As the Belgian city of Ghent shows, becoming a bike-friendly city is about so much more than enabling more cycling – it’s actually about reallocating valuable public space, and making connections that improve quality of life.

In today’s guest post, former Auckland Councillor Pippa Coom reports from Ghent, where she’s just attended this year’s Velo-city, the annual world cycling summit. 

Ghent’s Deputy Mayor for mobility and urban planning, Filip Watteeuw, is a happy man. He is the host of Velo-city 2024, welcoming 1600 delegates to his home town in Belgium for the annual world congress that brings together “advocates, cities, researchers, policy makers, and industry leaders to shape the future of cycling and sustainable urban development”.

In a way, the conference theme – “connecting through cycling” – is misleading. As confirmed by the experience of Ghent, and the stories that emerge from many of the conference sessions, it’s not so much about bikes at all, even though they’re a key part of the picture.

On a midsummer evening, Watteeuw leads out the traditional Velo-city bike parade – an event that invites the Velo-citizens, together with thousands of locals, to enjoy a 10km ride through a cycle-friendly city centre (a major ring road is closed to vehicles by police for the duration).

Hosting Velo-city in Ghent is the triumphant culmination of over a decade of work, which has seen the introduction of a congestion plan, a low-emissions zone (LEZ), a speed management programme, and the broad roll-out of “Fietsstraaten” – the “bike streets” that complete the cycle network.

This transformation, now universally and repeatedly acclaimed, wasn’t always so positively received. When the Ghent circulation plan was first introduced in 2017, a bitter backlash was provoked by opposition to car-park removal and changes to driving routes, and Watteeuw received death threats.

However, the controversy was short-lived. Not only were the changes hailed as a success, Watteeuw and his party actually increased their vote in the 2018 elections after the plan was introduced.

As a visitor, it is difficult to imagine that Ghent would ever want to reintroduce traffic to its city centre streets. Prior to the changes, 40% of traffic was just passing through. Now, walking and cycling around the central city is safe, easy and pleasant without the noise and dominance of vehicles. There are new verges of wildflowers, and plenty of places to sit and soak in the street life. A network of efficient buses and trams complements the travel options.

The positive experience of a more welcoming atmosphere is backed up by measured impacts. Since 2017, Ghent has seen:

• 18% reduction in air pollution (with a slight increase on the ring road)
• 20% fewer cars in the city centre
• Increase in PT usage
• Increase in cycling mode share from 22% to 37%
• Car journeys reduced from 55% to 27% mode share
• 37% decrease in traffic incidents.

The changes are working for drivers too. There are 10% more cars on the ring road, but no traffic jams. Cars are not forbidden in the city centre, but the changes have made other options more attractive.

Car parks have decreased by 8,000 spaces. At the same time there’s been a 6,500 decrease in the number of parking permits issued (these are free for residents of the city centre, so this is a strong indicator that residents are voluntarily deciding to reduce car travel).

Solutions have been found to provide access for deliveries and priority users. A trial of a free shuttle bus to bring people into the city centre was discontinued, as it was mainly being used by tourists.

(My sources for the above: the report “Creating the cultural shift behind Ghent’s mobility revolution”, Filip’s conference presentation, and the commentary on our circulation plan technical tour – any inadvertent errors will be down to my note-taking). 

The Deputy Mayor has proudly claimed “to Ghentify” as a verb; in short, effective management in reducing the role of the car in a city by reallocating space. As Chris Bruntlett of the Dutch Cycling Embassy highlighted in his address to the conference, the real debate isn’t about bikes or cycling, but “reclaiming space for quality of life” – a view shared by many speakers.

Former NYC Transport Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who visited New Zealand in March, has an impressive album of street makeovers from around the world. In her Brave New World keynote speech, she noted that “at heart, making connections is not about infrastructure. The greatest cycling infrastructure a city can provide is a well designed street.”

As the second image shows, after a brief positive reference to Wellington’s trial cycleway, New Zealand was called out as the poster child for what not to do. This was a big cringe moment for the seven Kiwis attending the conference.

The question: can we “Ghentify” Auckland?

For me, Velo-city 2024 raised the question: why, when all the foundations are in place, is Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland still finding it so hard to “Ghentify”? Why aren’t we avidly embracing an improved quality of life, when examples like Ghent show that “creating a sustainable mobility eco-system is achievable”?

I’ve attended previous Velo-city conferences, starting with Adelaide 2014, and have come away with lots of inspiration and valuable lessons. After presenting at Rio 2018 on Auckland’s progress in building a cycling network, I optimistically reported that “Auckland is on the right path to a sustainable smart city”.

Attending Velo-city 2024 in Ghent filled my cup with opportunities to network with awesome people – however, the presentations just re-confirmed for me that we have everything we need to get moving.

Auckland has already well thrashed out the “why” and the “what” – we get it – and the “how” is well embedded in our official policies and strategies. Auckland Transport’s transformation toolbox includes:

The funding for delivering this transformative work is a whole other topic – but it’s clear that reallocating existing road space is the cheapest, fastest, and most cost-effective option.

So how do we get there?

The many presentations and discussions at Velo-city 2024 highlighted the need for cities to pull together three main ingredients, in order to move from agreed strategies to successful delivery. The way these were covered at Velo-city might help explain Auckland’s seemingly endless predicament of getting stuck at the “how” – and show how we’ll unstick ourselves and move ahead.

1. Win the street fight

Universal to every city that has redesigned the street, is the “street fight”: the battle over every single car parking space. For all of Filip Watteeuw’s success in Ghent’s city centre, he still encounters a backlash every time a new circulation plan is set to be implemented. As he said, it takes “political will and dedication” to see that battle through.

Wayne Brown might just be the right Mayor to take on the street fight. He should be impressed with the cheap price tag and effective use of paint – after all, after two years of planning, the Ghent circulation plan was installed in one weekend for €5m.

He’s given AT direction to find “cost effective solutions to deliver the cycle network*, and he met with Janette Sadik-Khan on her visit, when they discussed “better, cheaper and faster solutions for walking and cycling”  (it wouldn’t have passed him by that street change wins elections).

However, the Mayor hasn’t yet followed through with walking the talk. The minute the going gets tough, he seems ready to throw AT under the bus, instead of recalling them to the shared vision and demanding they keep delivering.

This lack of political persistence only reinforces AT’s familiar cycle of predatory delay (see for example yet another review of the parking strategy, as recently reported to the AT board). It would be great to see more tenacity and political dedication that doesn’t accept excuses or fold at the first hurdle.

2. Let people feel the difference

Continuing with the experience from Ghent, Deputy Mayor Filip spoke about the importance of people living with and truly experiencing the changes to the street, not just being shown examples from overseas. He described how, after a 2-month trial, opponents changed their view because they were able to feel the difference.

How can Aucklanders have a new experience of mobility if trials don’t happen, or pilots are ripped out prematurely? (The Arthur-Grey project in Onehunga was a particularly painful example, which might have had a happier outcome with more consolidated political leadership.)

Although Auckland Transport has squandered opportunities for trials – the low-traffic Level 4 experience, the rail replacement planning, the untapped Streets for People funding – there are examples of success when AT and Council have faced down loud opponents and seen a trial through. Project Wave is a great example; and Quay St’s interim cycleway was a key step along the way to what we see today.

3. Win hearts and minds via the process itself

This brings us to the final ingredient: the huge opportunity to win hearts and minds via the whole process, not just the outcome.

Seth Solomonow, the moderator for a session called “Beyond Bikelash Unleashing the Power of Citizen Participation”, noted that the actual process of street change is what makes a project “politically resilient” – and that we need to remind ourselves that “the process is the project”.

From his experience working with Janette Sadik-Khan in NYC, the most controversial projects became the most successful. His take: “We do better when we give the public more of a platform.”

In our own city, I’d argue that Auckland Transport has too often got stuck in a tortuous cycle of ineffectively over-consulting in a futile attempt to avoid all possible conflict and solve all possible objections in advance – and then, abruptly backing down in the face of a noisy minority when it feels too hard, in the face of broad support and at the expense of community good will.

For example, despite his promises to an all-ages audience of “unwavering support” for bike infrastructure, former CEO Shane Ellison put the Inner West projects on hold as a result of the actions of a small group of “cycleway saboteurs”. This kicked off a six-year delay and multiple rounds of reconsultation and redesign. Only now are these projects finally progressing, and in the meantime, the available budget for a quality design for the middle section has evaporated.

As Mark Ames of Strategic Cities said in his presentation, “reactions to change are an inevitable part of the process”. We can see that in Auckland, with the current vexatious litigation over Queen St improvements and the development of the Downtown Carpark.

Perhaps it’s understandable that the process of change (coupled with anxiety about construction disruption, and now growing economic stress) isn’t able to quell aggrieved landlords and small businesses. Even so, Patrick Reynolds’ beautifully written piece on the City Centre Rebuild should be compulsory reading for those clinging to the status quo – we are almost out the other side.

There are now plenty of homegrown examples of the process being “incubated in the project” that AT could learn from. Wellingtonians Claire Pascoe and Oli du Bern gave an excellent presentation at our recent 2 Walk & Cycle conference on the implementation of Paneke Pōneke: Wellington’s Bike Network Plan. (Their presentation would match anything given at Velo-city, but is unfortunately not available online.)

As I continue my travels from Ghent to other cycle-friendly cities, my lasting impression from attending Velo-city is that Auckland absolutely has the “why” and the “what” ready to go.

As for the “how”: the government’s out-of-touch GPS has just made it a lot harder to deliver the good stuff for the people of Tāmaki Makaurau. This is ironic, given the beloved and high-profile people-friendly places (think of the Viaduct, Wynyard Quarter, Lightpath, the Glen Innes to Tamaki path) that have been funded and indeed opened with great fanfare by previous National governments.

But with strong and inspiring local leadership, we can crack on and achieve what Aucklanders unanimously want and need for a better quality of life – things like accessibility, fun, happiness, freedom, prosperity, sustainability. And we can do that by finding our own sensible and equitable solutions to reallocating valuable public space to create transport connections for everyone.

In other words, we can indeed “Ghentify” Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland – and maybe even one day, people will use our city’s name as a positive, creative, inspiring verb.

A bonus album of inspo from the journey:

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