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.

Driving with blinkers

When horse drawn carriages were the preferred method of getting around town, horses which were inclined to be skittish would be fitted with blinkers, short flaps of leather which restricted the horse's peripheral vision and so decreased the likelihood of the horse rearing or bolting. It often seems to me that policy makers in transportation feel more comfortable wearing their own metaphorical blinkers.
In the current recession, there has been much talk of stimulating the national economy by improving the infrastructure. When it comes to transport infrastructure so many people think only of roads. They do not consider there are other means of land transport like rail, walking and cycling. What makes this blinkered attitude so frustrating is that cycleways and footpaths don't cost as much to build as roads. We get more bangs for our buck if we put the money into these types of infrastructure.
When we read the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development's report on transport infrastructure needs, we see not just an obsession with roading, but also with roading which will reduce congestion. The cost to the economy from road congestion is much less than the cost from road crashes caused by poorly designed roads, yet making roads safer is not the major concern of the Council. If we wanted a quick way to reduce congestion then improving cycling and walking facilities will produce a better result because cycleways are quicker and easier to build and a bicycle takes up lass space than a car.
The detractors of the National Cycleway project seem to be long on derision and short on argument. The experience of the National Cycle Network in Great Britain is that a route developed primarily for tourism and recreation soon becomes the preferred route for people commuting to work or using their bicyles for other transportation purposes like shopping.