SPOKES Dunedin Informal Meeting August 2025

Events
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Location

Previous meeting:

To discuss:

  1. Questions for candidates - progress

  2. Albany Street / University

  3. Other business

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This was brilliant! Unfortunately, nobody took a photo. I’ve never sat on beer kegs for prolonged periods before (they are surprisingly comfortable), but that is made easier with a pint of fine stout.

Meeting Summary

Questions for councillors

This has gone surprisingly well, with approx 30 replies from the 50-odd councillor candidates. The replies themselves were a mixed bag; the most pleasant surprise is that we have some common ground with some on the conservative end of the political spectrum.

Currently, only the @exec have access to these, but we’ll make them available to all @members (i.e. financial members) shortly for their perusal and opportunity to comment. I’ll look into empowering our analysis with some AI smarts if time allows.

The plan from here:

  1. Devonia will chase those who haven’t replied (as personal messages from this site).
    • she’ll also include the ORC candidates.
  2. Nathan will throw open access to @members
  3. We’ll add in some AI smarts to aid the analysis if feasible
  4. We’ll likely share a summary with the ODT with a view to publishing them next week (thanks for the suggestion @jessica!
  5. Once published, we’ll also share them in more detail publicly on spokes.nz

Next Project - Small Improvements

One of the key messages we have received from the DCC is that small improvements are doable within the current constraints, but they aren’t sure where the value lies.

This is a great opportunity to partner with the DCC to address a whole bunch of pain points around the city. Things like barriers in pop-throughs, poor phasing or sensing of traffic lights, the need for a drop curb. Stuff that could be fixed in a day or two.

I propose that we do this via the SPOKES Wiki, and then have a round of ranking the potential improvements. I’ll tap each @member on the shoulder and support them to do at least one that matters to them before then.

Albany Street / The University Precinct

@david and @steve are doing good work on this front. See this:

Of note, @Elliot has an interest in this as he is the ORC rep for the Tertiary Precinct Planning Group. It would be great to fire this up again.

General Discussion

Pedestrian usage map

The Pedestrian usage map is now live.

Hopefully a cycling one will soon follow.

Cycling Ambassadors

@heike is keen to see this kick off again.
This could be co-ordinated from this website.
At the moment, there is nobody to lead this though.

Biketober

This seems to be a national thing, that is also going to happen in Dunedin this October. The DCC will have a big role in promoting it, and it would be great to be involved.

Organised rides

These are always great, but need someone to take ownership and organise them.
A good one to do shortly would be a ride around the University Precinct (? @david)

Next meeting (Formal)

At @frstep’s place 2025-09-07T12:00:00Z. We haven’t asked him yet though!

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8th at mine is perfect. I can promise pizza. Can’t promise tiramisu, and certainly can’t do home made limoncello!

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Good stuff. Cant wait to see the prospective councillor survey responses. Heres a report Re Dunedin’s pedestrian usage maps and dashboard.

Victoria BC , where Spokes Dunedin’s Head of Canadian Cycle Advocacy Intelligence Unit, Rob Orchiston, has been skulking around for the last few weeks, is British Columbia’s most cycle friendly city.

There are 43 automated bike counters sprinkled around the Victoria bike path system. These digital cheer-leaders encourage cyclists by letting them know how many others are doing what they do. They are also often visible to drivers who are sometimes unaware how many thousands of people travel by bike each day - thus visually countering the narrative that “no one uses the frigging bike paths eh”

Or Manchester for example.

In addition to the DCC dashboard lets ensure Dunedin which could be a quarter size sister city of Victoria gets some visible displays to publicly highlight real time bike counts. Based in Victoria’s several hundred thousand spent on bike counters perhaps Dunedin will eventually find money for one or two totem counters at prime locations.

Eco-DISPLAY Classic+ - Matrix real-time Display | Eco-Counter

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Something I was thinking off after the meeting. We do need to prevent any misinformation, so we prevent councillors saying things that aren’t true. When they do make claims, make sure it s backed up by evidence/sources. We want to prevent spreading misinformation.

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Thanks a lot for that! Will have a look into this.

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