I Hate Bikes

Well, that got your attention

As a keen mountain-biker, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ve shot mountain bike videos, filmed MTB events and been a stringer (freelancer) for MTV, covering extreme sport, river rafting and fly-by-wire, amongst others, over the years. A lot of my mountain bike footage has been urban – the streets of Auckland, Hamilton and… London – negotiating road traffic, sometimes at peak hours. A lot of it featuring some of NZ’s best semi-pro and pro riders. London was a gas – once had a race between a mate and I – he was on a bus, and I was on my MTB I’d shipped over from NZ*.

I used to bike daily from my home in Aberdeen (Dinsdale, not Scotland) to Waikato uni. No problem.

Anyway, this preamble is to clarify things a bit before I get onto urban cycle lanes. A real bugbear of so many in the community – most of the community, in fact. 190,000 people and our busiest cycle routes would be lucky to see a few hundred cyclists a day – most of them would be recreational riders at weekends. Older people on e-bikes and families with kids.

But, hey. They’re a nice thing to have. Except for two core reasons:

Number one is that Hamilton is, to all intents and purposes, broke.

When people are broke, they can’t afford the niceties. They use a basket at the supermarket instead of a trolley. They put $20 in the fuel tank instead of filling it. They are lucky to eat meat once a week.

When businesses are broke, they get wound up. Receivership or liquidation are the usual options - often with the owners/shareholders losing everything in the process. Sometimes they go into voluntary administration (more or less receivership) where someone tries to rescue their business and trade them back into profitability.

Our council instead goes, “Hey! We can’t pay the bills, so let’s increase rates so we can borrow more!”

Pay attention to that statement. Increasing rates doesn’t just bring more revenue in for council – it allows them to BORROW MORE money. And who has to repay that? Ratepayers.

Now you’re getting there...

Just remember, our council has increased debt from$385M in 2019 to over $1B this year – really $1.25B when you ignore the smoke and mirrors. If I’m going to be on the generous side, that’s an extra$665M in debt in less than 6 years. On top of the rates that council has collected ($500M/year) AND the central government grants – 90% of the cost of some projects!

That’s quite a lot of money, don’t you think? And what do we have to show for it? Be Honest.
So, that’s the financial aspect. Really the most important but not solely because we are broke and can’t afford, well, anything, to be fair. But let’s put that to one side as that’s been talked about forever, lately). I’ve said there were two core reasons – so now it’s time for:

Number two. The cycle lanes that have been built are crap (excluding the most excellent Wairere Drive setup. There is no other way to describe them – case in point being Rifle Range Road (and Claudelands Bridge!). Nearly everyone in Dinsdale voted against the Rifle Range Road “cycleway”, but council went ahead anyway.

The cycling “lobby” are desperate to spend other peoples’ money creating cycleways from every suburb into the CBD at extortionate cost, and with hardly anyone interested in using them apart from themselves. This with total disregard for practical planning.

20 years ago, my family and I used to cycle into the CBD regularly. The river paths were ideal – interesting, picturesque, accessible. You could easily do Flagstaff to the centre of town – and even to the Gardens. Yes, we had to negotiate roads at times, but we were taught how to cycle safely on the roads as children. Bikes did NOT have right of way. Why? Because you always come off second best. Convincing a cyclist that they have right of way is the ultimate in stupidity when they are not as visible as a car.

Anyway, crap cycleways. I go back to my mountain biking exploits. We took risks – some pretty big ones – at times (don’t race people down the Bruce Road on Mt Ruapehu), but we accepted the consequences without blaming anyone else for our mistakes. However, we also knew what we were doing and where we were going, with safety being paramount.

But, here’s the thing. I felt safer hooning down the steps from Victoria Street to the river path than I would riding on the dire excuse for a cycleway that is Rifle Range Road.

And it cost $3.5M?!? Please!

The existing grass verge could’ve been used to widen the footpath for shared use without having to take up much needed carparks – ever seen the crowds at touch in summer? This could also have been done one hell of a lot cheaper than the ridiculous bollards (tim tams) that are as much a hazard to cars as to the (virtually) non-existent cyclists. I would not be do a night shoot of mountain bikers on Rifle Range Road. It really wouldn’t pass health & safety requirements.

"But," you ask, "how do we get into town from the suburbs (because, you know, 20,000 of us a day want to do that)? We need to build cycle lanes on all the roads! Just in case Bob wants to go to the CBD (which nobody really wants to do anyway)".

Ah, well. Our roads are busier, some are not all that wide. They really aren’t suited to both cars and bikes, and catering to the lowest common denominator is the epitome of dumb.

What am I saying?

Cars and bikes do not belong together – especially on narrower, busier urban routes. Some suburban streets are nice and wide and safe as houses, but a lot of older streets aren’t – and most new developments aren’t even fit for pedestrians. But, that’s another issue.

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What is my solution?

Check out an aerial view or map of Hamilton. We have parks everywhere. Everywhere. Most of them have paths – all of which can be shared. These can be maximised so that very little of our roadways are necessary for cycle travel – certainly not our busiest traffic thoroughfares.
They just need to be linked.

Yes, you may not be able to cycle as the crow flies to your destination – but you can’t do that driving, either. And isn’t exploring more interesting? And fun? I would much rather ride my bike through a park than on a road. Or alongside the river. What sort of selfish sod wants to go out of their way to inconvenience cars, taxis and buses just so that they can ride on a dirty old road. That’s the mountain biker in me but give me a single track any day.

More to come on this...

*I won, by the way (bike versus bus, in case you forgot).

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