"There's less money going into cycleways, and I think New Zealanders are sick and tired of the amount of money going into cycleways"

Quote by our favourite Minister for sedentary and dangerous Transport in this article:

It is hard to know how to respond to that. Bunker down and wait until the madness passes?

1 Like

Oh my god, it’s hard to know how to respond to that idiocy.

I think there needs to be vocal and strong condemnation - the Labour approach of staying mute is a terrible one in my opinion.

I’m actually more angry at the media reporting of this than the policy, simply parroting the lies and media statements of the minister without any context
ie

  • the last National govt slashed road maintenance spending to build RONS, creating a maintenance issue
  • The money allocation to cycleways was already minimal and not comparable to the spending on roads
  • Forcing people to drive by removing alternatives increases congestion
  • This goes strongly against public opinion which wants travel alternatives to private vehicle dependency.

First step an opinion piece in the ODT maybe?

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I’d be happy to contribute to writing an option piece for the ODT about this. For quite some time I’ve also been thinking of writing an article called ā€œDunedin biking myths bustedā€.

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A decent response to it:

And another: