Making Auckland more cycle friendly

​Cycling is often not a safe or easy way to travel for many Aucklanders. Not many people use their bikes to travel to work, school, shopping or many other daily activities.

Getting more people to cycle will help:

• reduce transport-related emissions by reducing reliance on cars
• ease congestion by reducing the number of people in cars, especially for shorter trips in busier areas
• increase peoples' travel choices, particularly for those living in lower-income households where travel makes up a significant part of their household budget
• reduce the environmental impact of travel
• improve the health of people who cycle.

What other cities are doing

Auckland has much to learn from other cities about how to dramatically increase the number of people cycling.

For example, up to a third of all travel in Amsterdam and Copenhagen is by bike. Only 20 to 30 years ago these places had much lower levels of cycling.

In younger cities, such as Vancouver, Portland and Seattle, sustained effort into separated cycle routes has substantially increased the share of travel by bike.

What Auckland is doing

Between 2015 and 2018, central government and Auckland Council invested around $200 million in cycling. This investment was the first step towards developing complete cycle networks in and around the city centre. It included improvements such as separated cycle lanes and painted arrows on quiet residential streets.

This approach:

• improves safety for people who already cycle as their main way of getting around
• aims to get more people to take up cycling.

Investment added an additional 27 km of cycleways in central parts of Auckland and is already increasing the number of people cycling.

Focusing our efforts

While this recent investment has taken the first steps towards making cycling a safer and more attractive travel option, we need to maintain efforts to join up incomplete networks and extend this across more of Auckland. Efforts need to be targeted to the areas of greatest need and opportunity.

The following factors have influenced where efforts will be focused over the next decade. Our focus is on:

• short to medium average trip length
• high socio-economic deprivation
• concentrations of young people
• locations with poor transport choices
• high employment and education activity
• number of crashes.

Cycling is a fundamental part of achieving a rapid reduction in transport emissions. As such, the Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway also provides direction for future decision making.

In 2021 the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) was updated. It confirmed a major increase to transport funding in Auckland, enabling a $31 billion ten-year transport programme.

It was intended to:

• provide direction to the subsequent Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP)
• focus on encouraging a shift from private cars to public transport, walking and cycling
• address Auckland’s longer-term challenges of climate change and housing development.

The RLTP 2021-2031 includes around $600 million for Auckland Transport projects focused on improving travel by active modes.

This is supported by additional investment in active modes, like walking and cycling and projects led by Auckland Council - such as the Te Whau Pathway, and Waka Kotahi - such as the Glen Innes to Tāmaki Shared Path.

Funding for active mode improvements supports the provision of:

• new cycleways
• shared paths
• safer pedestrian environments.