Pierson on Wellington cycleways

Lukje Pierson writes:

A few weeks back, Wellington City Council published a story summarising what thousands of us think of its priorities for the next decade. Buried on page 40, you’ll find what Wellingtonians really think of the council’s controversial new cycleways. It turns out just 30% of us are happy, while 60% want to see the work reduced, or stopped altogether.

In other words, twice as many Wellingtonians oppose council’s cycling network as support it.

This is not hugely surprising.

Wellington’s cycleway shambles has become a regular topic all over town, but I’ve never met anyone opposed to cycleways in principle – we’re an environmentally and socially conscious city, and most agree cycling should be a choice in our transport mix.

So why are we all so outraged?

For a start, we’re doing them atrociously. Our streets have become littered with a mishmash of painted strips, cones and poles, stapled bits of plastic, incoherent road markings and routes that weave in and out of parked cars and through groups of pedestrians at bus stops.

Then there’s the impact on parking. Aside from the obvious inconvenience, removing parking from the central city alone has cost council $8m annually in lost revenue – directly contributing to record rates rises.

The best cycleways should be removed from roads, not created by abolishing car parks or taking away lanes.

This, to me, goes to the heart of the problem with Wellington’s diabolical cycleways. Council is quite literally bulldozing ahead with $111m more of this work, ignoring the pleas of our emergency services, struggling small business owners, vulnerable healthcare workers and two thirds of Wellingtonians just trying to get by, in favour of cycling extremism.

This story isn’t over, but we can all see how it ends. Far from being environmentally and socially conscious, council will double down on a privileged few, while making the city less liveable for everybody else – and force the rest of us to pay for it, at a time we can least afford to.

It is a wealth transfer from the many to the few!