Following on from looking back at what an incredible cycling city Christchurch has been, one issue we haven’t talked about a lot from the latest Census is the continued renaissance of cycling in Christchurch.
The fantastic Cycling in Christchurch blog (mostly written by a good friend of CAA, Glen Koorey) reported in January on some of the great numbers to come out of the census.
The table below shows the areas that performed particularly well:
Beckenham achieved an amazing 16% mode share with many other areas coming in at over 10%. Those numbers are comparable to cycling rates in Sweden or German cities.
Of course, these numbers are still much lower than the Copenhagen like cycle culture that dominated Christchurch through to the 1970s.
But it shows that with even a slight increase in the quality of cycle infrastructure, Christchurch can easily regain its title of best Australasian cycle city and perhaps even start to make waves on a global scale.
Christchurch should be aiming to appear on the Copenhagenize Index of Bicycle Friendly Cities in the next 5 years. I don’t think an Australasian city has ever made the list (please correct me if I am wrong – Melbourne?), so it is a great aim for the city.
