When I began to read about a plan to close the cycleway through the CBD (Rotorua Daily Post, April 6), I thought surely it should have appeared in the April 1 edition.
The more I read the management-speak from Stavros Michael, Steve Chadwick and Karen Hunt the more I wasconvinced it was a hoax equal to the Otago Daily Times' excellent April Fool's article about abandoning the placing of a fountain in the gardens by the railway station because of the perceived risk of splashes upsetting cyclists and scooter riders. But no, it was real!
Just get on with it: Rip out the kerbs in the middle of Haupapa and Hinemoa Sts and repaint the angle parking lines. No more of those hated new meters - abandon 15-minute-free parking zones and mark in more practical 30- and 60-minute ones.
Forget consultations about lower speed limits: In those inner-city streets no one can get up to 50km/h anyway. And don't let rental electric scooters loose in Rotorua, pedestrians are at enough risk of injury from skateboarding and cycling hoons.
Maybe then the dying centre of town may get a few of the many vacant shops filled.
The mayor stated the Green Corridor was an "investment to get the cycleways kick started". Phew, what an investment! I prefer to see a positive return on my investments. That is more imperative when the invested money is someone else's!
In my opinion, it parallels Mudtopia - another failed investment, and both with no apology or admission of poor, inadequate research and bulldozed through with nil regard for the investors.
How can councillor Hunt say that when the Green Corridor was installed, "speed limits hadn't been considered because that wasn't a common option internationally". I guess we must have travelled to different countries.
Two years after its installment, its proponents were still trying to justify its existence by describing it as a "stunning success". Who were they trying to fool, apart from themselves? Because it certainly wasn't the ratepayers and affected business owners.
Now we have the mayor telling us that we "may not need it". What she should have said was "we never did need it".
