The date of this incident is 25 April 2017; I couldn't type this date into the box above. (amended)
I was walking along the path signed as Adderstone Walkway, through the Adderstone Reserve. A young man on a mountain bike came around a curve towards me, quite fast. I stood my ground, and there was no room on the path for him to pass, so he had to swerve off the path to avoid hitting me. He was verbally aggressive towards me when I told him I didn't think this was a shared path.
I contacted Palmerston North City Council, and was told that this path is considered by Council to be a shared pathway, along with the others which make up the Turitea walkway through the suburbs and patches of bush in this area. I looked at the Road Code on the New Zealand Transport Authority website, and found that cyclists are instructed not to ride on footpaths, unless it is signed as a shared cycle/walking path. There is nothing on the Adderstone Walkway to indicate that it is a shared pathway. It seems ridiculous to me that these tracks would be designated shared pathways. Most of them are inaccessible or impractical for cycling simply because there are lots of stairs. The Adderstone Walkway is accessible to bikes, but doesn't seem suitable to share with walkers; it's not wide enough, it's winding, and the surface is gravel.
The wooden sign at the Pacific Drive end of Adderstone Reserve has a couple of stickers on it, one indicating no motorcycles, and one indicating no horses. The stickers are in shallow square recesses in the sign, and there are also about three more of these recesses on the sign; it looks like there were more stickers on the sign in the past, but some have been removed. The "no motorcycles" one has also been partly peeled off. This makes me wonder if there was a "no bicycles" sign on there at some point.
I got the impression the people at my local Council offices might just be confused about what is a shared pathway and what isn't, and didn't want to deal with my queries. When I replied to their initial email with the concerns above, I got no reply.
I was walking along the path signed as Adderstone Walkway, through the Adderstone Reserve. A young man on a mountain bike came around a curve towards me, quite fast. I stood my ground, and there was no room on the path for him to pass, so he had to swerve off the path to avoid hitting me. He was verbally aggressive towards me when I told him I didn't think this was a shared path.
I contacted Palmerston North City Council, and was told that this path is considered by Council to be a shared pathway, along with the others which make up the Turitea walkway through the suburbs and patches of bush in this area. I looked at the Road Code on the New Zealand Transport Authority website, and found that cyclists are instructed not to ride on footpaths, unless it is signed as a shared cycle/walking path. There is nothing on the Adderstone Walkway to indicate that it is a shared pathway. It seems ridiculous to me that these tracks would be designated shared pathways. Most of them are inaccessible or impractical for cycling simply because there are lots of stairs. The Adderstone Walkway is accessible to bikes, but doesn't seem suitable to share with walkers; it's not wide enough, it's winding, and the surface is gravel.
The wooden sign at the Pacific Drive end of Adderstone Reserve has a couple of stickers on it, one indicating no motorcycles, and one indicating no horses. The stickers are in shallow square recesses in the sign, and there are also about three more of these recesses on the sign; it looks like there were more stickers on the sign in the past, but some have been removed. The "no motorcycles" one has also been partly peeled off. This makes me wonder if there was a "no bicycles" sign on there at some point.
I got the impression the people at my local Council offices might just be confused about what is a shared pathway and what isn't, and didn't want to deal with my queries. When I replied to their initial email with the concerns above, I got no reply.