About 30 years ago, after my dreams of medical school were dashed by the small complication of having dropped out of high school, I completed a polytechnic course as a precursor to an apprenticeship. I was studying at Wellington Polytechnic, back when every polytechnic was still a polytechnic, every university hadn’t decided to digress and offer vocational training, and tertiary institutions weren’t obsessed with foreign fee-paying students. But I digress.

I lived about 20 km north of Wellington Polytech, and as a competitive cyclist, I naturally cycled to and from my classes every day. There were no cycle lanes back then. I battled cars down Ngauranga Gorge and along the Hutt Road in Kaiwharawhara. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible either. I didn’t rely on infrastructure for my safety; I relied on my own assertiveness. I didn’t wait for a separate lane to appear—I claimed my space and rode confidently.

Reflecting on those days now, as I watch the ongoing construction of Wellington’s multi-lane cycleways and the carnage they’re creating, I can’t help but feel that the council is addressing the wrong problem. The focus seems to be on building separate cycle lanes everywhere, but I believe the real issue is our driving culture. The council seems convinced that “if we build it, they will come,” but what they fail to realise is that the problem isn’t the absence of cycle lanes; it’s the presence of bad drivers.

Take Thorndon Quay, for example. The Wellington City Council has spent years tearing up the same stretch of road seemingly multiple times, removing public parking, and adding new cycleways. Meanwhile, businesses along the route are suffering. Bordeaux Bakery, an iconic spot for Pain au Chocolat enthusiasts (myself included), recently closed its doors. Its customers couldn’t park anywhere nearby, and the economic struggles facing Wellington only compounded the issue.

I’m not anti-cycling; in fact, I’m very much pro-cycling. I’ve lived in Denmark, where bicycles are a primary mode of transport. People ride their bikes to work, to the shops, and even to drop their kids off at school. But here’s the key difference: in cities like the one I lived in, there weren’t endless segregated cycle lanes. Instead, cars and bikes shared the road. What made this work wasn’t more infrastructure; it was the driving culture. Drivers—many of whom were cyclists themselves—understood the need to share the road, give space, and show patience.

In New Zealand, we don’t have that culture. Our drivers lack the awareness and respect needed to make roads safer for everyone, cyclists included. Instead of tackling this root problem, the council is trying to “solve” it by building more and more cycle lanes, separating road users even further. On paper, it might seem logical to divide lanes for cars and cyclists. But this is an outdated solution—a Band-Aid for a deeper issue.

Today, our roads are more complicated than ever. We have cars, bikes, e-bikes, scooters, and even electric skateboards all vying for space. The binary approach—one lane for cars, one for bikes—simply doesn’t fit anymore. What we really need is a cultural shift in how we think about road safety, not more paint on the asphalt.

We also need an economy that functions otherwise no one will have jobs to commute to by bicycle or car. In its overwhelming desire to deliver upon its doggedly dogmatic mantra, Wellington seems to have forgotten this.

To put it bluntly, our problem isn’t the lack of cycle lanes; it’s far more complex than this and one of the central causes is our driving skills and culture level. We’ve built an entire system that tries to compensate for that instead of fixing the core issue. Until we address this, no amount of cycle lanes will make our roads genuinely safer. We’re treating the symptom, not the cause—much like our country’s obsession with road cones. But don’t start me on that topic.

I really want our cyclists to be safe when rising their bikes. But I also want our drivers to be able to get from A to B and call in for a Pain au Chocolat with ease. These things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

9 Comments
  • I’m genuinely surprised by your lack of rigorous thought in this one Ben. I 100% agree that NZ drivers are among the worst when it comes to respecting other road users (in cars, on bikes, on foot). There is no greater sin in New Zealand than momentarily slowing down a car driver.

    However, you’re just flat out incorrect on the rest of it. There wasn’t some magical cycling fairy that waved a wand in Denmark. The oil crisis, road deaths, and (most importantly) *a massive program of separated cycling infrastructure* in the 70s and 80s was what turned Denmark into a cycling paradise (1, 2). You’ve mixed up your cause and effect: drivers are good about cycling in Denmark because cycling in Denmark was prioritised.

    There is massive latent demand for cycle infrastructure. The classic thought experiment applies: “why would we build a bridge over this river, no one is swimming across it!?”. Of course no one is cycling because it is inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst. But when you build safe, separated infrastructure, people will use it (3, 4).

    Lastly, the claim that only people in cars buy Pain au Chocolat is frankly bullshit. Occams’s razor which is the more likely cause of Bordeaux Bakery’s shutdown: a significant recession and massive layoffs in Wellington; or some car parks? Regardless of this one anecdote, the research tells us that by making locations (especially downtown locations) more accessible to more people, business does better (5, 6). How many people sit on a bus going past the bakery to get to their destination, who might otherwise pop in for a choccy bun if they were on a bike?

    1: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2013/brief-history-cycling-denmark-netherlands/59026
    2: https://toolsofchange.com/en/case-studies/detail/752/
    3: https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-019-0850-1
    4: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198224001076
    5: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-study-ever-conducted-on-the-impact-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes-has-on-businesses
    6: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944363.2019.1638816

    • I’m not sure I agree about your position re Denmark. yes there is segregated cycling infrastructure in rural areas but in the cities this isn’t the case. Bikes have been the norm in Denmark (and Holland) for generations long before anyone thought of giving them roads of their own…

      • Cycle infrastructure in Copenhagen is so ubiquitous they are literally called “Copenhagen Lanes” globally!? My memory from cycling there ~5 years ago was that every major route had separated cycling infrastructure. Not sure why you’re digging this hole for yourself.

      • In fairness it was 20 years ago i lived there so…

      • “In 1924, it was estimated that 40,000 of Christchurch’s approximately 80,000 people were cycling and by the late 1930s it was estimated that Christchurch was home to 20% of New Zealand’s 250,000 bicycles.” What’s happened since? Why are we not like Denmark?

        Hint: it’s not just vibes.

        • Copenhagen reduced city speed limits to 30km/h and 40km/h. Cities like Helsinki – which I’m familiar with – have reduced speed limits *and* seperated infrastructure. We have a government that is ideologically opposed to safer speed limits.

          If your belief is there is unacceptable economic cost to building this infrastructure, that’s a position. But don’t dress it in a safety argument. It simply doesn’t hold water.

      • Hello Ben. Actual Nordic here who has lived and worked in København and Sweden. Yes you’re wrong on this. Have a look at the history of Strøget which everyone said at the time would be a disaster when it was implemented with howls of protest, pretty much how NZ whines about protected cycling infrastructure in 2024. It turned out to be completely different, a success story that the world copied in fact.

  • Ben’s on point with driving attitudes, also as it was explained to me in Holland if you hit a cyclist you’re in the wrong.
    As a full time bike commuter now here in US, IMHO the drivers are so concerned about being sued they give you a wide berth.
    Can we not make better use of foot paths and call them shared bike, scooter etc. paths and leave the roads for cars and those on riding fast on road bikes?

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