Mike Hosking: Putting bikes on footpaths is a stupid idea

COMMENT:

There is nothing worse than bad law, there is nothing worse than bad law driven by tinkering and pottering, and a series of niggly little amendments that make it complex and / or neigh on impossible to police.

That's why National, as part of their red tape purge, are tossing out the landlord changes the Government is trying to implement as we speak. Fines for not telling tenants stuff, fines for changing your address or not providing receipts. That's niggly, scrappy, narky little bits of law that drive people nuts.

And that's before you get to the bigger stuff like 90-day tenancy changes, heating requirements, and pets. They have taken a market and wrecked it.

Here are the simple facts around renting in this country, there aren't enough houses, there are too many people looking for those houses, the price is rising and finding a place is a nightmare. The average rental in most urban centres is at record levels, in excess of $600 a week. And what you get for that is depressing.

A large chunk of that is based on the very simple premise that the harder you make it to do something, the less likely someone is to do it. Which is why Simon Bridges and his mates might be onto something. New Zealanders hate petty little rules, so tipping them up has appeal.

And then having messed up rentals the government are looking to poke their nose into bikes and footpaths.

Should bikes be allowed on footpaths? No. But that's not stopping them.

Should it be limited to 16-year-olds or less? Immediately you can see where the trouble is, who's policing that?

Should e-scooters be allowed in bike lanes? They think yes, but they'd need lights and reflectors. Who's policing that?

Should skateboards be allowed in bike lanes?

So you've got bikes, scooters and skateboards in bike lanes, under-16 or maybe over-16, some with reflectors some with out, but they'd all have to give way to buses. Are you serious? This, you perhaps won't be surprised to learn, is the work of that well known transport genius and feebate inventor Julie Anne Genter.

The fact we have allowed e-scooters to roam and rampage free for a year now without any regulation, costing us all millions in ACC as pissed geriatrics fall off and break themselves, shows you just how hopelessly disorganised we are around transport and its regulation.

And when we go to address it, instead of keeping it clean and simple, clear and understandable, we have half a million options and variables which will lead to carnage, cost, and confusion.

This lot are meddlers. There isn't an issue they can't strangle and complicate, with death by a thousand bylaws, exemptions, changes or theories.

The footpath is for people, the road is for everyone else.

See it's simple, if you apply a bit of logic.