Best beware before barricading beautiful bikeways by bountiful bollarding!

Cycleway bollards in New Zealand are a bit like the concrete dividers we are now adding on some of our cycle paths – often needed to keep cars out, but often also pretty ugly. In a more civilised (cyclicised?) driving culture, we could probably do with simple raised kerbs for our cycle lanes – and remove most of the bollards we add to our path entrances.

But for now, they seem necessary in many places so that you can be a bit more sure your path doesn’t suddenly become a car park.

Yet as necessary evils, we want them to stay relatively rare – and as safe and convenient for cyclists as possible. After all, every bollard is another object you can hit with your bike, your pedals or your shins – especially when travelling in a group (it’s harder to see what’s coming toward you when other cyclists are ahead, or when you’re trying to mind some wee ones behind you).

And there – when it comes to “good practice bollarding” – well, there we got a real uneven deal.

A few months ago we noticed that the bollards along the Northwestern Cycleway between Point Chevalier and town were being changed around quite a bit. Some even several times in the space of 2-3 months, as if two competing teams of people were chopping and changing each other’s work! We had heard that there was a (NZTA?) project in the works on this, but this remains a bit of a mystery.

Going from the west, we start at Carrington Road:

Then, a little bit further east, we go from Sutherland Road onto the cycleway again.

Next up, we shall ignore the chaos around the St Lukes roadworks for this post as it is hopefully going to be over in a couple more months – or we’ll end up going off on another frustrated tangent…

Shortly afterwards, we come to where the new(ish) Kingsland section of the cycleway starts. There used to be a bollard right where the path narrows, east of Myrtle Street…

Just west of Nixon Park car park, another bollard is gone.

Just east of here, at the other end of the small car park, we had a very weird change of bollards – either two different teams were doing works here, or the same people first added a bollard based on looking at plans only (instead of the actual site!). Either way, a few weeks later, the brand new bollard and paint suddenly disappeared again. No loss.

Just past the Bond Street bridge, another bollard has been removed…

Next up, an example of the bollards on the many side streets leading onto the path. Ugh.

Then we come to the Haslet St Bridge, where CAA managed to get AT to resurface the whole area a few years ago – remember, it was a mess of a dozen manhole covers and various sunken surface patches…

Then we come to the Takau St ramp onto Newton Road. No bollards / barriers there anymore, after a AT-CAA review some two years ago. Not nearly perfect though…then again, we won’t have to worry about this climb for much longer.

Then it’s on into town, to encounter more modern designs. The first one on the Grafton Gully cycleway has already got a lot of people up in arms… we understand it was mainly added here because the apartment building corner on Upper Queen Street bridge means pedestrians couldn’t see a fast cyclist coming off the path.

Further down Grafton Gully, we get a bollard example that’s pretty much top quality for riding (but which NZTA apparently felt was only okay because it was at the top of a steep section)…

So what have we learned on this tour de bollards? Well, bollards are literally all over the place – in design, in terms of numbers, in terms of safety and riding convenience. Some existing bollards we can probably remove; others we’ll probably need to keep around – but need to make safer. There are actually quite explicit guidelines in our design documents about bollards and chicanes, but they still seem to be occasionally ignored, not to mention all the old designs lingering out there which still need retrofitting.

And on that thought – the need to make things safer – let us finish with what we think is the WORST EXAMPLE of bollards in Auckland (that we know about – *shiver*).

Namely the ones at the “Art Bridge” on the Twin Streams, west of Corban Estate in Waitakere. We have been asking for years for these to go:

These bollards are NASTY. Can we get your promise that if you go past them, you take out your smartphone, and contact AT on the website form to add your voice to get these (and other hazardous bollards) removed?

Because bollards should be used smartly, and in moderation.