🚲 **Now Live: 2025 Candidate Matrix on Active Transport!** 🗳️

General
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Want to know where your local council and mayoral candidates stand on cycling and active transport? Spokes has compiled their responses into an easy-to-read matrix so you can make an informed vote this election.

Check it out here: https://spokes.nz/matrix

In case you missed it, you can find all responses of the candidates we have received on our website here: 📋 Candidate Index

Your voice matters! Let’s pedal toward a more bike and active transport-friendly future!:green_heart:

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Nice! A lot of effort has gone into that - appreciated.

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The Candidate Matrix is brilliant - it really summarises the content in Ask the Candidates well, and gives a quick overview of where they all are.

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Devonia, this is an excellent compilation of the candidates responses. I really love the matrix and honest AI summaries. I have dug into a handful of the individual candidate responses in detail and it’s great to see the thought some put into their responses and it’s clear who isn’t pro active transport and has some misunderstandings about how to best serve their constituents who want active transport choices, collective municipal transport options and how best to reduce the numbers of cars on the streets.
Thank you for all the work you have put into this, it’s very helpful and will definitely be used in my voting decisions.
Next steps -

  • How do we ensure everyone on spokes shares this info with their family, friends, colleagues and social groups and promote discussion about active transport in Dunedin. I attended an excellent evening presentation by another cycle advocacy group in July titled “Gear Up: Your Civics & Cycling Toolkit” which was all about how to promote informed voting amongst voters in upcoming city council elections in Calgary, Alberta.
  • How do we ramp up the discussion and get this important info out to the masses - has this excellent matrix been published elsewhere like the ODT? I see the viewership on the spokes site is between 12- 60 views per respondent in the last 3 days since publishing.
  • How do we ensure transport options that are Always Available for All Ages & Abilities becomes an election issue!

Rob

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Ive posted this on the DTTT fb page - see if we can get a wider audience

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I very much do not understand this matrix, it’s ranking answers to questions that were not asked? so candidates are being penalised for not going off topic or failing to go off topic is being received and ranked as disinterested on those topics that weren’t inquired about?
And it’s ranked by AI? how is it meaningful or representative?

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You make good points, Evelyn.

It is an imperfect analysis, and you are right - it did give too much weighting to those who roamed across active transport topics a bit. And because you were good and stuck to the questions asked, it scored you lower than perhaps it should have.

As our AI guru (@frstep) is away on holiday, we aren’t in a position to rerun it for this election. But this is a good learning point for the future.

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So now that final results are in. Here is how much our new council aligns with active transport based on the original matrix. We may have some work to do….

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