In a single meeting, Wellington City Council voted in favour of 30km/h streets, bike lane upgrades, behaviour change programs, and a controversial separated cycleway into the city.
The near 8-hour long meeting of the Planning and Environment Committee took place across the ditch on Thursday 15 September.
General business kicked off with Agenda Item 2.1, the Council’s approach to speed management. Council voted in favour of reducing speed limits to 30km/h on 80% of city streets by 2027. A number of additional streets would be reduced to 40km/h.
The Council then voted in favour of devoting council staff time for the delivery of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving program, a $7.2 million joint initiative that aims in part to get people out of private cars.
Without skipping a beat, Council voted unanimously in favour of safety upgrades to a notorious intersection in the western suburb of Karori, before proceeding to the most controversial item on the agenda: the Newtown to City cycleway.
![](https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/newtown_to_city.jpg)
The proposed Newtown to City cycleway in Wellington, New Zealand
The divisive Newton cycleway project has faced a plethora of backlash. Earlier in the year, businesses took Wellington City Council to court seeking an injunction on the rollout of the cycleway. The matter was later settled out of court.
Wellington City Council has received a whopping 1880 submissions related to the Newtown cycleway, comprising over 2200 pages of feedback.
After some focused debate, Council ultimately approved the project in the Thursday meeting, a fourth victory for the bike riding community.
Councillors acknowledged that it would be initially hard for businesses but ultimately better for the community in the long term.
Deputy Lord Mayor Sarah Free told Stuff.co.nz that she is “nervous about change but I know we’re basically doing the right thing. That’s the whole point about this being transitional... It’s not necessarily optimal, because we don’t know what we don’t know yet”.
The Thursday Planning and Environment Committee meeting was one of the final meetings of the term. It was also held the day before voting opened for the 2022 local body elections.
Wellington is just one of many cities across the world facing pressure regarding the rollout of bike infrastructure designed to support the wider community.
Despite this, a recent poll by Climate Council has found that the majority of the public are ultimately supportive of active transport facilities. The Guardian has also shone a light on the ‘bikelash paradox’, that oppositions raised by a vocal minority are ultimately quashed by voters.
Voting in local elections closes on Saturday 8 October in New Zealand. Delivery of the items approved in Wellington City Council’s Thursday meeting will start immediately.