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Brings extensive knowledge as a Spokes member and e-bike user, presenting detailed plans including extending bus hours on Sundays/holidays, adopting free fares for under-18s and community service card holders, and creating a Regional Public and Active Connectivity Strategy. He strongly supports reinstating the Albany Street cycleway, extending George Street’s success to the Octagon and Princes Street, and emphasizes accessibility while advocating for better integration between transport modes.
As a proud member of Spokes, I can often be found zipping around town on my trusty e-bike and I’m very familiar with our public and active transport networks in Ōtepoti, flaws and all. As Otago regional councillors, much of the work we are able to do in this space involves lobbying Dunedin City Council. To avoid writing a novel I won’t detail all the things I think DCC could be doing to improve walking and cycling in Dunedin, but I encourage you to check out submissions to council I’ve made in the past, advocating for better urban design that enables easier and safer mode choice for all. DCC also has an important role to play in building bus priority lanes and signals to make our bus services more efficient.
Of course, there is plenty for the ORC to do in this space too, mostly with public transport but also with regards to active transport too. My plans are as follows;
Public transport:
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Extend hours on Sundays and Public Holidays. Most bus routes end around 6pm on Sundays, and we do not run services at all over many public holidays, which particularly affects shift workers.
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Adopt the frequencies and service hours recommended by the Dunedin Fares & Frequencies Business Case**
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Trial regional routes outlined in our draft LTP, including a link to the Dunedin airport. If successful, expand and explore interregional connections too.
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Adopt free fares for under 18s, for students, and for community service card holders (as soon as we have a Government Policy Statement for Transport that allows for this).
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Ensure the Total Mobility Scheme continues to be funded to serve those in our communities who rely on it.
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Work with local businesses on ‘FareShare’ programmes, company transport planning, and Fringe Benefit Tax maximisation.
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Establish a bus users liaison group, as an additional accountability measure to ensure buses are actually showing up and that any novel ideas or concerns can be raised quickly.
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Extend a handful of targeted routes until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays.
Active transport:
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Continue enabling use of ORC flood banks for shared-use paths where appropriate
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Continue financial and regulatory support for community trusts building bike trails
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Explore initiatives with local councils like community e-bike share schemes, as part of our Climate Strategy.
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Create a Regional Public and Active Connectivity Strategy. If there was one good thing to come out of the government’s bus-bike-rack-ban debacle, I hope that it was a greater understanding in decision-makers of how important the interface between public and active transport is. We need a strategy to make sure our routes, timetabling, and infrastructure (eg. bus stops) are optimised for walking and cycling as much as possible.
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Revive the Tertiary Precinct Planning Group between ORC, DCC, and Otago Uni – and bring OUSA on board too.
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The Dunedin Fares and Frequency Business Case recommended services run 6am-11:30pm every day. Primary routes (5/6, 10/11, 8, 63) should run every 15 minutes between 7am-7pm, and every 30 minutes the rest of time. Secondary routes (3, 14, 15, 18, 19, 33, 37, 38, 44, 50, 55, 61, 70, 77) should run every 15 minutes during weekday peaks and every 30 minutes the rest of the time.
The Albany Street cycleway has been delayed for far too long and is a critical connection between Te Aka Ōtākou and the SH1 cycleways, while also improving the urban design of an important strip of the tertiary precinct. The Tunnels Trail and Coastal Connection Trail are also both urgent priorities and will be invaluable assets to the city that I’m excited to see take shape, but deserve more council support than they ended up getting. The peninsula extension will also be beneficial.
Better walking and cycling infrastructure is sorely missing in South Dunedin, but I’m hopeful that the outcomes of the South Dunedin Future programme can provide certainty to planners and a positive vision for the community that includes more blue/green space (including open streams and wetlands) where walking and cycling is planned for and encouraged.
In addition to what I’ve outlined already, I would be pushing DCC to extend the success of George St to the Octagon and Princes Street, and to consider fully pedestrianising sections of George St, like Cuba St in Wellington. As mentioned, other parts of the city like South Dunedin, could benefit from additional welcoming public spaces and quieter streets. The Uni campus is a clear example of how enjoyable and practical pedestrianised spaces can be, but many of the student streets around North Dunedin do not benefit from the same investment and care.
I would also be pushing DCC to take the accessibility of our streets and public spaces more seriously. I wrote an article on this very issue for the local student magazine in my days before council, and there has not been nearly enough progress since then. There are plenty of steps I advocate for ORC to be taking too, particularly regarding the safety and accessibility of bus stops and the buses themselves.
Another area where ORC can play a role in improving quality of life in public spaces is with regard to the harbourfront. The “Te Awa Ōtākou Issues & Opportunities” report was commissioned by ORC and highlights a number of steps that could be taken by different stakeholders to improve our harbour and harbourfront. The most pivotal of these steps is a pedestrian bridge, connecting Queen’s Gardens to Steamer Basin, long planned by DCC but never fully funded.
The bus hub is another area ORC has naturally taken an active role in, to improve safety, accessibility, and attractiveness. However, I think we need to look at the long-term future of our bus network, and the need for a proper transport hub that integrates active transport and inter-regional services (whether bus or train) and serves as a safe, welcoming, and lively public space where people actually want to be.
I believe connection to nature is another critical component of quality of life in public urban spaces, and ORC should be taking more of a direct collaborative approach to urban biodiversity with DCC. We can and should continue strategically densifying Dunedin, while also increasing how much nature we incorporate into our city. The recently-developed New Zealand Biodiversity Factor (NZBF) guidelines could serve as an excellent tool for this.
Thanks Devonia and everyone else in the Spokes community for your mahi, and for the opportunity to respond to these questions. Feel free to reach out with any questions, comments or ideas based on my responses here today, I’d love to chat.