Cycle Tracks

Below is a picture of a cycle track, apparently taken by Russel Norman, Green party co-leader.

Here’s what he says about it.

But the bike track is really bad - it’s rough as guts, has lots of glass on it, is covered in loose gravel in various places. At some points it’s hard to figure out where to go. The track is crammed between the motorway and the railway. The road next to it is freshly surfaced, smooth and new lines painted on it. It epitomises the govt’s priorities for transport - roads get all the money and cycles and pedestrians get second rate treatment.

Where to begin?

It’s nice there’s a nice road there, but I’d say there’s a reason for that. The reason is most likely that it was in bad condition, and has recently been repaired. So much for that.

The cycle way in the picture is not in bad condition (one would assume Russel took a photo of the worst parts). Sure, it may have some glass on it - that’s far from unusual, and it’s never troubled me. It is about twice as wide as needed, and even if it does have a few potholes it’s easy on a bike to skirt around them. Bikes don’t need super-smooth roads to operate on - they don’t go that fast.

I don’t know the area, but I can tell from the picture above that there’s nowhere close for people to walk to. I doubt that more than a handful of people walk that route in a day. I doubt there’s more than a couple of people cycling there. Should we spend money on something that’s hardly used? No.

So what should we spend money on? Well, I’d say we should spend money where people are going to use it. In this case, that’s the road.

Oh, but what’s that beside the footpath? Why, it’s a perfectly maintained railway. Hm. Russel says he went that way “day before yesterday”. On a post dated 27th, that would mean that Russel was out riding on Christmas day. When public transport isn’t running. Leaving all those people being “environmentally friendly” with no option but to walk or cycle.

So if we don’t fund roads, we have to instead fund all alternatives, just in case one doesn’t work at the time.  Maybe the expense of doing that caused this unused footpath/cycleway to slip below Mr Norman’s rather high standards.

Of course, the solution is obvious. We need to schedule daily runs by one of those gas guzzling maintenance trucks make sure the path remains in to notch condition. Perhaps we could put down some nice red carpet and a guard of honour (armed with pea shooters of course) to make sure Mr Norman’s next trip is to his liking.