It’s rational to build more cycle lanes
One of the joys of being a parent, and there are more of them than I’d anticipated, is seeing the world through the eyes of your offspring. The wonder of each new discovery seen afresh.
The latest adventure has been learning to ride a bike. The process was painfully slow and, for the most past, involved me holding the back of the urchin’s shirt and running alongside him. I am sure there are better methods, but it worked, and now he’s off: Oh the Places He’ll Go.
Last month we took a family vacation to Queenstown, hired bikes and went cycling around the lake. It was great fun.
Pedal bikes are a remarkably recent invention. Humanity developed the cannon some 600 years before we figured out how to make effective use of the wheel for muscle-powered transport – which tells you all you need to know about mankind’s priorities.
Technology leapfrogged the bicycle remarkably quickly, with Karl Benz getting a patent for a motorised vehicle a mere 60 years after the first pedal bike hit the pavement. Now, in wealthy nations, the motor vehicle has become a mobile prison cell from which we sit in comfortable – but increasingly frustrated – comfort, inching along.
We built cities around the car, with urban sprawl devouring the countryside – the younger the city the worse the sprawl.
Old cities such as London, and those that took shape before the curse of the automobile took hold such as Hong Kong, are high-density metropolises where people can walk or glide into the urban centre on functioning public transport.
Auckland, by contrast, has evolved with the horseless carriage and is built around driving. In the 1950s this was ideal. You could own your quarter-acre slice of paradise in Sandringham and clatter into town in your Holden without delay.
To sit in traffic today is a demonstration of the power and magic of free enterprise contrasted with the perpetual failure of central planning. With heated seats, podcasts covering every facet of human interest, and a GPS guiding your journey, the free market delivers; yet the state-planned roads have become a tragedy, or perhaps a farce, of the commons.
Without congestion charging, the wealthy industrialist pays the same cost in terms of time as the stay-at-home dad driving his charge to school. Each additional car on the road is a form of pollution, clogging and hindering others who wish to use the same limited space.
Bicycles, by contrast, remain a source of freedom. The ability to weave through traffic, zip along the sidewalk and park anywhere there is a spare metre, is almost a form of modern urban rebellion.
The geography of Auckland and Wellington provides a challenge to those relying on pedal power. Yet technology is coming to our aid with small electric motors giving us a boost.
The only real constraint to cycling, other than the limitations of carting groceries and children, is the inequality of outcomes when a cyclist and motorised vehicle collide.
I refuse to wear a helmet, out of contrarian defiance rather than any libertarian principle, although I demand my young son wears his. The impact of one’s head against asphalt can be detrimental to cognitive function and the most likely cause of such an event is cycling, literally, into a car.
I don’t have much confidence in those designing and building the new pathways and cycle lanes, but the desire to prevent them, in order to ensure traffic continues to flow, is flawed.
Even if you refuse to embrace the joys of lycra and saddle sores, getting more people onto bikes is a positive. It means less competition for the limited amount of roadway. Some recent designs seem counter-intuitive, but the trend is a positive one and the new plan to build a cycle and pedestrian path across the Auckland Harbour is exciting – although I am sure it will follow all government projects by being far too expensive.
Cycling, as my son is discovering, is a form of individual freedom, and the new electric bikes and scooters provide a new alternative for those seeking to avoid the ongoing congestion failures of our major centres.
Cycle lanes that make pedalling from one destination to another safer and faster are a rational response to our modern transport troubles.
To sit in traffic today is a demonstration of the power and magic of free enterprise contrasted with the perpetual failure of central planning.