Mike Hosking: Cycleways exposed as the sham they are

Opinion

OPINION

I am here to report that we were right all along about cycleways. We said cycleways aren't the future, don't get used, cost a fortune, and inconvenience the rest of us (ie those of us in a car) and for those of us who are guided through life by common sense.

I have a growing feeling we are starting to win the debate, and we are winning in this case through yet more evidence that so many of these decisions having nothing to do with reality, but everything to do with ideology.

An Auckland Transport report lays bare the sheer dishonesty around cycleways and how they're funded. AT used exaggerated figures to get public money to fund these things.

In the four business cases the report looks at, exaggeration was seemingly used in all of them. Millions upon millions of our dollars was spent on things those of us with a brain, but without an agenda, knew were bollocks.

Last year I stood on one of these cycleways, in peak hour, and filmed it. No one was on it, the road was full of cars, but no bikes.

These cases are in Auckland but no matter where you are - Christchurch, or Wellington - be rest assured the same dangerous, exaggerated nonsense will have been used to get your cycleways up and running.

Shops going bust, car parks removed, access to retail prevented so the zealots can build their monuments to a transport system that isn't wanted, isn't used, doesn't pay its way, is there by potentially fraudulent means, and ultimately will be seen for the sham it is.

The Auckland numbers as an example. One project projected 1060 bikes per day. In reality it was 680. Another said 980. In reality it was 330. A third said 975. In reality it was 290.

Even if those original numbers had been right, think about it. Nine hundred bikes a day in a city of 1.5 million people. Does 900 bikes justify millions in construction, and more millions in lost productivity, inconvenience, and wasted time?

Of course it doesn't. Not at the original, potentially fraudulent, invented, finger in the air, exaggerated figures, and certainly not at the real figures.

This is the dishonesty of the modern age. This is our power industry, where we hate we hate fossil fuels, dream of wind farms, but end up importing coal.

This is the oil ban in Taranaki with no new jobs to replace those who pack up and leave the region, or the mining on the West Coast banned but with no ideas to fill the gaps.

This is the EV market where the headlines would have you believe they are booming, and yet we buy 64 utes for every EV.

The ideologues make it up as they go along. They pedal crap. But slowly they are getting found out for what they are.

The lesson here is, if it sounds flakey, it will be. If it sounds too good to be true, it will be. If it's promoted by weirdos, watch out.

These people are dangerous and we are footing the bill. But slowly the facts are exposing their rort.