Shine Falls – a remnant of the NZ walkways

If I’m reading history right in the 1970s there was a small movement (amongst Taranaki locals?) for the establishment of an East West Walkway across the North Island from Cape Egmont to East Cape. It never eventuated, but it did inspire the New Zealand Walkways Act of 1975. That founded the New Zealand Walkway Commission and 12 district committees who’s aim was “to establish walking tracks over public and private land so that the people of New Zealand shall have safe, unimpeded foot access to countryside for the benefit of physical recreation”.

Ohakune Old Coach Road

As well as the Mangapurua Cycle Trail another part of the Mountains to the Sea Cycle Route is the Ohakune Old Coach Road. It starts at the train station at Ohakune and heads west of town on a dirt road to a small carpark. On a sunny day there’ll be lots of walkers, and the track can seem a bit crowded.

There is a short grassy uphill section where some cyclists will get off and walk.

Through some scrub on a well formed track.

The train line originally went through the Hapuawhenua Tunnel, but it’s been rerouted when they built the new viaduct. You can ride your bike through the tunnel, but the far end is gated off.

The section sidling around the hill through the forest is wonderful to ride through if there aren’t too many walkers around.

The trail goes under the train line and then you can ride onto the old Hapuawhenua Viaduct. The somewhat muddy track to Horopito goes up the hill near the start of the viaduct.

After Horopito 40 odd kilometres of quiet rural roads leads on to the start of the Mangapurua Track.

On a busy day you’ll probably question the decision to allow cyclists on the short walk to the viaducts, so enjoy it while you can. On foot or on bike it is a pleasant, shortish ride out from Ohakune to the viaducts and back. Slow down for walkers.

The Mangapurua Cycle Trail

As part of the Mountains to the Sea Cycle Trail the Mangapurua Cycle Trail links the Whanganui River at the Bridge to Nowhere to the Ruatiti, Orautahu, Raetihi part of the World. There’s a big slip down near the river end blocking the trail, but I didn’t get that far anyway. I had a short, couple hour ride from the eastern end. This is a short trip report, and is the first of two from short sections I did of the new Mountains to the Sea Cycle Trail.

The Nga Haerenga sign is starting to appear on road signs as the National Cycleway is getting built out. So this is near the start of the eastern end of the track. The trail from Horopito and ultimately from Ohakune, goes over the very quiet public roads, and even the time driving through Orautahu and Rautiti is quite long. It’d be quite an effort to ride a bike over the hilly and windy road sections to get here. There is camping at the Ruatiti Domain if you have taken a day to ride from Ohakune.

From the carpark at the start of the track it is all uphill. The track is open to walkers, cyclists and, by permit, quad bikes. I was lucky enough not to see or hear any of them, but they have caused a bit of mud and churn on the track. In fact I didn’t see another soul for the whole time I was on the track. Either side of the track is private land.

At one point if the weather is clear the views to Ruapehu and Tongariro are magnificent. Here is the view to Ruapehu.

I only had to get off and walk through the gungiest mud twice on the ascent. The surface is a mix of gravel and stones and quad bike churned sticky mud, which isn’t that deep. After rain I think it is probably a bit harder. After reaching the end of the private land the Taheke Conservation Area is reached and the long uphill grind is over.

The surface on the DOC lands is a bit better and it flattens out through the Conservation Area. The riding through here was bloody lovely and I could ride at speed amongst the kereru.

There was also a few patches of mud. Sloppy enough to lose traction in and go sideways, but nothing too bad.

On the other side of the Conservation Area there’s a sign to say Whanganui National Park and the track starts to descend. I had a bit of a look-see and turned around. The flat parts were once again glorious, and the long climb I had done on the way in turned into a quick downhill where I didn’t have to pedal much to get back to my car.

This was my first experience of a so-called National Cycleway, apart from the day before on the Ohakune Old Coach Road (but that will be another post). I only rode for a little over 2 hours and I had a whole lot of healthy fun, but the Rimutaka Rail Trail it ain’t. The Mangapurua Track was as rough as guts. It’s definitely fat tyres only, and it would be quite a feat to ride the trail with full panniers. It’s never going to appeal to masses of people like the Otago Central Rail Trail does. And I still think the idea of the National Cycleway should be that you could ride from Cape Reinga to Bluff with a set of panniers (if not a bike trailer) and have a great adventure without being run over by a truck, but if this is indicative of much of the trails then it is more like a collection of fun mountain biking routes.

You couldn’t take kids on this trail. Many weekend cyclists would find the uphill section at the start long and muddy and almost unrideable. My 250W electric motor and a granny gear made it rideable, just. Mountain bikers would enjoy it (but it’s probably too wussy for them if they like gnarly single-track). There’s only camping options along the way. It’s great that it exists and can be ridden by bikes, but what is the Tourism Ministry’s game plan here? Only hardy souls are going to be able to ride it, and hardy souls could make their own fun without the flash marketing.

Wankers

The blogosphere is all aghast at the poor policy decisions of the National Party of Steven Joyce and John Key as they release the Ministry of Transport’s report into the rejection of the business case for Auckland’s CBD rail loop. See:

CBD Tunnel Review

Auckland Council’s CBD Tunnel Review

Auckland Must Fight Loopy Decision

Transport Ministry “Explain” Their Decision

Joyce Unconvinced By CBD Rail

Rail Loop: the Auckland Case

Elsewhere the nation’s dailies haven’t even dealt with the story. The Dominion Post, pretending to be a National newspaper from the country’s pretend capital,  has a fluff piece on politicians. There is nothing on Stuff, and the news was out by lunchtime. (I’m writing this at 9pm)

The NZ Herald being an Auckland paper does: Rail link benefits ‘significantly overstated’ says review. And also has an interesting article Aucklanders in favour of harbour rail link, something they’d never get without the CBD loop.

So there are two reviews – one commissioned by Auckland Transport and Auckland Council and the other commissioned by the National -led government. They do not agree on the benefits of the project, and the first is largely positive, and the second is largely negative.

I think the first one is closer to the truth and the second is pandering to the National Party’s ideologically driven ministers. The Transport and Treasury report looks a bit like the Weapons of Mass Destruction “evidence” being provided to Blair and Bush to justify invading Iraq.

National won’t listen to sense on their Roads of National Significance projects, and they are making up nonsense on essential urban rail infrastructure for the country’s largest city. This kind of attitude is in a way masturbatory. They have their hands down their pants fiddling with the numbers, instead of actually working out what would be the best infrastructure projects for the country to fund.

If only they were incompetent, rather than sinister. If they were just incompetent then by chance we could expect some of the times they’d get it right, but they consistently are choosing the worst options for New Zealand.

Steven Joyce, John Key, and all the National Party cronies who let them get away with it (and the idiots who vote for them) really are wankers.

Come on someone in Transport, or Treasury – leak. What really are the machinations needed to come out with such a bullshit report?

Let’s know all the names of the people who have committed Auckland to another 20 years of backwardness.

Hauraki Rail Trail progress

On Auckland Trains is a post with great news about the Hauraki Rail Trail. It looks like it is going to get built.

I think from the map it means there will be safe riding between Kaiaua and Miranda, around the Firth of Thames, to Thames and then through to Waihi or Te Aroha.

There mightn’t be any funding for urban cycle infrastructure, and they may leave us with a multi-gazillion dollar debt, but John Key’s National government at least is helping with progressing rural cycle infrastructure. Maybe not in completely meaningful ways (for instance I have found that the SH1 bridge over the Manawatu River is very, very scary to ride) but it’s a start.

Hawkes Bay Coastal Ride

On a recent hot day I had a chance to ride from Havelock North to Napier and back along the Tuki Tuki River and the coastal path. It has been developed by the Hawkes Bay Rotarians (click for maps and info) since 2002, and is to be expanded as part of the National Cycleway plans.

Along the Tuki Tuki river the path follows the top of a levee bank. The views are over orchards, pumpkin patches and vines. It’s all a bit horticultural if you like that sort of thing.

The number of gates on the cycleway are a problem. Gates are just about always a barrier to cycling, and how is someone in a hand trike, a velomobile or a recumbent going to get around them. Kissing gates are a right royal pain in the buttocks on a bicycle. The bits between Clive and River Road was chock-a-block full of gates. Some with warning signs about how cows may be frisky (which is a bit of a clue to what they get up to around Napier way when it’s not Art Deco weekend). I got a bit sick of all the gates.

Closer to Napier the kissing gates disappear and ‘motor vehicle restriction points’ are used, and as pointed out by the Bicycle Canberra blog (a barrier to cycling) are not entirely safe for cyclists, but better than an annoying gate.

There are no road crossings the whole way from River Road to Ahuriri which is great, the rivers are crossed on footpaths of the road bridges, and the worst the path gets is running alongside the noisy road, but those bits are short. Most of it is out of the noise cone of the road, which is how it should be. It is all alongside the rivers or the sea (or the fertiliser factory)

The path surface is pretty good quality of very fine packed gravel, and even thin tyres I think could ride on it, and maybe even on a wet day.

Closer to Napier the cycleway turns into concrete, and is quite wide and good quality.

Past the Port the path turns into boardwalk, which can get a bit busy with pedestrians on a sunny day.

And always remember to have a front wheel on your bicycle.

and on the way back to Havelock North after a hot sunny ride looking at Te Mata Peak in the distance, it does occur to me that it might be a great idea to plant a whole lot of trees alongside the paths, to offer the sun-kissed cyclist a little bit of shade, and a break from the wind.

The paths provide mostly an enjoyable day, but probably not a reason to go out of your way to visit Hawkes Bay unless you go up for other reasons like a hike to the gannetry, or a visit to the National Aquarium.

Durie Hill Elevator

I wrote a guest post on the Gondola Project about the Durie Hill Elevator in Whanganui.

Railcycles Past and Present

I am officially a Shweeb Dweeb now. I had a ride on the weekend in Rotorua of the Shweeb. The Shweeb is a recumbent bicycle (although it doesn’t have wheels so it’s not a bicycle at all) sitting inside a perspex shell hanging under a rail.

It was fun and it was fast and it was over very, very quickly. It is also quite expensive (NZ $45 for about 2 minutes of fun). It’s set up like a velodrome. There are two tracks, each of 200 metres in length. So there is an inside and an outside track.

There are 7 gears. If you were to ride it you’ll most likely start in 3rd gear and be told that changing gears isn’t really necessary. Ignore that advice. Pedal your guts out, get it into top gear, and see how fast you can go. I didn’t get within sniffing distance of the course record for 3 laps for my age group. I was 10 seconds slower, but it still felt like flying.  The capsules swing out like a centrifuge. There are no brakes inside the Shweeb, so when it is time to stop a track underneath the Shweeb is raised. They can’t engage it if you’re pedalling your guts out. It took a whole lap without pedalling to bleed enough speed off to engage the braking thing. Afterwards my legs were like jelly and I had trouble climbing down the steps.

Now as a tourist toy it doesn’t work so well because the punter throughput it really low. If you got there on a busy day you could be waiting mega-yonks to have a go. I figured I’d be there for nearly an hour, but one group ahead of me had an odd number of people, so I got to jump the queue to make up the numbers. Still despite the wait and despite the cost I’d recommend it at least once for the novelty. A second go is $20. I will have a second go next time I’m passing through Smellytown.

After I finished I texted my significant other to tell her it was fun, and she told me that Google had just given the Shweeb people a lot of money to develop their idea of getting Shweebs into cities as public transport. The NZ Herald wrote about that too.

Now it isn’t a completely new idea to use monorail bicycles for public transport. Whilst waiting to ride the Shweeb I took a photo of their display of historic bike monorails:

I recently got a copy of William Least Heat-Moon’s most recent book Roads to Quoz, An American Mosey. Whilst waiting for it to arrive I started reading River-Horse again. I loved it 9 years ago, and I’m loving it again. He’s got to be amongst the best writers of travel narratives. River-Horse is about taking a small boat from the East River of New York to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. In it it has one of my favourite lines in all books where he yells out to a worker having his lunch sitting under a bridge on the East River that he’s headed to Oregon, and the worker replies “You’re going the right way then.” I haven’t started moseying to Quoz yet, as I’m still on a Missouri flood, but flicking through the book I spied this picture:

and I want to know so much about it, but I have to wait. I’ve heard about it being done before on the B.A.M. railway on a ride between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, but it isn’t altogether new. For this blog post I thought I’d find a picture of a kalamazoo, sometimes called a handcart, which Quick Draw McGraw style you and a friend push up and down on a lever and you travel on the railway lines, but the Kalamazoo Railway Supply Co, for which kalamazoos are named, also made what they called velocipedes.

I found it on this site from Whippany, New Jersey, where I also found that there was a pedal inspection car made by a company in Indiana:

I’ve long believed that a town on a closed branch line of a railway could get itself a few kalamazoos and then encourage visitors to have a go getting between one town and the next. If you were pumping faster than the people on the kalamazoo in front you just swap places with the people on that kalamazoo. I envision that it would be quite a popular little tourist attraction in an otherwise dying town. So far Cummins, in South Australia is the only town that comes close.

So what about the potential of the Shweeb? It is kind of like a pedal powered PRT pod. PRT ranges from the nearly useful, but still yet to be operational Heathrow Airport system to the very ridiculous. PRT is a land for dreamers and kranks, but I guess there is room for innovation. Hey I think even an interurban rollercoaster would be great. For instance Auckland to Hamilton with lots of loop de loops. Inventiveness needs encouragement, but reading one after another about those PRT schemes will make you pull your hair out.

Firstly getting into a Shweeb capsule is a little awkward. The seat has to be adjusted depending on the rider’s height. Collisions between capsules when a faster rider comes up behind would be buffered and they’d kind of entrain themselves. Switching between one section of track and another I imagine would be reasonably easily engineered, but it’d have to be under the rider’s control. Small children and the infirm wouldn’t be able to ride it. With hills and inclines the riders could get some form of mechanical assistance. The speed is to be a reasonable 20km/hr, even if it is possible to get them up closer to 50km/hr. It would be quite expensive to build a network of lines. They do lift themselves over obstacles like roads and rivers quite easily, and it would be a little less scary than some other proposals. They’d be all weather.  I’d love to see it tried. A network with Shweebs would be a bit like a bike hire scheme, so they’d need some form of load balancing for the capsule locations. So then you’d need workers to hitch a few together and ride some empty ones around the network. It would be quite interesting to see it done.

Still if I was a city mayor and I was working out whether to add freeway capacity, rail capacity, a PRT, or a Shweeb network, I think I’d go a Shweeb network. However I think a network of off-road paved cycleways would be more effective, cheaper, and available for everyone’s bikes, trikes, rollerblades and velomobiles. I’d make bridges for cyclists and pedestrians to cross major roads, and I’d throw up cable car funiculars and aerial gondolas to get people and bikes up hills. Then around heavy rail and light rail stations I’d have secure bike parking, and stands for a bike share scheme.

I hope that somewhere in the world Shweeb takes off for urban transport, but I wish everywhere in the world had safe Dutch-style cycleway infrastructure, the kind where it would be safe to ride a normal recumbent bike without the danger of getting run over by a car, or a bus or a log truck.

I wanna be a Shweeb Dweeb

Yet another cool idea at the design intersection of bikes and public transport. It’s a Shweeb. It is a suspended, enclosed recumbant bike dangling from an overhead monorail. And in all the world the prototype is in Rotorua. It’s set up as one of those tourist town attractions, read Zorb or the Luge. But it goes 50km/hr 5 metres off the ground and you can race someone you love. I feel a trip to Smellytown coming on.

Whanganui River Paths

I recently had cause to be in Wanganui, and thought I’d have a ride along the banks of the Whanganui River. I started near the Trafalgar Square shops and rode under the Victoria Avenue Bridge. There’s a wooden deck along here, and it is nice to ride along.

Past the paddle steamer wharf near the Moutoa Gardens there is no river path so I got up on the road. Then there is a newish shared path separate to the road. It is nice and wide and is really good to ride along. This is the kind of infrastucture, if widespread, that is going to get people on their bicycles.

I rode up, to the end of that, and it stops at the Dublin Street bridge. It kind of goes under for pedestrians, but not for bikes. So I got up onto Somme Parade and kept on riding up to the cemetery by Papaiti Road. There are glimpses of the river, and there’s a few walking paths down by the river, but there’s no real linked up cycling paths. I turned around and rode back to the railway bridge, and it is possible to get across for pedestrians and bikes.

Then it is possible to ride on the true left side of the river and there are paths through the parks all the way back the Victoria Avenue bridge. This photo is going under the Dublin Street Bridge.

And this is somewhere through Kowhai Park. Don’t take the path down through the bamboo thicket. I stacked it when some bamboo caught my handlebar. I love that moment of clarity just before you hit the ground where you think it’s not going to hurt. It didn’t. None of my 3 stacks have hurt this year, and although I was wearing a helmet each time, I didn’t bang my head at all, so this year a helmet has been completely unnecessary.

The approach to the Victoria Ave bridge:

Then I hadn’t had enough so I did a flyby, and rode along the pedestrian path (with no pedestrians on it, so they didn’t mind)  along the true right side of the river in Gonville, riding towards the Heads:

They’re (they being the Horizons Regional Council) are still building the riverside path down towards Castlecliff and the sea.

All up there are enough bike paths along the Whanganui River through Wanganui to make for an interesting 20kms or so of riding. They’re not linked up, there’s a bit of riding on not too busy roads, and some of the paths are debatable for whether a bike should be on them or not. Hey it was something different. I enjoyed it.