Dr Michael Johnston: A question of priorities

It is more than two weeks since the catastrophic failure of Wellington’s sewage treatment plant at Moa Point. Massive quantities of raw sewage continue to flow into Cook Strait. Many of Wellington’s beaches will likely be closed for months.

The immediate cause of the failure appears to have been a blocked pipe. The inside of the facility was flooded, badly damaging the plant.

Mike's Minute: Cycleways – hype over reality

If a council gives a media outlet some numbers and the media outlet simply re-posts those numbers, is that reportage? Or propaganda?

The headline was "more cyclists get on their bikes", which is true. But at no point in my reading of the cycleways of the nation's major cities, was any definitive analysis done as to whether the cost of the infrastructure to get people on their bikes was worth it.

JC: JAG loses her RAG

The Greens might be with us physically but mentally they’re somewhere else.

JAG (Julie Anne Genter) is once again losing her RAG (Raging Activated Gene), which causes her to angrily wander off into her parallel universe; one completely devoid of reality. This time, unsurprisingly, she is more than a little upset by Simeon Brown’s transport policy announcement. She describes it as “terrible”. It comes at a time when, she says, people are biking more than ever. Maybe in her parallel universe they are, but certainly not on Auckland’s roads. Not on the rest of the country’s roads either. If I were Simeon Brown right now I’d be asking for parliament security protection.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Paying for cycleways

Did Labour's Hipkins & National's Willis & Bishop bust the Ferries & break NZ's State Highway 1 System Linking North & South to pay for pork-barrel-politics cycleways in their own electorates?

Contrary to popular belief, NZ always did have the money to pay for state-of-the-art rail-enabled ferries linking the North & South Islands, even at a cost of several billion dollars. It is not a matter of finding the funds, its a matter of using the scarce resources the country already has to maximum effect & not wasting them on stupid projects. Are there tools to help make these decisions? Yes, they go by the name of cost-benefit analysis.

Alistair Boyce: After the Goldrush - “A Dying City”

The demise of Wellington as a modern vibrant growing city has fast come to an end. A perfect storm involving central and local government actions and inactions have culminated in myopic, self-serving bureaucracy, economic stagnancy and contraction spreading from the CBD heart arterially out to the immediate suburbs, and it is about to get worse.

Over the last decade the Wellington City Council (WCC) has been captured by a ‘Greens’ led socialist left-wing rump that has dominated the decision-making with an ‘alarmist’ climate change agenda, seeking to turn Wellington into the ‘greenest’ capital city in the world. Unfortunately, this is it at any expense with little fiscal restraint and is actively aided and abetted by the ‘goldrush’ from the 6^th Labour government. The city’s infrastructure is subjugated as the all-consuming priority is the ‘rapid rollout’ of carbon reducing strategies spearheaded by the cycleways projects of ‘Let’s Get Wellington Moving’(LGWM).

Kate Hawkesby: Why do we bother with cycleways, if even the cyclists don't use them?

I have a very smart girlfriend who is an extremely active citizen in her local community, and her city in general actually.

She is a go-getter who stays informed, keeps up with local and national politics, and donates a lot of her time and energy to helping the community. She was an early adopter to the e-scooter, uses the city’s cycle ways, and is all for saving the planet and getting cars off the road.

But, and here’s the big but, she raised a very valid point the other day regarding said cycleways. Guess who is not using them? The cyclists.

Mike Hosking: Michael Wood was dragged kicking and screaming back to reality

There it was.

At 7 o'clock yesterday morning Michael Wood, the lover of trains and cycleways, was on this programme waxing lyrical about the new spending priorities for our transport system.

I asked him whether it was more important to get a cycleway up or give Coromandel Highway 25A back. He said they were doing both, which of course isn't remotely true.

We were told just this time yesterday that climate change was top of the pile in terms of priorities when it came to handing out money for transport.

Heather du Plessis Allan: Aucklander's want more frequent public transport not more cycleways

 

Have I got my hands on something good for you. Now, you know how we're constantly told by the authorities that there's all this public support for cycleways? And you sit there thinking, well, nobody I know likes the cycleways, so what's going? Where can this possibly go? What?

Well, here's the answer: Looks like they're fudging the numbers. There isn't majority support for cycleways at all. Today, the Ratepayers Alliance has released a public survey conducted by Auckland Transport that I think might be the first real insight that we've had into what Aucklander’s  actually think about cycleways. And let's have a little guessing game on this one, right?

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Waka Kotahi needs to stop overengineering cycleways

 

If you hate cycleways, you’re probably going to hate them a whole lot more when I finish telling you about the latest instalment in this.

Turns out cycleways are getting really expensive. The country’s cycleway building programme is blowing out big time.

Waka Kotahi has set aside $618 million to spend on cycleways over the next three years, but the budget has blown out already to $670 million, which is an overspend of 10 percent.

Why? In some cases, because of dumb mistakes.