The Open Space Plan

While the shape of this city is a curse for trans­port­a­tion plan­ners, it is a bless­ing for any­one who even just occa­sion­ally wants to get out­side, because the city’s edges are close by and full of oppor­tun­ity.

We don’t all take advant­age of this though. There’s lots of good and bad reas­ons why people don’t, ran­ging from a lack of inform­a­tion, or abil­ity, or inclin­a­tion, or time. I can’t believe it took me nearly 20 years of liv­ing here before I dis­covered the Sky­line Track. I just did­n’t real­ise that I could open that gate and walk up that road I’d noticed on the hill across from our house. Now, one of my favour­ite week­end activ­it­ies is an hour or so of walk­ing or rid­ing through open farm­land fol­lowed by the simple joy of stand­ing on the biggest hill around and say­ing “I can see my house from here”.

But as well as hills to climb, there are trails to run, coasts to scramble, forests to breathe, val­leys to stroll, and tracks to cycle (this lat­ter being my favoured activ­ity).

Which leads me to the Wel­ling­ton City Council’s Open Space Plan, on which the Coun­cil is col­lect­ing sub­mis­sions right now.

The Coun­cil say:

Walk­ers, run­ners and cyc­lists enjoy over 340 kilo­metres of walk­ways and tracks in Wel­ling­ton City. To ensure these are well-man­aged and planned for the future we are doing a minor review of the Open Space Access Plan 2008. This plan guides the use and man­age­ment of tracks and walk­ways in and between the city’s open space net­work.

The review pro­poses oppor­tun­it­ies for elec­tric bike (e‑bike) use with­in the open spaces net­work, and an updated imple­ment­a­tion plan for track plan­ning and devel­op­ment.

The most alarm­ing aspect of this review for me was the men­tion of e‑bikes. How­ever hav­ing now read the doc­u­ment it seems that e‑bikes – these being low-powered ped­al-assisted elec­tric bikes of the sort you see increas­ing num­bers of on the streets and soon, moun­tain bike vari­ants – are unlikely to be allowed on ded­ic­ated uphill moun­tain bike tracks such as those at the Makara Peak Moun­tain Bike Park.

As someone who has occa­sion­ally volun­teered over there I can ima­gine the wear and tear on tracks would be increased with e‑bikes (power skids are gen­er­ally frowned upon by track build­ers and main­tain­ers). To bal­ance that though, the tracks will be more access­ible to more people if e‑bikes are allowed, and that must surely count as a good thing. Most MTB track net­works have altern­ate uphill routes – old forestry or farm roads – and these will enable e‑bike users to get to the top, ready for a down­hill cruise, without affect­ing the uphill single­track routes.

The most excit­ing parts of the review for me refer to a couple of new tracks, which when com­plete should open up some amaz­ing coun­tryside and lead to some truly epic adven­tures.

The first is a pro­posed coastal track from the end of the Red Rocks track right around the south and west­ern coast all the way to Makara Beach. It would be a bit far for me to walk or run (though plenty would) so I am hop­ing it would also be open to cyc­lists. This would be a pretty fant­ast­ic full day activ­ity (pick your day care­fully!).

The second is a hill­top route, appar­ently fol­low­ing an old Māori trail, from the hills above Crofton Downs across the ridges to Makara. Again, I have hopes that this would be open to cyc­lists as well, as it would provide some great off-road con­nec­tions to the Ōhariu Val­ley, Makara Beach and West Wind.

There are some oth­er pro­pos­als as well, which will add to the exist­ing net­work and make it more easy for people to access smal­ler parts of the longer tracks so that they can split the activ­ity over sev­er­al ses­sions eas­ily.

But the coun­cil also want to know:

• wheth­er paper roads should be included into the open space net­work

Yes! Roads, even paper roads are pub­lic land after all, and the big ones here are in the farm­land west and south of Karori. But this will need a prag­mat­ic approach from us, the poten­tial track users. Like as hap­pens today in oth­er areas on the edge of the city (e.g. Bel­mont Region­al Park), there will be times the own­ers of the sur­round­ing farm­land will need to close the tracks to pub­lic access.

• wheth­er cyc­lists should be encour­aged to use a bell

I think the issue here is likely cyc­lists not announ­cing them­selves appro­pri­ately to walk­ers when on shared trails – and while a bell is a use­ful way to do this it’s not the only way. Bells can be pretty abrupt and I have severely startled some walk­ers from time to time using mine. I prefer to call out these days; mak­ing sure to slow right down when passing.

The coun­cil’s pro­pos­al to des­ig­nate some tracks (just a few!) as moun­tain bike pri­or­ity should also help set expect­a­tions for both cyc­lists and walk­ers here.

• if access­ib­il­ity with­in the open spaces is adequately addressed.

There’s def­in­itely more to do here, from bet­ter sig­nage and more maps and map­boards, to cre­at­ing more sealed and graded tracks allow­ing people in wheel­chairs and those of lim­ited mobil­ity – or even just lim­ited time – to enjoy the amaz­ing spaces we have. Some more integ­ra­tion with trans­port net­works would be great as well, even if (for example) that’s just mak­ing sure poten­tial track users know how to get to and from each end of that sec­tion of the North­ern Walk­way they’ve decided to tackle today.

But those are just my opin­ions, and there’s cer­tainly a lot more to think about in the coun­cil’s doc­u­ment­a­tion than I’ve writ­ten about here. You might have your own opin­ions… and if so, you should make a sub­mis­sion!

And if you haven’t had a good look at Wel­ling­ton’s track net­work then get a map or down­load the app and grab the next fine calm week­end day. No-one should have to wait 20 years before they dis­cov­er what’s out there on their door­step.

Sub­mis­sions close 5pm 13 July, here.