https://www.cyclewellington.org.nz/june_2026_newsletter

Kia ora koutou - 

Wellington has been experiencing another bout of extreme weather, with our south coast battered by 11m high waves recently. We hope anyone who had to evacuate is safe and back home with their whanau.

Our Co-Chairs delivered Cycling Action Network’s open letter this week, with Julie Anne Genter and Tangi Utikere helpfully agreeing to take copies in to the offices of Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis, and Christopher Bishop for us.

On the 27th of May, Wellington City Council voted to adopt the amended 2026/2027 Annual Plan, capping rates rises at 5.8% with water costs shifting to the new Tiaki Wai entity that will also see rates rises. In good news, city councillors voted down a proposal to pause the cycle lanes altogether by 13 to 5. However, due to the budget constraints being faced by many councils up and down the motu, there is now a further reduction in the pace of delivery for the remainder of the network.

Thank you to everyone who submitted on the annual plan. Collectively 69% of feedback was to complete Paneke Pōneke over 10 or 20 years, with more than half of those supporting the faster rollout. We need to continue giving our councillors a clear signal to keep pushing for a full network, which is going to remain challenging in these times. The new plan includes committing $2.5 million to the Bunny St - waterfront connection and the Brooklyn upgrade to connect up the primary network (total budget $4.1 million). 

The absolute explosion of cyclists, joggers and pedestrians along Te Ara Tupua has shown how pent-up the demand was for an active travel connection between Pōneke and the Hutt valley. Now, with the option to arrive by bike or on foot; many people are taking up this healthy and cheap option, proving the classic adage of “if you build it, they will come”.

Over just the opening weekend, the new connections saw more than 10,000 cycling and walking journeys; then over 18,000 more journeys in the first few weekdays. Since then, more than 85,100 cyclist and pedestrian movements have been recorded showing a weekday mean of 1,653 and weekend mean of 5,205!

It’s not just the volume of users that is striking - if you ride out there you will see all sorts of people enjoying the space, walkers, riders, runners, bladers, skaters, boarders, and whole families out for walks or rides, loads of kids, some using the path at all times of the day. Seeing so many people out enjoying the space is inspiring and wonderful.

The seawall has already faced some big waves with the path being closed by Waka Kotahi for safety for a short time.

We also must draw attention to the inadequacy of the connection to Te Ara Tupua at the southern end. We are (still) calling on Wellington City Council to fix this gap in the bike network. We have already documented this issue in our New Old Hutt Road Path gap campaign that includes our suggested interventions that council could implement if they were to keep treating investment in safe cycling as the basic, must have that it is.

The golden mile project is now dead, with the new council voting on Thursday to discontinue the project. As another part of the ill-fated Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme, this is a big loss for the city. It had taken too long to survive the political quicksand that our transport planning is founded on in New Zealand. The “Golden Metre” at the Courtenay Place Kent Cambridge intersection will remain, with some adjustments to make it safe.

Cross-town connections for safe cycling are now completely up in the air. Cycle Wellington are still calling for Quays Please by repurposing a traffic lane on the Harbour Quays to best connect people on bikes to the east of the city.

In this world of depreciating infrastructure, standing still is going backwards. While there thankfully remains some work by council still progressing the cycle network, it is disappointing and frustrating to see another connection for people on bikes fall by this government’s hostile cars-first choices. It is clear that ongoing progress for better biking requires different leaders in central government, so do make sure you’re prepared to vote in this year’s General Election.

Alex Dyer and Linda Beatson

Co-Chairs

Upcoming bikeness

Winter solstice bike rave

Saturday 4 July 2026

📍 Te Ara Tupua, Pito-one end
🕠 From 5.30pm
🚲 Ride departs 6pm

Pre-Rave Ride Out
📍 HNRY Stadium forecourt
🚲 Ride departs 4.30pm
👨‍👩‍👧 Family friendly

Join Bicycle Junction on Saturday 4 July to light up Te Ara Tupua with bikes, beats, speakers, lights, weird wheeled creations and your finest, weirdest, most rave-adjacent outfit.

We’ll warm up the dance vibes, bring out the beats, then head toward Petone for the main event. Lights on. Speakers up. Weird outfits encouraged. 

Miramar road closure and bike opportunity

While temporary traffic management sometimes gets a bad rap, works at the north end of Te Motu Kairangi Miramar Peninsula will create a five-month-long (June - October) casual cyclovia. Work is under way to repair 220 metres of seawalls in total. The road closure begins at Point Halswell and ends at Herbies Beach (pullover area), north of Scorching Bay. 

Cyclists and pedestrians can continue to use the road both ways throughout the construction period, with traffic control in place.

3rd Aotearoa Healthy Shift webinar

12 Noon Wednesday 8 July

Jeanette Ward and Kylie Huard: Making medium density work for people living car-lite

For this webinar, Living Streets Aotearoa will be hosting Jeanette Ward and Kylie Huard to talk about Making medium density work for people living car-lite.

Jeanette Ward is Technical Director of Transportation Engineering at Abley. Kylie Huard is a Principal Transportation Planner at Stantec where she specialises in travel demand management.

Register here.

Catch up on the first two webinars in the series:

Enabling Health Journey in New Zealand Cities

Dr Tim Welch & Lennart Nout

Car dependence: understanding barriers to change through the decades

Dr Giulio Mattioli

Next Cycle Wellington Meeting

6pm Tuesday 7 July 2026

Sustainability Trust, 2 Forresters Lane, and online.

---

Recent goings on

Te Ara Tupua opening day group ride and picnic

It was just wonderful to share in the first rides on the opening day of Te Ara Tupua. Cycle Wellington arranged a group ride from Queen’s Wharf where around 120 riders gathered and rode out. After visiting the Honihana reserve at Pito-One we rode back to one of the Ūranga for a shared picnic. We held a little chain cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening in a way that we thought was fitting.

Video short by EcoKiwiMagazine

Given the reactions and stories we have been seeing and hearing, it is clear that this facility will be a powerful example to lean on as we continue pushing for a complete network for Wellington.

WCC

Golden Mile is now not proceeding following the outcome of a review sought by Mayor Little.

Public consultations for both the Bunny Street and Brooklyn Road projects are expected to launch in mid-July.

The project to build a path running from Martin Luckie Park along the side of the Berhampore Golf Course (funded by the Bloomberg Award) is progressing soon too.

New traffic analytics dashboard

After a lengthy anticipation, the WCC has officially launched its public traffic dashboard. Dive into the data yourself at the Travel Insights portal. Leveraging advanced VivaCities sensors, this tool provides a nuanced view of our streets by tracking both the volume and direction of various transport modes. For those curious about the nuts and bolts of how this works, check out the council's summary on their transport sensor technology.

This offers a fantastic opportunity for our community to explore and understand the shifting trends in how we choose to move around our city!

New book: How to implement cycling infrastructure

The Wellington bike network story features in a new book launched just this week at the 2026 VeloCity Conference in Rimini, Italy! The book is published by GDCI - Global Designing Cities Initiative. As the title suggests; it provides practical implementation guidance for cycling infrastructure and highlights the 10 cities around the world who were awarded BICI (Bloomberg Initiative for Cycling Infrastructure) funding in support of their programmes. 

The book is free to download here.