The fining down solution

So the World Health Organisation has determined that New Zealand comes third highest in the international stakes for the most people who are obese. This will doubtlessly create a new round of jokes about our ability to come third in everything, but it is probably correct that other countries have estimated their obese population in ways which understates the problem. Nevertheless, in the debate we return to the issue of how to alter our environment to make it easier for people to exercise, and included in the suggestions is increasing safe cycle ways so children can cycle to school.
We spend so much helping people not to exercise. Yesterday at the public library, the recently build car park was half full while a driver looking for all the world like a bank robber outside the bank ready for a fast get away, patiently waited outside the door to the library. Presumably his goal was to enable his passenger to walk even less distance. As my son and I left, his place was taken by a parent dropping off her daughter. The car park was still only half full and the cycle rack had one bicycle. How do we make this approach look bizarre and the alternative of having these children cycle to the library look more normal?
The National Cycleway, now a series of discrete projects like the Otago Rail Trail, is aimed at tourists and people who cycle for recreation, Fortunately the British experience is that the majority of people who use these cycleways are locals who use them for day to day transport.

The end of the trail for cycleways

I was one of the people surprised to learn that the National Government of New Zealand had endorsed the New Zealand Cycle Trails proposal in the Prime Minister’s jobs summit in 2009.   We would expect The Green Party or, at a pinch, Labour to promote such policies but, as a party representing business interests, National should not have been interested.

For example, the Minister of Transport, Stephen Joyce, promotes Roads of National Significance and will not support maintaining the rail network or the Auckland Rail Network.  Roads and motorised transport occupy his attention and the goal is to have better, faster roads with less congestion.  The reason is not hard to see, the financial backers of the National Party do not ride bicycles nor do they use public transport.  With guaranteed car parking why should senior executives or board members worry about cycling to work?  The car is probably paid for by the company as well.

Rod Oram, in a column in the Sunday Star Times 22 April 2012, Riding rings around policy, looks at the cycle trails policy with a fresh eye.  The assumption with so many of the proposals for new cycle trails is based on the assumption that they can duplicate the success of the Otago Rail Trail.  This trail is very popular and the riders have generated a new source of revenue for the communities along its route.  Oram points out that routes such as the St James Trail and the Dun Mountain Trail are more costly to construct.  The Otago Rail Trail uses a disused railway line required few earthworks.  It runs through existing population centres where there are existing buildings which can be adapted to tourist accommodation and draws its work force from the same community.  Another trail requiring a road to be constructed and in addition new accommodation as well as bringing in a workforce into what are sparsely populated communities, will require a greater input of capital and so may prove to be uneconomic right from the start.