In this city, cycling reigns supreme. It’s part of the city’s identity. It’s a way of life. Citizens, here, are active and healthy as a result.

In this city, cycleways loop through the landscape, separating bicycles from cars and giving cyclists easy access to the CBD from the suburbs.

It’s possible this city is Christchurch, circa 2065. It’s possible research fresh out of UC’s College of Science in 2012 was exactly the evidence city planners and policy makers needed to make it happen.

University of Canterbury’s Professor Simon Kingham thinks so. There’s possibly no better time in history to ditch driving and take up cycling.

World-wide obesity rates are steadily rising as people exercise less and less.  City highways are clogged with traffic.  The earth’s climate is rapidly warming thanks to an over-supply of carbon in the atmosphere.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to switch, however, is the startling fact that cycling has been found to be safer than driving.

University of Canterbury’s Professor Simon Kingham, whose research forms the basis of this finding, explains: “Safety – and people’s perception that cycling is far more dangerous than driving – is undoubtedly the biggest barrier to cycling today.”

“Yet, our study has found car drivers are consistently exposed to more carbon than cyclists – up to 50 percent more. We know cycling beats driving hands down when it comes to both the physical health and environmental benefits.

“And our study found car drivers and bus passengers tend to get exposed to more general traffic pollution than cyclists too – particularly when cyclists are able to keep some distance between themselves and traffic,” says Professor Kingham.

Professor Kingham’s government-sponsored research project also looked at the perceived danger of cycling in busy Christchurch and Auckland traffic and compared the safety of cycling on the road with off-road cycling.

People were afraid to cycle in built up areas designed exclusively for car drivers, he says. Instead they wanted to travel on specially-designed cycleways positioned away from traffic and pedestrians. If this wasn’t possible, they were more likely to cycle if intersections and roundabouts were redesigned to suit cyclists, as well as car drivers.

Professor Kingham hopes his findings will help urban planners and transport policy makers come up with new ways for moving citizens around cities like Christchurch.

“The city’s rebuild gives us the opportunity to rethink how we’ve done things in the past and come up with solutions that will stack up well in, say, 50 years’ time.

“When it comes to solving our traffic woes:  the simple answer is more people would cycle if we made it safer.”