New Zealand’s most colourful bike path has just been shortlisted for this year’s World Architecture Awards and it’s thanks in part to the imagination of one cyclist.
In Auckland, New Zealand, some clever designers have covered a former highway offramp with a shocking pink nonslip resin to create a bike path that has just been shortlisted for this year’s World Architecture Awards.
Designed by Monk Mackenzie architects and landscape architecture firm LandLab, the Nelson Street Cycleway (known as “the Light Path”) opened in December and has already been christened by more than 100,000 cyclists.
It’s a joint project by NZ Transport Agency, Auckland Transport and Auckland Council, but the man who helped get the wheels turning on the $13m development was cycling advocate Max Robitzsch.
Robitzsch works as a transport engineer and spends his spare time lobbying for cycling infrastructure through Bike Auckland (formerly Cycle Action Auckland).
In May last year he organised a walking tour on the old motorway offramp and wrote a blog post on the potential to use it as a cycleway. It included sketches of how it could be accessed by ramps and and converted into a cycleway/walkway similar to the New York High Line.
The 600 metre offramp turned bike path cuts through the surrounding asphalt like a pink ribbon, a bold and unconventional piece of urban infrastructure if there ever was one. How did the designers settle on that particularly vibrant shade of pink?
“From the outset we wanted something extremely vivid to contrast against the highway network it passes through,” partner Dean Mackenzie told me in an email. He said that they wanted to pick a color that didn’t connote a bus or typical bike lane (which in New Zealand, tend to be green or blue).
Mackenzie said that they approached the project as “a citywide artwork” that “had to be considered at that scale rather than just for the cyclist or pedestrian on the bridge.” In addition to the swath of pink, they installed 300 individual LED light poles at the eastern edge of the bike path to create a programmable interactive “spine” that transforms the space at dusk.
But just one rule… don’t Pokemon and ride.
Check out the video below to see happy cyclists of all ages using the bike path:
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