Waterfront cycle carnival a taste of car-free future

Jiggles the Clown leads cyclists in one of the events staged on Quay St during the bicycle carnival. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Quay St on Auckland's waterfront became a cycling mecca at the weekend, offering a taste of its future as a restricted-traffic boulevard.

Motor traffic was confined to one-way trips behind barricades on Saturday as Mayor Len Brown and Jiggles the Clown took turns leading young pedallers in a cycle-themed carnival across the rest of the street.

"Ciclovia on Quay", one of an array of Bikewise month events around the country, included synchronised bike "dancing" and a game of polo as well as cycling safety and maintenance lessons.

Auckland Council joined its transport and waterfront agencies in providing a taste of Quay St's potential as "a world-class waterfront boulevard", turning the harbour edge from Silo Park to Britomart Place into a car-free zone for the day.

"The event is one of several Auckland Council place-making initiatives planned for Quay St," a spokesman said.

"It was designed to get people thinking about Quay St as a place rather than as an arterial traffic route."

The council's 2011 masterplan for central Auckland envisaged increasing the amount of space on Quay St dedicated to walkers and cyclists and limiting private vehicle use to local traffic and cruise ship pickups.

Councillors deferred $25 million of spending on the Quay St boulevard project from their 2013-14 annual plan, but $2.1 million has been proposed in the draft budget for the next financial year, to start work on its transformation.

Youth organisation Generation Zero took advantage of Saturday's event by gathering signatures for a petition to give Auckland Transport a hurry-up over providing new bikeways, calling for half of the region's proposed 900km network of cycling routes to be built by 2016, compared with 27 per cent now.

Spokesman Ryan Mearns said the petition was up to about 2000 signatures, after around 200 were gathered in Quay St.