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.