Up Front: This is a Photograph of Me
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Plus, Islander, at least cycle-tourists normally take the time to find adequate toilet facilities. One over freedom campers you've got to admit.
The whole "they don't pay road tax" thing is a wash. No-one pays road tax: you pay rates, or national taxes, which subsidise local/national roads respectively. Touring cyclists pay GST while they're here: they're contributing to our roads. And John Key obviously thinks touring cycling is the way forward: witness all our funding for that national cycleway.
Other perk of cycling: it's a good excuse to wear skin-tight lycra. It's more fun than you think!
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Deborah, I think cyclists would have a right to travel SH1/8/63 IF there was a dedicated lane for them: as it is, there are numerous places on -as you well put it- this 'significant part of a national frieght network' where 2 two milk-tankers (and there are a *lot* of those these days) have to crawl past one another. There just isnt room, without huge (&unjustified) expense to put in a cycle-lane through8/-out the main Coast road.
It is a road built for an earlier time, and cyclists have never been a real consideration in any upgrade. It is also a road which carries(comparatively) very little local traffic at some times of the year - and very little tourist traffic at other times of the year. Thing is, the local traffic is a constant: the tourist traffic isnt.
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I think you need to give a bit of weight (in your monster post, and we will hold you to that promise!) to the different ways in which cars and other motor vehicles are used in the 21st century, c/f 100 years earlier.
Deborah: absolutely. I am not proposing a McGillicuddy-style Great Leap Backwards. Although full unemployment for all has a certain appeal.
But yes, it has been 100 years -- cars are no longer obviously the progressive form of the future, they are just as much a potentially obsolete transport mode as cycles, buses, trams, trains, diesel ships and planes. To envision a reduced role for the motorcar and a reclamation of the public street can be forward-looking at least as much as it is nostalgic.
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It is a road built for an earlier time, and cyclists have never been a real consideration in any upgrade.
Too true for too many roads in our country. This isn't just a cyclist problem: how many of our rural roads were designed with an 80kph maximum speed in mind?
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I'm cheering Stephen from the sidelines. Occasionally I may try to pass him a bottle of water. Jack too.
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Stephen Judd, JackElder - cycle-tourists on the Coast in South Westland are 90% part of ride the bus or van/ride your bike set-ups: they spend very little in local areas *except* where their vehicle overnights
(say Hokitika, then Franz or Fox.) They mainly use local toilet & rubbish facilities (as do a few of the 'freedom' camper-vans )- but, who, pray, do you think pays for those facilities?Us local rate payers...
Dont ask what we get back from them-
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When I first arrived in Big O, the road in was a gravel road, and 4WD much of the time. There were 4 tiny one-way bridges.
Now, it is sealed, with only 1 one-way bridge - and slumping in parts (I remind my family & friends that if they are travelling here in heavy rain, hug the cliffs - dont worry if it's the wrong side of the road!) It's only within the last *FOUR YEARS* that a whiteline went down the middle of the road.
It was a road designed for packhorse travel - and you're right Stephen: very few of the rural roads I know in this area were designed for anything else but-
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Sorry for this, but I just heard Tim Chadwick, whom I met last year at a scooter gathering, passed away in a car accident. He was a 'driver' in every sense of the word. R.I.P Tim.
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Thanks, Stephen. We've touched on this before but shared spaces are about getting back to that sense that the road is not just for cars.
It's certainly not a new concept. Stumbled on this 1905 clip from a San Francisco streetcar before their big quake - note the fairly relaxed movement of other traffic and pedestrians.
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Xeno,
On the subject of photo ID, how about a gun license? I have perfectly good ID already (I've been overseas in the last 12 months), but I'm curious as to how people would react when you pull it out in the chemists trying to buy real cold medication.
It's a little pricey, but you'd probably spend more on a car. Unless you *really* like guns.
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Xeno, I've done that earlier this month. Gun licence, and wanting Panadol.In good ol' Oamaru. Nobody twitched (despite the maniac pyschopath look.) Might've helped that the family has been there for nearly a century...
oh, and check back earlier in the thread-
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Sorry for this
No worries. Sometimes you need someplace to say something.
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@Jack
I've got to ask here: when were you last on a bike?
Of course you do, it shows in the whole way you've been talking. Sunday, is the answer. That was the last time I went for a reasonable length ride. Actually the real truth is yesterday, I rode to the dairy to get some milk, but we can discount that one.
Most people riding do NOT ride a $5k bike and there is NO WAY it's as engineered as even a lame weak car. Cars are designed by teams of hundreds of people, assembled by thousands. They are rigorously tested at every step along the way, then they have to pass strict certification guidelines to get onto the road. The safety is tested by law frequently, by independent experts. Massive redundancy is built into most features to make sure that they continue to work. Everything is stronger and heavier duty than on any pushbike. Of course, this is necessary because they do a hell of a lot more work, cover far more distance, are much more capable, faster, more potentially dangerous.
I was not talking about braking power, obviously. I was talking about traction. Stopping power is all about traction. Most people on pushbikes, seeking to get a little more speed and a little more longevity, take active steps to reduce their traction. Also, what do you think is safe about a vehicle that sends you over the handlebars when you brake? That just shows that the centre of gravity is way high and forward. If you've gone over the handlebars, that means 100% of the braking was being done by the front wheel, which might have something like 2 square inches of rubber on the road. Your feet have better traction.
The visible cross section of your profile on a bike is little more than a pedestrian's. In a car people see something 2m wide and about 1.5 tall, for an average sedan. It tends also to make quite a bit of noise. Obviously SUVs and other trucks are even more visible. Cars have built in high powered lights at night, and horns that are audible at 100m.
Wobbling? Sure, some riders are rock solid, even going up hill. But one heck of a lot aren't. The task requires balance, a great deal more balance than it requires of a motorcyclist. I know this because I ride both. Children are all over the show. Old people and unfit people and untrained people wobble like anything, particularly at low speed. This doesn't happen so much with cars.
I'm not speculating about rider psychology. I live it. I watch cyclists a lot, and most of the time, their eyes are fixed on the road about 20 ft in front of them, scanning for minor obstacles, like stones and glass. Their heads are angled downwards making it hard for them to look backwards. When they look backwards, they tend to also turn in that direction, it requires real skill to suppress this habit. Getting tired is pretty normal for the vast majority of people on bikes who are not trained to laugh off a 200km ride, and it's distracting to them. They get hot, then cold, then hot. They're in pain, got a sore bum, etc.
Then there's all the distractions drivers also have. But cyclists have extra ones.
There is also the tendency, mostly absent in powered vehicles, to resent giving up momentum, so they're not exactly heavy on the brakes.
Most riders have little more protection than a flimsy little helmet that doesn't cover their faces. They are basically wearing underpants on the rest of their bodies. A pedestrian has more protection, except on their heads.
I do think that cycles are amazing machines nonetheless. But be honest about their limitations and the risks you are taking riding them.
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A small irreverent & unlikely dream:
in every city hub, cars are banned: people walking or biking (including
taxi-tricycles) or small electric shopping carts (for yerm, seniors - or mums with small kids) are all that is allowed...after midnight, electric delivery & service vehicles can come in for 4 hours. Silently...There will be suburban transport, gas/electric, whether rail or bus. It will be cheap, monitored, people & pet friendly. It will run 24/7.
Outside the city, connected to the suburban transport, will be several other forms of transport: it will include motor vehicles (gasp!) for the recidivists: electric hover craft, dirigibles, sun-homes...the roading network is narrowed, railed in the main...there are strange twisty wee roads that lead to odd and possibly dangerous outliers of the 10 major cities...take the overgrown mushroom-shaded route to Big O if you have an extreme need for 'bait...
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Just how much does the average tourist-cyclist pay towards this?
What is this, Kiwiblog?
The amount you contribute doesn't change your basic right to use public facilities. All roads (except the few motorways) are open to all classes of traffic. Everyone is entitled to use those according to the road rules, whether they're a tourist/dolie who's paid nothing or a truck company paying thousands.
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The amount an individual contributes to the general maintainance of public facilities can, however, change your attitude to bludgers - like freedom campervans or certain kinds of cyclists.
The Kiwiblog slur is unwarranted , noted, & resented.
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@Stephen, yes current infrastructure in NZ is designed around the automobile. I'm like that to change too. But until it does, cyclists can expect to be considered occasionally as nuisances, and should think about other road users. Pedestrians aren't allowed to dawdle 3 abreast down the road, and I've heard many a cyclist barking at them to get the F&^% out of the way, and fair enough too. People honk at motorists who are being similarly inconsiderate, crawling along looking at something. In London, I recall people doing it on the escalators too. It's fair enough, standing to one side to let people run through is simply a good idea, good manners, and it makes things work better.
Fair enough, there are times when the safest thing to do is take up the whole road. Motorists need to learn to live with this, and "militant cyclists" are also wise cyclists. But they are not wise when they're riding 2 abreast along Tamaki Drive (which even has a cycle lane, admittedly a really shit one, but still) for miles, forcing cars to go to the other side of the road to pass them. Then they are being twits.
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Most people riding do NOT ride a $5k bike and there is NO WAY it's as engineered as even a lame weak car
Ben, you do realise that a rusty old Edwardian banger is probably more efficient than any car on the road today, right? (In kms for energy used. (& `As engineered as' is meaningless.))
If you've gone over the handlebars, that means 100% of the braking was being done by the front wheel, which might have something like 2 square inches of rubber on the road.
This really isn't a useful way of thinking about bicycle braking at all.
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Following on from "A small irreverent & unlikely dream":
we need to make cities for people, not for vehicles: I dont know how many thousands of other people have shouted this, but if you design a city around a form of transportation/any form of transportation that is extremely costly & polluting in every sense, and you keep feeding it roads because the cars need need need-
you've got the worst aspects of Auckland. (And almost every other city in the world.) And it doesnt have to be that way-
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As for the obsolescence of automobiles, yeah right. For massive megalopolises, sure, the center could possibly be designed to restrict access only to specific service vehicles. But for every massive centre, there is usually a much, much more massive suburban area around it, in which the automobile will continue for a long, long time to dominate. And the bulk of the surface area of the earth that is not city at all, will continue to have almost nothing but automobiles.
Personally I'm quite glad about this, I think cars are amazing devices. Tonight, I took my whole family to see my parents in one. If I had to use public transport, I would most likely not see them very often at all. And they don't even live very far away. The trip took ten minutes, and the kids slept most of the way home. If I had to wake them up at 8pm and then get them organized into a pram, push them all the way up the hill to the bus stop, wait for a bus to take me into the city (the opposite direction from my house), arsing around carrying all the paraphernalia of child care, including in this case a port-a-cot, it would have taken me about 2 hours to get home. And it rained a little bit as well so we'd have all been wet and cold. To say automobiles are something crap, that they stifle humanity, is profoundly ungrateful, IMHO. They open the world up for us. You don't have to take your car. It's just a bloody good option, a huge amount of the time.
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Cars have their place. I love my van. I love the freedom it gives me BUT
*I live in a remote area.*
People in properly organised cities would have - well what I mentioned. 24/7 public transport with other options. You noted my taxi tri-cabs? But the whole current set-up in cities is crap. At the moment.
And it is that *at the moment* stuff you describe so feelingly. Why does it have to continue? Because everybody is fixiated on roads for cars/buses/et al? Why not have a whole fleet of electric/however-powered shoppingcarts/taxi-things that any citizen can stick a card in, at any time, and use it however they want within the city?And - I did mention the out-of-city stuff? Hmm?
We all know there are entire industries locking us in to a certain way of living. I think it is time we wrenched ourselves out of those confines......and did what we are really good at doing. Making a new way of living.
We've actually got all the tools to hand-
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Ben, you do realise that a rusty old Edwardian banger is probably more efficient than any car on the road today, right? (In kms for energy used. (& `As engineered as' is meaningless.))
So what? We were talking about safety, not fuel efficiency. And the amount of engineering is not irrelevant, it's the difference between a good car and a bad one, after all. Why is it not the difference between a car and a bike? Cars have massive redundancy of safety features built in.
This really isn't a useful way of thinking about bicycle braking at all.
Care to elaborate? What is it that actually stops a bike, if it isn't the rubber on the road?
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But the whole current set-up in cities is crap
I don't reckon. It seems pretty good to me, the entire thing is decentralized, we can all go pretty much anywhere we like with ease, except for people who work in the center of big cities who have to put up with commuting. Personally I think that's what's antiquated, people going into these giant centers en-masse every day. They should either live there, or not work there. Then commuting would be a thing of the past, and infrastructure would not even need to be capable of splurging so many people in and out.
Personally, I commute on foot, all the way out to my office in the garage. When I need to see people I can jump in the auto, and be anywhere in Auckland in 30 minutes, excepting those 3 stupid hours every day, which I try to spend sleeping or eating. Considering that most of my colleagues are soundly asleep in bed for most of my working day, this is easily arranged.
For all those people that simply must, for some reason, work in the city, how hard would it really be for them to just consider moving there? Apartment living is pretty awesome, actually. I'd do it myself if I had to work in the city. I have done it before and I really liked it. But I still had a car, and I got to see a whole lot more of the place because of that. I could socialize with people who lived miles away. My wife lived 20 kilometers away (when she was just my girlfriend), and traveling to her house, even though it was on a train stop, was a PITA on public transport by comparison to just jumping in the wheels. I frequently went to Bell's beach, which was several hundred kilometers away, and to any number of other beautiful places. In one job I was required to go out into the countryside frequently. I tried doing it by train but it was just a total bastard.
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Anecdata.
I look at cities from the outside in: few citydwellers are as happily mobile as yourself BenWilson, I venture to suggest.
Or I can find your post a lovely legpull - which I suspect it is.
Cooool! -
Ben, I agree with you about how neat cars are. My car gives me that same amenity and I love it too.
Also, note that when I complain about the rights of vulnerable vs the dangerous, and ask who's rude, I know perfectly well what most people think. I'm proposing alternatives, that's all.
But anyway, there's more to the role of cars in society than the private benefits any car provides for its owner.
Eg, you mention the 3 hours of madness in Auckland, and suggest "for all those people that simply must, for some reason, work in the city, how hard would it really be for them to just consider moving there?"
An interesting feature of this idea is that it would presumably greatly reduce the amount of car traffic. The idea of few, highly enjoyable trips is a nice one. I don't want to ban cars or anything like that. I just want to think about whether we can set things up to reduce the sort of tragedy of the commons they seem to bring about.
The answer to the question "how hard?", as things are, might be pretty hard indeed. The city has long grown, by accident and design, on the assumption that cars are the predominant mode of transport, and that people will live a long way from where they work. Apartments suitable for families don't exist in any number in Auckland, neither are there amenities for children at the right density, yadda yadda -- implementing your vision of most people working at home or living close to their workplace would require exactly the kind of radical rethinking I like.
In sum, I think we have a lot to agree on.
Oh Emma: congrats on the house! I will try to get out and raise a glass to it this evening.
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