The Hidden Cost of Bus Lanes
The Papanui Road bus lanes appear to be working, not least the vastly improved safety zone implicit in the cycle lanes. Despite some publicly expressed worries, and the vaguely confusing, vaguely zig zag quality of the road corridor itself the underlying concept seems simple and sensible. The lanes precede queue points at traffic lights, in both directions (according to the time of day) and to achieve this the centre line permanently shifts along the course of Papanui Road to accommodate both a lane of in and outbound motor traffic and a combination of bike and bus lane heading into the sticking point. The saga of bus lanes in Christchurch is a sad one, bordering frankly on the pathetic. Some decades after other small cities began building bus lanes (by way of an example I recently came across the first bus lane in Gatineau, Canada, a city two-thirds the size of Christchurch was created in 1971) attempts were made to bus lane Riccarton Road in 1997. So fierce was the shopkeeper oppo...