What kind of transformational government are you?
Sunday column
Yesterday brought the colossally surprising news that the government has embraced timidity and paid due deference to the status quo.
The Auckland harbour bridge no one asked for and was never going to happen is not going to happen.
It was obviously sound politics to ditch it but God how dismaying all of this has been for anybody who hopes for some sort of progress.
It really was quite a dazzling kind of inverted political wizardry to get bike riding cast as an act of smug entitled indulgence, and a driver’s love for their double cab ute as tortured victimhood.
Hard not to imagine some chortling at Waka Kotahi.
From the moment they unveiled the drawing it felt like a Diva’s sweep of the arm: OK you mewling grizzling cyclists, you want a bridge?? Here's a bridge!! Here's the most bridge a bike bridge ever had. How lavish do you eternally moaning guts-achers want it? How about this lavish? Hey, no, don't get up we've got some more lavish to trowel all over youse.
LOL! Now let's see what hard working New Zealanders think of your dopey Greta delusions. Sure would be a shame if this over-the-top bullshit got your dopey climate crisis ideas tanked.
What’s that? You’re going to ask the minister to help? Guffaw. Hey Sam, they're going to ask the minister to help LOL.
To refrain:
They are scrapping the grandiose thing no-one asked for. And they continue to ignore the actual request:
Please permanently allocate a lane of the existing bridge for bikes.
That's it. That's all it needs. That's all we're asking for and it's not at all out of the ordinary.
There is a plan for a better Auckland: cycleways, all the way around, to carry riders completely separate from the city’s roads.
It will open channels up all over the city. It will make it possible for more and more people to come on board, all those people presently too scared of riding.
It’s been tortuous work. It still is. But huge chunks are there now.
A crossing of the bridge is a vital missing link in that network. We just need a lane of the current bridge. That's what we asked for, and it's what we're still asking for.
This is not kooky extremism. It’s happening all over the world, at pace, where leaders with even a little vision and spine are embracing the idea that shifting modes, getting people out of cars and onto bikes, actually makes thing better for everyone.
They are literally switching modes on busy bridges over to bikes. And people are loving it.
The Brooklyn Bridge got itself a bike lane this year. It’s a two-way protected lane. It replaces the innermost car lane of the Manhattan-bound side. All it took was a barrier segment, a new connecting bike path and protective fencing on the inside of the bridge.
New York City is having an absolute cycling boom. Foot and bike traffic on the bridge has skyrocketed. Times Square in the Sky, they call the pedestrian crossing on the top.
In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s manifesto of a Fifteen Minute City - a vast collection of neighbourhoods where you can find everything you need within 15 minutes from home, where you remove car parking and using that freed-up space to make more room for people on bikes and people on foot, has been a huge success.
They’re doing this stuff all over the place, putting bikes in the centre of the picture.
But back here in Auckland the treatment has devolved within the space of one dismal announcement from the grandiose to: you can get off your silly bike here and wait for a ferry or a bus.
Buses and ferries. God what a meagre ministerial cop-out. It misses the essential point about people using bikes: that you’re able to get around at will. And that’s even before we consider the dire meagre woefulness of such services you would just know to expect.
The argument for bikes has nothing to do with leafy suburbs or lattes, no matter what any clue-deficient Kerre or Heather might claim. It just makes so much sense to change the way so many of us get around.
A bike can be the absolute perfect device for so many people of all ages to travel quickly and inexpensively. For many of us, it’s the most meaningful way for us to stop filling the atmosphere with emissions. For many of our trips we can be getting out of cars and onto bikes, just the way they’re doing in the rest of the world.
It can make things better for everybody.
Maybe it might not feel meaningful enough to amount to a nuclear-free moment, and this government wants to do something grander.
But for pity’s sake, so far all you’ve done is put those words in a speech. What kind of transformational government are you?
Given the way things are going in the UK, "supply chains" may end up with cyclists getting every lane on the Harbour Bridge sooner than we think.
The Brooklyn bridge looks great and is notable for an important reason. There had been a cycle lane for years but it was simply a painted line on the pedestrian crossing. Given the bridge was always choked with tourists it was impossible to expect sightseers to keep to their side of the line and often was just easier to join the crowds and walk your bike. Persuading city authorities that pedestrians and cyclists ("people too poor for cars?") are not the same thing is sometimes hard. I'm both a walker and a cyclist and I know at times we'll need to share. But if at all possible it works best if we can be separated for everybody's safety and comfort.
Cycling in New York is becoming amazing and one thing tends to lead to another. Good infrastructure has made the short term bike rental "Citibike" feasible. For about the cost of one decent cab fare, a visitor can get 72 hours worth of 30-minute rides (and much cheaper for residents over a year). Use the app to plot a "mystery tour" across Manhattan to places you'd never see otherwise with rental and dropoff stations every few blocks in many places (and taking up carparks!). Ride uptown from a Greenwich Village jazz club after midnight embedded in a crowd of food delivery cyclists. Swoop down on the magnificently curved Williamsburg Bridge cycleway into Manhattan and you feel like you are in the future. And hopefully, you are.
Even small things help. Here in Ōtahtahi junctions on the new cycleways now have destination signs with distances. Only 8km on cycleway from near my place to the University? Sure, I could do that....
Thank you for this! Feeling depressed and demoralized I went for a bike ride yesterday afternoon and was amazed by the number of people - families with kiddies on learner wheels, teenagers doing stunts around basketball courts, flatties on mountain bikes exercising together, sports cyclists in lycra, first-timers on hire bikes, older couples tootling along on ebikes - everyone out sharing the paths in the gorgeous sunshine, and I was immediately uplifted. The revolution is coming, ready or not!