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

Advocacy
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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
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Oh my god, itā€™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.

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

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A decent response to it:

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And another: