Posts by Mikaere Curtis
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It’s been earmarked as a potential car park for ages, so let it be a carpark. And let it not be free to use, at least at peak times. If you can afford that luxury SUV, you can afford five bucks for a couple of hours’ unsubsidised parking.
My son attends Waiorea, the Maori unit at Western Springs College and every year (unless there is fruitfly outbreak or the school is being rebuilt), we run the carparking for the Pasifika Festival. We use the fields around the college, and at the same time MOTAT are doing the same with that field.
So it already is used as a carpark, and I wonder if what needs to happen is that MOTAT need to think of it as a potential income stream on Saturday mornings.
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But the engineers made the fatal assumption that they could make their plan work by converting the free left turn at the top of the St Lukes off-ramp to a Give Way and getting rid of the slip-lane that was there. They couldn’t. Without the slip-lane, the intersection was a disaster and traffic backed up onto the motorway every evening..
And was these same geniuses that declared that their models were so awesome that we absolutely had to cut down the Pohutukawa 6, but couldn't see the obvious issue resulting from putting in a Give Way in place of a Free Turn.
I really hope there was some proper accountability for that empty lane/offramp debacle. You're right, though, it does make life easier as a cyclist :)
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Russell Brown,
True, but National are such wankers about it. Simon Bridges is on record saying this Auckland's housing affordability issues are only in the "top tier". And John Key's housing crisis of 2007 evaporated as soon as he took the reigns.
I truly hope that Labour's time in the wilderness has sharpened their appetite to actually fix these issues; somebody has to do it and it may as well be Labour and the Greens who bite the bullet.
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Moz,
I’m not sure that that would be easy, and it might make housing affordable again
FTFY
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
The first step would be to stem the record numbers of people arriving, full stop. The floodgates have been open too long, Auckland has been full for more than 20 years IMO. I agree that simply moving the record numbers of immigrants to the regions is a non-starter.
One way would be to change the point system so that hardly anybody can get in, and then get the regions to bid for the numbers they want; this way immigration applicants get points for moving (and staying) in the region. Moving to Auckland (or other designated over-populated locations such as Queenstown) will reduce your ability to become a permanent resident/citizen.
This approach will give the likes of Auckland some breathing room and we can start doing stuff like replacing non-character buildings with higher-density dwellings (apartments, terraces etc).
This approach is a quick win, and if it turns out you got the settings wrong (i.e. start detecting unintended consequences), then it's also quick to adjust the policy settings.
Of course, immigration is a major driver of GDP growth when you have a government of incompetent group-thinkers. National loves the "free" GDP growth plus IIRC each National MP owns 2.3 houses so they quite like the current settings because of the tax-free capital gains. And it's not their friends and whanau who are living in overcrowded houses, garages etc.Win/win for them, methinks.
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s a huge and complicated problem.
True, but it there are some pretty easily picked low hanging fruit:
* Change our immigration policy settings to massively reduce the number of people moving to Auckland.
* Disallow non-residents from purchasing real estate
* Implement a capital gains tax (except on the whanau whare)
* Redirect investment from un-needed motorways (such as this expensive rort) into a proper 21st century transport model (like CFN 2)).I don't think National want to lose this election. They can only follow their kaupapa of directing wealth to the wealthy if they are in power. The real driver is that they just don't care and they have no shame.
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Hard News: A tale of two festivals, in reply to David Pentecost,
Interesting how Stuff have just posted an article on George in the Park.
Maybe they think that dude covered in mud is a Person Of Colour...
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Bart Janssen,
This thread has lots of links to reviews and primary source and is based on David’s RNZ science spot.
Thanks, it's a good piece. I am still not sure how you prove that re the helmet law " it’s trivial to show that it raises the likelyhood of having a car v bike accident."
I get that cars drive closer to bikes and vice versa, and I run that gambit all the time when I ride to worka nd when I'm in or near the city it's typically a situation where I'm creating my own cycle lane on the left of the car lane nearest the curb. My approach is to be very visible, and ride a predictable line.
However, I don't see the evidence that this raises the likelihood of car vs bike accidents. The ones that count are when the car pulls out in front of the bike, or pulls into the lane that the bike is in. These are when the driver is blissfully unaware of the cyclist. Even if they drive closer to the cyclist, they are both typically going in the same direction and the theory is that the driver chooses to driver closer to the cyclist *because they are aware* of the cyclist. Is there any evidence that car drivers, who can typically negotiate traffic without hitting other vehicles, are more likely to actually hit a cyclist who is wearing a helmet (vs drive closer to them) ?
In contrast, the accident hotspots I have seen seem to be in places in which there is a pinch-point in which the cyclist and the car get pinched into the same space. I can't see how the helmet law affects this.
My (very anecdotal) reading of the situation around lots of cyclists = more space and better awareness is that when you have lots of cyclists they you have lots of non-hardcore cyclists i.e. ones that are more likely to weave a bit and that is what causes drivers to be careful - they can't trust cyclists to ride in a straight line so they automatically make room for them. When they see a lithe, lycra-clad pedal-power machine hunched over a specialist road bike then they instinctively know that this person is going to hold an extremely straight line, so no need to worry about giving them an especially wide berth.
In addition, around the time of the helmet law we also saw a rise in the role of over-protective parents who started driving their precious kids to school. Back in the day, it was either walk or ride, and if you take those skills away then you end up with kids who don't learn the skills around riding and therefore are less likely to ride. Thus a cohort of non-cyclists was created. I would say the vast majority of baby boomers and the significant majority of GenX could ride. Not so with the millenials, and this could explain part of the reduction in cycling.
Finally, I think that some of the problems around Helmet Law = Negative Outcomes can be handled by both education ("Helmets are safer, m'kay?") and engineering (do they *really* need to create a "helmet hair" situation - surely there's a better way ?)
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Bart Janssen,
It’s the law that is the problem. The law has unintended consequences and it’s trivial to show that it raises the likelyhood of having a car v bike accident.
Have you got a link handy ? The wiki page doesn't seem to mention this phenomenon.
It’s the ones that just don’t see you that will kill you.
I've actually seen a passenger open a car door as the cyclist ahead passed to the left of the station car (waiting at lights). He did it on purpose purely to give the cyclist a fright (I don't think he was trying to actually hit the cyclist). Nonetheless, it was very dangerous.
Unfortunately for this arsehole, there was a cop car behind him, and I was quick to engage the officer to deal with this situation. IIRC he got a $150 fine for being a dick.
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I cycle to work when I'm working in town and yeah, you do have to keep your wits about you. The cycleways are good and have greatly improved my cycling experience since I started riding to work in 2011. Bring on the Ian McKinnon Drive cycleway ! I often ride that way and while the cars are usually pretty good, there are those pesky drains that you have to ride around which is enough to get too close to the cars' "lane".
Never mind that we were doing over 50 kph in the rain anyway and waiting a minute behind us would have given him a perfectly safe passing zone.
Exactly, it's really no skin off their nose to bide their time and then accelerate when the way is clear. Once I was driving south along Highway 25 in Coromandel in that narrow and windy bit just south of Manaia. There were a couple of cyclists up ahead who were keeping to the left,but I refused to overtake until I could do so with an absolute clear view. This took a couple of minutes, and the cyclists were getting stressed that I wasn't overtaking since many drivers are less risk averse.
As is repeal of the helmet law.
I don't know about this, I've fallen off / been knocked off my bike enough appreciate having even an imperfect protection between my head and the road.