or shared paths. But actually, we need to be focusing on movement and reallocating road space.”
Lowrie said AT was significantly increasing the bill of building cycle lanes because it had become “frightened” to take away on-street parking.
“So in a bid to retain parking and appease some residents or businesses, we're dealing with these huge costs because we're not just taking that space and turning it into cycleways.”
Polley said some reallocation of parking space will be necessary to deliver the project at the estimated costs.
“This has not yet been estimated.”