HoS on Cycling to the World Cup

An excellent Herald on Sunday editorial:

Councillor Sandra Coney, who gushed that “the idea of lots of people going by bike to Eden Park is really great” has possibly not attempted the feat herself. If she had, she would have noticed the long slog up Queen St and the suicidally cycle-hostile wasteland of the uptown interchanges. And once she got to the park, she might have wondered where she could lock up her bike in the throng of arriving fans, who might good-naturedly let her tyres down. Add into the mix roads clogged with buses (never mind Aucklanders going about their business) and the fact that many of the cyclists will be inexperienced and full of the sponsor’s product imbibed at Party Central on Queen’s Wharf and you have enough work to keep the nation’s orthopaedic surgeons busy until 2013.

Maybe ACC could set up claim counters along the way?

Hulls’ claim that it will put Auckland on a par with London, Paris and Melbourne, would be laughable if it were not so frightening. All those cities have working public transport systems; here we are still learning how to compose a sentence that contains the words “train” and “on time”. But if this is the thinking that excites decision-makers at a regional planning level barely two years out from kick-off, we should start praying for the arrival of the Super City. With a bit of luck, somebody in the new council will realise that it’s time to stop mucking around.

Transport is the biggest unresolved issue for the cup I reckon.