Street innovations challenge

Vida Christeller, Manager City Design at Wellington City Council
Vida leads Wellington City Council's City Design team, focused on influencing and delivering people-centric spaces which build on the best of Wellington and transforms the city to be fit for the future. Her focus is on ensuring that the Council’s strategy and policy are implemented, and the city becomes more sustainable in the whole holistic sense of the word – that densification is done well through empowering Wellingtonians of all ages and abilities to get around safely on foot and by bike, urban greening, public space upgrades and place-based regeneration. Wellington City Council is turning strategy into action and are beginning a decade of transformative change.

Skye Duncan, Global Designing Cities Initiative
Skye is an urban designer with over 20 years of experience in architecture, urban design, planning, and transportation, and has been recognized as one of TUMI’s Remarkable Women in Transportation. Skye is the Executive Director of the GDCI, and she and her team produced the award-winning Global Street Design Guide and its recent supplement, Designing Streets for Kids. In support of these global resources, GDCI provides ongoing technical assistance to multiple cities around the world on transforming streets and mobility to support safe, sustainable, equitable, and healthy cities for everyone.

Skye has worked as a Senior Urban Designer at the New York City Department of City Planning, as an International Urban Design Consultant, and as an Associate Professor at Columbia University in New York City, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar.

Bridget Doran, transportation engineer and researcher
Bridget holds degrees in engineering and in applied cognitive psychology and is a Chartered Member of Engineering New Zealand. Bridget has over twenty years of experience in the transport sector. Her work specialties are in planning and design of accessible streets and places; community engagement, particularly with disabled people; research into the intersection of transport, equity and wellbeing; and road safety. Bridget is an advocate for the promotion of disabled people's voices in public process. She is interested in the psychology of transportation investment decisions by planners, engineers, executives and politicians.

Terry Collins, New Zealand Automobile Association
Terry is a Principal Advisor for the NZAA, mainly dealing with policy, technology, and fuel pricing. He has a varied career from implementing the traceable measurement of fuel excise duty to developing and implementing policies for vehicle fuel economy labelling, the Clean Car Standard and product standards for energy efficiency. He has also managed permitting for New Zealand’s mineral resources. Terry is a keen motorcyclist and uses a variety of options for mobility including public transport and bikes.

Adrian Lord, Auckland Transport
Adrian is the Head of Active Modes at Auckland Transport. He oversees the provision of new cycle and walking infrastructure as well as associated promotions and safety training. He has over 25 years’ experience working in sustainable modes, preparing city strategies, designing routes and writing national design guidance in the UK. Auckland Transport faces similar challenges to other cities in balancing requirements for different modes and kerbside activity while trying to manage construction with lower cost carriageway space reallocation.

Simon Kennett, New Zealand Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi
In 1994, after 8 years working in power systems engineering, Simon retrained and began working on cycling events, books and trail design/construction. Over a decade later, he took up a Greater Wellington Regional Council roll as a road safety and active transport coordinator. In 2014 he was appointed to the Cycling Safety Expert Panel, which completed the report - ‘Safer Systems for People Who Cycle’. The following year Simon joined the New Zealand Transport Agency to help implement the report’s recommendations, including development of the Cycling Network Planning and Design Guidance.

Jacob Bradbury – Manager Planning and Delivery Transport, Christchurch City Council
Jacob is the Transport Planning & Delivery Manager at Christchurch City Council. Has over 20 years experience in the civil engineering industry in the UK and New Zealand, starting as a Site Engineer, and working in a variety of construction management roles in housing, power, water, roading and rail. Has been in his current role at CCC for around 2 years, with oversight for the Major Cycleways Programme – a 90km network of safe, connected cycleways around the city. This was started in 2015, and is now around 60% complete.

Stephen Harte, Team Leader Transport Project Delivery at Wellington City Council
Stephen Harte oversees the delivery of Transport Projects across the city including new cycle and walking infrastructure as well as minor safety improvement projects that improve the way people move safety around the city. He has over 40 years' experience working in the city involved in maintaining, operating, and introducing new schemes for sustainable modes. Wellington City faces many challenges in reallocating scarce road space to accommodate all modes and is constantly looking for the most effective and efficient use of this to balance competing needs. Delivering these projects creates many challenges in realising design objectives, managing construction disruption and choosing materials and construction methodologies that best achieve the expected outcomes.

Richard Hovey, TilleyGroup
Richard does cycling and urban micromobility-focused product design and development at TilleyGroup, a local manufacturer and supplier of a wide range of products that enhance streetscapes. With electric bikes, scooters and other mobility devices evolving quickly and being taken up by a wide range of people there’s huge need to meet the challenges and opportunities around the ways they are transforming urban travel.

Oliver McLean, Civil Sector Lead at Vanguard
Oliver’s role at Vanguard is focussed on supplying practical solutions that assist with cycleway separation and road safety projects. He brings 8 years of industry knowledge and has a special interest in designing practical solutions that solve a real need in the industry rather than settling for status quo. He’s been involved in designing cycleway separators currently used through Wellington City Council cycling networks and is looking forward to adding his knowledge of product design and manufacture to new product concepts.

Richard Docherty, John Fillimore Contracting (JFC)
Richard brings 17 years of practical industry experience leading teams in civil construction. He has worked in a commercial, planning and mentoring role for the JFC team being involved with Kilbirnie, Berhamphore to Newtown and Island Bay street change projects as the contracts manager. JFC were engaged as part of the Head Contractors Panel to assist Wellington City Council in improving road and cyclist safety and efficiency through this programme of work.

He has extensive knowledge of construction techniques and is keen to explore innovative solutions and deliver best solutions for projects. Richard offers valuable contributions to alternative construction methods, buildability and construction planning.

Has there been any community stakeholder engagement undertaken to understand what the community wants? What user feedback is there available to consider when designing cycleway separations?

We've a dedicated website for communication and engagement around street change projects in Wellington – transportprojects.org.nz

This website can be a helpful resource to understand all aspects of the options considered for street changes, the community feedback, and the details of changes going forward as a result of both design standards and community feedback.

We’ve engaged with the community through formal traffic resolution processes for both the full bike network plan and for each street change project in Wellington. For every consultation, there is a summary report publicly available on the Transport Projects website under the supporting documents page for each project. On this website, for each project page we aim to highlight how community feedback has influenced the final design.

It’s important to note that the design of the cycleway separation itself was not a key question through the consultation processes, but there may be aspects of the feedback that help inform your design approach.

I am writing to clarify the site selection requirements. Is there a specific street or area in Wellington that we need to design for, or do we have the freedom to choose any street within the city?

There is no specific site or street you have to design for but make sure your design can work in various street environments. Entries must include visuals of the design in a street context – you can choose which street you want to use for this.